Sign In to view the Rule of Law and Holding. Crimes directed against the persons and property of others-such as second-degree murder, § 750.317; rape, § 750.520b; and armed robbery, § 750.529-do not carry such a harsh mandatory sentence, although they do provide for the possibility of a life sentence in the exercise of judicial discretion. All of these principles - the primacy of the legislature, the variety of legitimate penological schemes, the nature of our federal system, and the requirement that proportionality review be guided by objective factors - inform the final one: The Eighth Amendment does not require strict proportionality between crime and sentence. 105). . Rummel, treated this line of authority as an aspect of our death penalty jurisprudence, rather than a generalizable aspect of Eighth Amendment law. Contrary to Justice SCALIA's suggestion, ante, at 985-986, the Solem analysis has worked well in practice. White took issue with three premises of Scalia's argument. The most prominent objective factor is the type of punishment imposed. Under that view, capital punishment-a mode of punishment-would either be completely barred or left to the discretion of the legislature. Proportionality review is one of several respects in which we have held that "death is different,"and have imposed protections that the Constitution nowhere else provides. (Eight Amend. Thus, Benjamin Oliver, cited by Justice SCALIA, ante, at 981, observed with respect to the Eighth Amendment: "No express restriction is laid in the constitution, upon the power of imprisoning for crimes. Possession of the amount of cocaine at issue here would subject an Alabama defendant to a mandatory minimum sentence of only five years in prison. This page was last edited on 22 December 2017, at 15:58. His reasons for claiming that it should not be so construed are weak. The illegal drug trade, by contrast, begets a tremendous amount of violence. Solem twice stated, however, that its decision was consistent with Rummel and thus did not overrule it. According to Scalia, Solem assumed that the Americans who adopted the Eighth Amendment in 1791 understood that language in the same way as the English of 1689. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982). For the foregoing reasons, I conclude that petitioner's sentence of life imprisonment without parole for his crime of possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine does not violate the Eighth Amendment. New York: Modern Library, 2002. Our decisions recognize that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause encompasses a narrow proportionality principle. First, the fixing of prison terms for specific crimes involves a substantial penological judgment that, as a general matter, is properly within the province of the legislature, and reviewing courts should grant substantial deference to legislative determinations. In so doing, the Court has borne in mind Justice McKenna's admonition in Weems v. United States, 217 U.S., at 373, 30 S.Ct., at 551, that "[t]ime works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. In Trop, 356 U.S., at 102-103, 78 S.Ct., at 598-599, the Court surveyed international law before determining that forfeiture of citizenship as a punishment for wartime desertion violated the Eighth Amendment. 1417, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962), held for the first time that the Eighth Amendment was applicable to punishment imposed by state courts; it also held it to be cruel and unusual to impose even one day of imprisonment for the status of drug addiction, id., at 667, 82 S.Ct., at 1420-1421. 89-7272. Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 274, 100 S.Ct. 501 U.S. 957. Seven justices also agreed with the proposition that the Eighth Amendment imposes some requirement of proportionality in sentencing. To justify such a harsh mandatory penalty as that imposed here, however, the offense should be one which will always warrant that punishment. See, e.g., Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 30-31. 89-7272. Absent a constitutionally imposed uniformity inimical to traditional notions of federalism, some State will always bear the distinction of treating particular offenders more severely than any other State. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. Browning-Ferris Industries of Vermont, Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc. Legal history of cannabis in the United States, Council of the European Union decisions on designer drugs, Arguments for and against drug prohibition, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harmelin_v._Michigan&oldid=976378645, United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court, Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause case law, United States controlled substances case law, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from public domain works of the United States Government, Articles needing additional references from November 2007, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. This statute applies equally to first-time offenders, such as those in and. 'S suggestion, ante, at 299, 103 S.Ct., at 801 102... Accordingly, he says Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S., at 598 recent in. Down with great frequency embody different penological assumptions, making interstate comparison of sentences a difficult and enterprise... 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