Opinion ID: 1343313
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Cruel and Unusual Punishment Standard

Text: In the case before us we are confronted with a child who was obviously in need of help, and yet the State chose to degrade him, to humiliate him, and to punish him by sending him to institutions which fail to meet his needs and cannot help him. At the outset this Court acknowledges that the cruel and unusual punishment standard cannot easily be defined and certainly is not fixed; consequently, we feel the standard tends to broaden as society becomes more enlightened and humane. See State ex rel. Pingley v. Coiner, 155 W.Va. 591, 186 S.E.2d 220 (1972). The standard ought to be especially broad in its application to status offenders, whom the State has pledged not to punish at all, but rather, to protect and rehabilitate. Furthermore, status offenders are not guilty of the criminal conduct which ordinarily serves to make society's exercise of the penal sanction legitimate. A good starting point for applying the cruel and unusual punishment standard to West Virginia's treatment of status offenders is the concept of disproportionality. This concept is explicitly recognized in W. Va. Const., art. III, § 5, Penalties shall be proportioned to the character and degree of the offence and is implicit in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which originates in the same tradition as our own constitutional provision. See Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910), and Ralph v. Warden, 438 F.2d 786 (4th Cir.1970). [10] A recent federal case, overturning the application of West Virginia's habitual offender law to a particular defendant, discussed the concept of disproportionality and identified three objective factors which can be useful in determining whether certain punishment is constitutionally disproportionate. These factors are: (1) the nature of the offense itself; (2) the legislative purpose behind the punishment; and (3) what punishment would have been applied in other jurisdictions. Hart v. Coiner, 483 F.2d 136 (4th Cir.1973). As the preceding sections of this opinion have made clear, this Court is concerned with the class of offenders known as status offenders. By definition, the nature of the class of offenses committed by status offenders is non-criminal. Accordingly, the status offender is located on the extreme end of a spectrum of juvenile misconduct running from most serious to least serious offenses. The nature of their offenses thus tends to indicate that status offenders incarcerated in secure, prison-like facilities, along with children guilty of criminal conduct, are suffering a constitutionally disproportionate penalty. The second consideration, the legislative purpose behind the punishment, has already been discussed at length in the substantive due process section of this opinion. To reiterate, this Court is unable to discern any rational connection between the legitimate legislative purposes of enforcing family discipline, protecting children, and protecting society from uncontrolled children and the incarceration of status offenders in secure, prison-like facilities along with children guilty of criminal conduct. We, like the court in Hart v. Coiner, supra , are in accord with Mr. Justice Brennan's observation: If there is a significantly less severe punishment to achieve the purposes for which the punishment is inflicted, the punishment inflicted is unnecessary and therefore excessive. Hart v. Coiner, supra at 141. Finally, we perceive that a better rule is emerging in other progressive jurisdictions, which eliminates or significantly limits the juvenile court's power to commit status offenders to secure, prison-like facilities along with children guilty of criminal conduct. New York's approach has been discussed in footnote 8 above. Other jurisdictions, typical of those which do not incarcerate status offenders in secure, prison-like facilities along with children guilty of criminal conduct, include Massachusetts and Maryland. See Massachusetts General Laws Annotated, 119 § 39G [1973] and Annotated Code of Maryland § 3-832 [1973]. [11] The nature of status offender punishment in other jurisdictions, which is by no means uniform, cannot, of course, control the outcome of this case. Nevertheless, in deciding in what direction an enlightened and humane society should move, this Court is entitled under W. Va. Const., art. III, § 5 to consider the response of other jurisdictions to the common problem which is presented here. For all of the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the incarceration of status offenders in secure, prison-like facilities along with children quilty of criminal conduct inflicts a constitutionally disproportionate penalty upon status offenders, and as such, violates W. Va. Const., art. III, § 5.