The Eighth Amendment in only three words imposes a constitutional limitation upon punishment: It cannot be “cruel and unusual.” What did the framers mean? The courts have interpreted the words “cruel and unusual” in a flexible and dynamic manner reflecting a evolving society. The Crime Act of 1790 mandated that a person be executed for Treason. Not only did you have to kill them; the body had to be mutilated. Mutilation of a corpse in itself is both cruel and unusual. At that time it was the Law, we don’t do that anymore, we have evolved. The eighth amendment has been affected more by the evolving change of society than any of the other Amendments. Even though we can see the evolving of societies common sense and decency where the eighth amendment is involved, society continues to show a primitive style of justice by using electrocution, the gas chamber and lethal injection as forms of executing the death penalty. These methods inflict pain and in some cases disfigurement and charring of a human body. I consider this the same as mutilating a body in 1790. We have known the outcome of an electrocution after the very first one was performed in 1889. And, the other two methods aforementioned are just as bad if not worst.