Opinion ID: 1901039
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Federal Cruel and Unusual Punishment Cases.

Text: 1. Introduction. The lower federal courts have, of course, followed the cruel and unusual punishment framework developed by the United States Supreme Court. In light of the fact that the Supreme Court has found only two noncapital sentences invalid under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause in the past one hundred years, Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910), and Solem, the vast majority of federal appellate cases apply the stringent standards developed by the Supreme Court and deny relief to defendants in a conclusory fashion. In the words of one federal appellate court, finding a sentence grossly disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment will be hen's-teeth rare. United States v. Polk, 546 F.3d 74, 76 (1st Cir.2008). 2. Validity of as-applied challenge. Some federal appellate courts have been willing to engage in an examination of the specific facts and circumstances involved in a crime when a defendant challenges a sentence as cruel and unusual as applied. For instance, in Henderson v. Norris, 258 F.3d 706, 707 (8th Cir.2001), the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a life sentence for first-offense delivery of .238 grams of cocaine base. The court emphasized the small amount of drug involved, the fact that the defendant did not initiate contact with an informant who bought the drug, and that there was no indication that the defendant engaged in violence, had any weapons, or indicated any other trappings of the drug trade. Henderson, 258 F.3d at 710; see also United States v. Nagel, 559 F.3d 756, 763 (7th Cir.2009) (analyzing both a facial and an as-applied cruel-and-unusual-punishment challenge); Hawkins v. Hargett, 200 F.3d 1279, 1283 (10th Cir.1999) (noting the defendant's age as a factor in his cruel-and-unusual-punishment claim). Many federal courts engage in what one commentator has referred to as color matching by comparing the facts of a given case with those of Rummel, Solem, Harmelin, or Ewing to determine whether the facts of the case at hand, at a very high level of abstraction, are on par with those in the Supreme Court precedents. Donna H. Lee, Resuscitating Proportionality in Noncapital Criminal Sentencing, 40 Ariz. St. L.J. 527, 579-82 (2008). Color matching is legal analysis by analogy as opposed to a deeper, rule-based analysis that legitimately applies principles of stare decisis. Id. at 579. 3. Federal appellate cases considering Roper outside the capital context. A number of federal appellate courts have also had occasion to consider whether the reasoning in Roper namely, that juveniles are categorically not as criminally culpable as adultsextends outside the death penalty context. Federal courts in the Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits have declined to extend Roper outside the death penalty in a variety of situations. See, e.g., United States v. Salahuddin, 509 F.3d 858, 863-64 (7th Cir.2007) (upholding sentence enhancement based on armed robbery conviction committed as a juvenile); United States v. Mays, 466 F.3d 335, 340 (5th Cir.2006) (upholding life sentence for possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine under recidivist statute where prior adult conviction occurred at age seventeen); United States v. Wilks, 464 F.3d 1240, 1243 (11th Cir.2006) (upholding enhanced sentence where prior youthful offender convictions included aggravated assault, grand theft, burglary with assault, and strong-arm robbery). In limiting Roper 's application outside the capital context, lower federal courts generally stress that death is different the Eighth Amendment applies with special force in death penalty cases. Salahuddin, 509 F.3d at 863-64; Mays, 466 F.3d at 340; Wilks, 464 F.3d at 1243. These courts also distinguish Roper, where the defendant's punishment for a crime committed as a juvenile was at issue, from cases where a defendant's sentence for a crime committed as an adult is enhanced by a prior conviction committed when the defendant was under eighteen. Salahuddin, 509 F.3d at 863-64; Mays, 466 F.3d at 340; Wilks, 464 F.3d at 1243. [5]