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Kingreaper comments on Rationality & Criminal Law: Some Questions - Less Wrong
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NOTE: I don't know US law at all well, I don't know how the passage is currently interpreted, I just know how I feel about the concept in and of itself.
There's good reason IMO to ban "cruel and unusual punishment"
But "cruel and unusual" is as worded, very specific. For a punishment to be "cruel and unusual" you must answer yes to both the following:
If a law was passed stating that from now on a multitude of crimes were to be punished by the flaying of the left foot of the perpetrator; this would be cruel. It would not, however, be unusual, because it would be being applied to many people convicted of many crimes. This degree of consistency gives at least some deterrent value to the punishment.
If a judge sentenced someone to the flaying of their left foot, with no other changes in our society going on, that would be cruel AND unusual. It would not serve as a deterrent, because people wouldn't expect to be tried by that specific judge.
I suspect 'usual' there meant not "done frequently" but "according to usage or custom".
English is generally ambiguous on these matters, when one tries to translate it into more precise logical terms. In the US version of this:
We can read the last clause as "Cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted." But it is ambiguous in common use whether this outlaws punishments that are both cruel and unusual, or if it outlaws both cruel punishments and unusual punishments.
Historically, the Supreme Court has interpreted merely cruel punishments as violations of the Eighth Amendment (According to Wikipedia) but I'm not sure about 'unusual'.
IANAL.