Pros And Cons Of Punishment

one of the main questions in the court trial for Ricky and Raymond Tison seems to be “do they deserve the death sentence? Would sentencing them to death violate their 8th amendment rights? The 8th amendment says “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” It would be very hard to define a “cruel and unusual Punishment” because when faced with a death penalty they have to look at all the aspect of the case, to see if the death sentence was a just punishment for them. When they sentenced Ricky and Raymond Tison to death, it was something they had to consider. Even though they claimed that they never believed that their actions would have lead to the murder of the Lyons family.

The brothers said that they didn’t think the lyons would be killed, they said that they simply thought they would leave them in the broken car, but after they retrieved water for them when they said, according to “In Our Defense” written by Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, on a chapter about the 8th amendment “they saw Randy and Gary firing point blank into the Lincoln”. After being apprehended 10 days later with only Randy, Ricky and Raymond surviving, they were put on trial for the murder. All of them were tried separately for the murder of the Lyons, Randy had been tried and sentences to death as the triggerman who had killed the Lyons, 18 years he was executed in 1997. But for Ricky and Raymond being that they did not pull the trigger but participated in the felony that led to the murder, were tried under the Felony-Murder law. According to Law.com a law dictionary, Felony-murder law means “a rule of criminal statutes that any death which occurs during the commission of a felony is first degree murder, and all participants in that felony or attempted felony can be charged with and found guilty of murder. A typical example is a robbery involving more than one criminal, in which one of them shoots, beats to death or runs over