Hello m:

Solitary confinement is cruel. The death penalty is cruel.. Putting people in jail for smoking pot is cruel.. Sending people to jail FOR punishment, instead of AS punishment is cruel..

I could go on, but that's enough for the moment.

excon

If a person does graffiti and gets 5 years in jail, that's cruel. If someone kills someone else and gets the death penalty that's cruel. I don't believe in the death penalty, you don't teach someone to not kill by killing them. If you kill someone and get life without parole, that's not cruel. He murdered someone. Life in jail.

Excessive fines would be if you spray paint a train and get fined $1,000,000 that is excessive but if you get fined $100 that isn't excessive. If a murderer is fined 1,000,000 that isn't excessive. It pretty much depends on the crime you commit and your history of committing crimes.

If people watching it are inclined to fist pump and hoot and holler and the average citizen wouldn't want their children under 16 to watch it then it's probably a scenario which was cruel and unusual.

A cruel and unusual punishment might consist of, for example, force-feeding the criminal until his death. It's all relative to case-history, if thieves are usually given 5 years imprisonment then giving them 100 years for a minor theft is clearly "excessive".