Cruel and Unusual Punishments: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 Today we’re going to look at the issue of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution: what is cruel and unusual punishment? What is cruel and unusual punishment that the Constitution says we cannot punish people with? The Supreme Court in 1958 made this statement: the Eighth Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. A soldier had deserted for half a day, came back, turned himself in; he was sent to the brig, he was discharged with an undesirable discharge, and then they took his citizenship away. And the Supreme Court said no—the Eighth Amendment—that is cruelty and that is an unusual severe punishment for that crime. So remember they said this statement: the Eighth Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards

▶ 1:19 of a progressing mature society. In America we have several punishments. We have prison, and we have 2.3 million people in prison, and we have eight-tenths of a million—800,000 or more—on parole from prison. And then we have the probation: you know, first-timer, we’ll put you on probation, you know, you just check in with us and be a nice guy. Two and a half million are on probation in America. Then you have restitution. And honestly, all the people I know, I have never heard one of them thieves having to pay back even what they stole plus the loan added to it, so I don’t know about this one, but they say it’s a law. Community service: so you pick your charity, you did a bad thing like some famous people do, so you pick a charity and you go work in that charity for so many hours—that is your punishment.

▶ 2:28 Then you have fines where you pay a dollar amount for your punishment and then you’re just free to go. And then you have the death penalty—and I got a question mark there, because there were 15,000 murders in 2014 and only 35 people were executed with the death penalty. Doesn’t sound like it’s carried out in this progressive and a decent mature society. Civil punishments in the Bible: we have restitution; you have fines when you have a dispute with your neighbor, an argument or a court contest over something, and the loser has to pay a fine; and then you have beatings of 40 at the most stripes, okay.

▶ 3:27 So everybody beat 39 times so they didn’t go over the mark. And that was over a physical dispute: you’re a bully, you’re going around beating up 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-year-old guys and you’re 18, 19, 20, or your threesome in your little group is beating up people in the community—then the courts can beat you. All right. Servitude is very misunderstood in the Bible. Everybody that attacks the Bible says that slavery—that is not slavery. That is: you went into debt, or you had a bad business adventure, you couldn’t pay your bills, so you went and hired yourself out to someone for six years, or in that period of six years, to pay off that debt. It couldn’t last any more than six years, so it’s not slavery at all. Refuge cities were for people who accidentally killed someone: your axe handle, your axe flew off and hurt your neighbor and killed him, and so you could run to the city of refuge so the avenger of blood, the family, couldn’t come and kill you until you had a trial and found innocent.

▶ 4:37 And then you had murder and you had the death penalty. And over here we have little symbols of that: death penalty was carried out by stoning or a sword; this is the whipping lash; and a jail is our city of refuge today—you go to jail to protect you from people and protect society from you until you’ve had a trial and found guilty. There are no prisons in the Old Testament laws—no prison sentences at all. Everything was dealt with that day, at that time, at that moment, and done and decided. So cruel and unusual punishment in the Bible would be death for a theft: you kill a person because they steal your horse—the Bible would say that was cruel and unusual punishment for that crime. Death without a trial: the mob, they accuse you of something, they think you’re guilty, and they just take you and they hang you and they stone you—that’s cruel and unusual in the Bible. Torture is totally forbidden in the Bible—no torture at all. False witness:

▶ 5:53 they were examined, and if they were found to be a false witness, what they’ve brought that person to court for was done to them. If they brought that person to court to be stoned, then they were stoned. So you didn’t want to get in that court as a false witness. Now, cruel and unusual punishment—up on your screen is John Cooey. He’s age 46. He’s been arrested 24 times for drug violations. He’s a habitual user of crack cocaine. He’s been arrested for burglary, concealed weapons, disorderly intoxication, disorderly exposure, disorderly conduct under the influence of alcohol and drugs, driving. He committed fraud. He had some insufficient funds. He was charged with larceny, and his driver’s license had been suspended for 99 years. He had been arrested twice for fondling and abusing children, sexually abusing children. Okay. He was high on cocaine one day. He goes into the trailer in the same park and gets this girl out, age nine, Jessica.

▶ 7:10 Takes her to his trailer where his sister and her lover lived—and you can see all three of them are on drugs. I mean, come on, anybody can tell something’s wrong there. And he rapes this nine-year-old girl, tore her vagina from the rape, put her in a closet to stay there all day without food till he got home. And my point is this: why was he back in society to harm this innocent girl? Secondly, we got Josh up there. He got a teenage girl drunk, 13 years old, intoxicated, and raped her, and he was given probation. Two years later, after he got off probation, he got a 14-year-old girl drunk and raped her, and he served one year.

▶ 8:12 Well, after he got out, he got a 16-year-old girl drunk and raped her, and unbelievably he got three years in prison. He was sentenced at three years in prison. I tell you that is an unusual punishment for a very bad crime. And the cruelty is to the young girl who lost her life. He took her and he put her in plastic bags and buried her alive. That was John Cooley. He buried her alive. Melinda Loveless—she’s 16 years old. She is a homosexual lady teenager. And she loved the girl

▶ 9:04 up on your screen there, Shanda. And they had sexual relationships. That girl was 12 years old. Melinda is 16 years old. Well, Shanda switched partners and went to have sex with a 14-year-old girl, and Melinda got jealous, talked to her friends into luring her out of her home at midnight, took her to a place and beat her with her fist, beat her with a tire iron, shoved that tire iron up her anus, beat her over the head some more, tried to choke her—this was over an eight-hour period—tried to choke her to death. She passed out and then came back. They beat her more with the tire iron.

▶ 10:00 And then she went home and her parents were there, with this girl in the trunk of her car out in the yard, and finally put gasoline on this girl and burned her to death. She died from the burning. Lawrence Singleton. Mary Vincent was having car trouble. This guy stopped and offered her a ride to the gas station and so forth, took her to a secluded place, raped her repeatedly, and then took an axe and cut off her arms. And he got eight years. Now, for that kind of cruel crime, is this the decency of a maturing society?

▶ 10:57 Is this the direction we’re going, where the criminal is treated with such decency that there is no real penalty for a serious crime? Is this—for the Supreme Court says we are heading—two hikers came by. She was walking with her hands up trying to keep the bleeding down. Just happened two hikers came by and took the girl to the hospital, and she’s alive today. Purpose of punishment: 1 Timothy 5:20, them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. Deuteronomy 17:12: you shall put away the evil from Israel; all the people will hear and fear and do no more presumptuously.

▶ 11:52 So penalizing is for deterring crime. Deuteronomy 19:19: put evil away from your midst, and those that remain shall hear and fear and shall from henceforth commit no more such evil. Punishment is to be publicized, to be public, to cause those that are coming up behind to stay away from a life of crime. Now, cruel and unusual punishment is civil authorities not discouraging future criminals by punishing present criminals and publicizing it; civil authorities not informing uninformed citizens of immoral behaviors’ destructive and life-ending results; and the conclusion that no morals, no knowledge of morals, lack of self-control is the missing social puzzle piece in America. And it is not decency when we do not punish the criminal for the proper crime.