Nearly 40 years ago, this Court upheld the death penalty under statutes that, in the Court's view, contained safeguards sufficient to ensure that the penalty would be applied reliably and not arbitrarily. . . . The circumstances and the evidence of the death penalty's application have changed radically since then . . . those changes, taken together with my own 20 years of experience on this Court, . . . lead me to believe that the death penalty, in and of itself, now likely constitutes a legally prohibited "cruel and unusual punishmen[t]." (Death Penalty Information Center)

Do you agree or disagree that capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment? Why is or isn't capital punishment cruel and unusual punishment? How does it relate to the 8th amendment?

I came up with this question to better understand this topic.