required, nor excessive fines imposed,

Excessive bail was borrowed with a few slight changes from the English Bill of Rights Act. The concept of bail in both England and in the United States was never thought as right to bail in all cases, but to provide that bail would not be excessive in cases where it is considered legitimate to set bail.

The definition of Bail, as according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, property given as surety that a person released from custody will return custody will return at an appointed time. The concept of bail was first created by the Statute of Westminster the First of 1275 A.D., which created a detailed list of certain offenses that were bailable and those that were not. Because judges were permitted to imprison people with or without bail, the Petition of Right was enacted in 1628 A.D. Due to various frauds of petitions for habeas corpus which could not be presented the English Parliament enacted the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 A.D., which established procedures for the release of prisoners from

The Eighth Amendment is only relevant to the criminal justice system, and acts as a guideline. It tells all those who work within the criminal justice system of standards and explains what these standards are and what they represent. It states that if and when bail is set in a particular case, it has to be set a reasonable price. This reasonable price in not only for bail, but for fines as well. Not only that, but no person is to be subjected to any sort of cruel and unusual punishment. As far what is considered to be "cruel and unusual," this is to be decided by societies ever changing values of what is to be considered proper and improper.

2) "U.S. Constitution: Eighth Amendment: Annotations." Internet. 3 June 1999. Available: www.FindLaw.com

I completely feel the Eighth Amendment is a good guideline for criminal law, but it needs some improvement. It is my belief that excessive bail and fines are indeed a bad thing, because the poor suffer more than the rich. This is not just in a democratic society. I also feel that we need to update what should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Our society is living in the fear of being robbed, murdered, kidnapped, etc. Recently there have a large number of crimes where lots of people have been killed and it seems right that these crimes should have a large bail set. But for other less sever crimes, more reasonable bail should be considered.

The death penalty has to be one of the most controversial issues surrounding the eighth amendment today. This strict form of punishment has been used throughout the history of the United States. Today many people feel that it is a strict violation of the constitutional concept of cruelty. The campaign against death penalty has been around since the early 1960's. As a result of this anti-death penalty campaign, the US Supreme Court did their own investigation and study as to whether or

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