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Beaten to death, put in a pen with wild, carnivorous animals, cutting off appendages a little at a time, "the rack", being tied to a post until death. In general, it would consist of any of the tortures that were used in European dungeons or a Roman Coliseum. Cruel and unusual did not only apply to death penalty, it also included torture to force confessions because it was recognized that with enough torture ANYONE could be forced to confess to ANY CRIME.

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My understanding was that, at that time, hanging was by far the most common method of capital punishment in the colonies, and later the United States. For quite a while before then, there had been a movement afoot to make capital punishment as humane as possible.

At the time, hanging was the quickest, most efficient, most humane, and least humiliating method of execution available. My guess is that they would view a method of execution as "cruel and unusual" if it was more painful and degrading than it needed to be, and/or simply inflicted pain for its own sake.

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9y ago

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