I have a question about “cruel and unusual punishment”. Does that mean only punishments that are BOTH cruel AND unusual are prohibited and therefore cruel punishments that aren’t unusual or unusual punishments that aren’t cruel are allowed?
In death-penalty cases SCOTUS always looks at how prevalent it is for states (and, when Kennedy was calling the shots, foreign countries) to apply capital punishment to that particular crime (or for murderers of that particular age), so it seems that a punishment that normally wouldn’t be considered cruel (such as, say, death by electrocution) could still be deemed to run afoul of the 8th Amendment if its imposition for such type of crime would be unusual.