Is the death penalty cruel and unusual?
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Is the death penalty cruel and unusual?

B2Upper-intermediateOctober 15, 202647 min
  • Documentary
  • Crime & justice

The Eighth Amendment. What is cruel and unusual punishment? Who gets to define and decide the amendment's boundaries? And how did the Constitution's authors imagine it might change? In this hour, the shifting definition of cruel and unusual punishment. This episode was originally published in January 2025. Guests: John Bessler, law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, and adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Author of The Death Penalty's Denial of Fundamental Human Rights. Carol Steiker, law professor at Harvard Law School and author of Courting Death: the Su...

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The failed lethal injection of death row inmate,

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just this year, has reignited a national conversation

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0:00

This message comes from Pushkin Industries. In his new audio book, The American Way of Killing, Malcolm Gladwell asks where America's gun violence epidemic came from, from the Second Amendment to shooting ranges

0:11

to ER doctors. Get it wherever audio books are sold. The failed lethal injection of death row inmate, Krista Pike, the second botched execution in Tennessee

0:22

just this year, has reignited a national conversation about cruel and unusual punishment. So we thought it was a good time to revisit this episode about the Eighth Amendment. And a note before we get started.

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