Wilkerson v. Utah

From Conservapedia

In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1878), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of a firing squad as a form of capital punishment, and denied a challenge that it violated the Eighth Amendment.

This case consisted of a challenge by an individual convicted of murder in territorial court, who had been sentenced to death by firing squad. Id. at 136. The Court held that the sentence would not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Id. at 133.

The Court noted that "[d]ifficulty would attend the effort to define with exactness the extent of the constitutional provision which provides that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted; but it is safe to affirm that punishments of torture, ... and all others in the same line of unnecessary cruelty, are forbidden by that amendment." Id. at 135-136. The Court relied on precedents in England in which "other circumstances of terror, pain, or disgrace" were "superadded" to the act of execution. Id. at 135. By contrast, the Court observed, the firing squad was routinely used as a method of execution for military offenses, see id. at 133-135, and "[o]ther modes besides hanging were sometimes resorted to at common law," id. at 137.