But that’s a lie. All of those methods, and more, were used to kill Black people, and would have been readily identified as acceptable methods to kill Black people to most of the white people reading the Eighth Amendment at the time of its ratification. These punishments were not “long disused” by the time of the founding. They were used all the time, and would continue to be used all the time, against Black people. Don’t even get me started on the eighteenth-century punishments thought to be normal and acceptable to inflict on Black people when the white people wanted to keep them alive.
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