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Punishment and killing of slaves: Slave codes regulated how slaves could be punished, usually going so far as to apply no penalty for accidentally killing a slave while punishing them. [9] Later laws began to apply restrictions on this, but slave-owners were still rarely punished for killing their slaves. [10]
Punishments were a matter of public or royal law, where the disciplinary power over slaves could be considered more severe than that for domestic servants yet less severe than that for soldiers. Masters could only chain and whip slaves "when they believe that their slaves deserved it" and cannot, at will, torture their slaves, or put them to death.
[32] [33] For example, as with the Bill of Rights 1689, the US Constitution prohibits excessive bail and "cruel and unusual punishment"; in fact, the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution which imposes this prohibition is a near-verbatim reproduction of the corresponding article in the Bill of Rights 1689.
Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase in common law describing punishment that is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to the sanction. The precise definition varies by jurisdiction, but typically includes punishments that are arbitrary, unnecessary, or overly severe compared ...
The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments has led courts to hold that the Constitution totally prohibits certain kinds of punishment, such as drawing and quartering. Under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, the Supreme Court has struck down the application of capital punishment in some instances, but capital punishment is ...
Though slaves were present in other states, most were forced to work in agriculture in the South. According to H. W. Brands, because of the declining productivity of crops like tobacco due to soil exhaustion, many of the drafters of the Constitution assumed that slavery would die out naturally in the South as it had done in industrialized North.
Use of the term "cruel and unusual punishments", derived from the English Bill of Rights might have also been influenced by its inclusion in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution some ten years previously, whose text was well known to English-speaking jurists.
The New York Bill of Rights includes: the right to a jury trial, [23] freedom of religion, [24] prohibition of excessive fines and cruel punishment, [25] protections against eminent domain, [26] freedom of speech and press, [27] right to assemble and petition, [28] guarantee of equal protection under the law and prohibition against ...