cruelty
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 329 U.S. 459 - State of Louisiana Francis v. Resweber · 1947Most cited · 1,000 citing opinions
constitutional
The cruelty against which the Constitution protects a convicted man is cruelty inherent in the method of punishment, not the necessary suffering involved in any method employed to extinguish life humanely.
How often courts cite the case defining “cruelty”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “cruelty” — 997 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.