The death of capital punishment in the United States is not only desirable but also paradoxical. Attempts to make this practice constitutional have enveloped it with ever-more-refined procedural safeguards intended to make it compatible with the Eighth Amendmentâs proscription of âcruel and unusual punishments.â But the safeguards have made it increasingly like then-Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewartâs1972 description of it as âcruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.â Maurice Chammah in âLet the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penaltyâ says, âIn 1959, there had been 124 murders in Harris County, Texas, which encompassed Houston, but only three people sentenced to death.â Arbitrariness was one reason the Supreme Court, in a 1972 case that generated opinions from all nine justices (cumulatively, 233 pages), ruled that capital punishment in all 41 states that administered it was unconstitutional.