A partially successful effort has been made to enlarge the concept of unusual punishment to cover penalties which shock the sense of justice by their absolute or relative severity. Justice Field pointed the way for this development in his dissenting opinion in O'Neil v. Vermont,[12] wherein the majority refused to apply the Eighth Amendment to a State. With the concurrence of two other Justices he wrote that the amendment was directed "against all punishments which by their excessive length or severity are greatly disproportioned to the offenses charged."[13] Eighteen years later a divided Court condemned a Philippine statute prescribing fine and imprisonment of from twelve to twenty years for entry of a known false statement in a public record, on the ground that the gross disparity between this punishment and that imposed for other more serious fines made it cruel and unusual, and as such, repugnant to the Bill of Rights.[14] No constitutional infirmity was discovered in a measure punishing as a separate offense each act of placing a letter in the mails in pursuance of a single scheme to defraud.[15]
Notes
[1] 1 Annals of Congress 754 (1791).
[2] Ibid.
[3] 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 2385.
[4] Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1 (1951).
[5] 8 U.S.C.A. § 156 (a) (1); 64 Stat. 1011.
[6] Carlson v. Landon, 342 U.S. 524 (1952).
[7] Ex parte Watkins, 7 Pet. 568, 574 (1833).
[8] 255 U.S. 407 (1921).