best-known civil rights leaders. In 1992 he surprised many when he openly backed Dennis Archer in the Detroit mayoral race, and encouraged longtime friend Coleman Young to step down. In 1995 Crockett’s story was recounted in a chapter of Black Judges on Justice. Crockett died on Septemb er 7, 1997, in Washington, D.C, after suffering a stroke. He had been battling bone cancer. FURTHER READINGS House Document No. 108–222, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Available online at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/hd108- 222/index.html (accessed July 17, 2009). Thomas, Robert McG., Jr. “George Crockett Dies at 88; Was a Civil Rights Crusader.” The New York Times (September 15, 1997). Available online at http://www. nytimes.com/1997/09/15/us/george-w-crockett-dies-at- 88-was-a-civil-rights-crusader.html; website home page: http://www.nytimes.com (accessed July 17, 2009). Washington, Linn. 1998. Black Judges on Justice: Perspectives from the Bench. New York: New Press. Wasniewski, Matthew. 2008. Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007. 3d ed. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress. CROP INSURANCE A contract of indemnity by which, for a specified premium, one party promises to compensate another for the financial loss incur red by the destruction of agricultural products from the forces of nature, such as rain, hail, frost, or insect infestation. The federal government, acting through the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, an agency of the DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, sponsors such insurance. By improving the economic stability of agriculture, crop insurance promotes the welfare of the nation. CROSS REFERENCE Agricultural Law. CROPS Commodities produced from the earth whi ch are planted, raised, and gathered within the course of a single season. Crops might be produced either naturally or under cultivation. This distinction becomes important when determining whether a crop is to be sold as PERSONAL PROPERTY or as REAL ESTATE , and also in terms of how crops are to be devised. Fructus naturales are crops that are pro- duced by the powers of nature alone, without any harvesting methods. They include fruit trees, berries growing on bushes, and hay growing spontaneously from perennial roots. They are considered real property when they are not severed from the land, but personal property when severed. Fructus industriales, or emblements, are annual crops that are raised by yearly labor and owe their existence to human intervention and cultivation. Such crops include wheat, corn, and vegetables. Authorities differ as to whether they constitute real or personal property. The ownership of crops is generally held to be in the owner of the land, whether the crops are natural or cultivated. The owner may voluntarily choose to sever and sell the crops, without being obligated to sell the land upon which they are grown. The situation often arises in which the land belongs to one person and the crops belong to another, such as in the case of one person leasing land from another person. In such a case, whoever is in possession of the land subject to the consent of the owner may take and carry away the products of land resulting from his or her own care and labor. Ordinarily, crops that are attached to land at the time of a sale pass automatically to the buyer, except where the owner has provided to the contrary. Someone dispo sing of land may, therefore, stipulate the retention of the title to the crops. It has been widely held that a trespasser who enters another person’s land and cultivates Crops, such as these green peppers, are commodities that are planted and gathered within a single season. AP IMAGES GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION 318 CROP INSURANCE crops does not acquire title to them, because the owner is lawfully entitled to full possession and enjoyment of his or her property. Some authorities have held that as long as crops planted by an intruder remain unsevered, they are the property of the owner of the land upon which they are planted, whereas severed crops belong to the trespasser if he or she possesses the land when the crops are ready to be harvested. CROSS REFERENCE Agricultural Law. CROSS-ACTION A separate and independent lawsuit brought by the defendant against a plaintiff for some reason arising from the same transaction or event that is the basis for the plaintiff’s lawsuit. Under some circumstances, the court may order a consolidation of the actions. CROSS-CLAIM A demand made in a pleading against another party on the same side of the lawsuit. For example, a manufacturer of desks shipped 30 desks to a buyer by truck. When the buyer refused to pay because the desks arrived in a damaged condition, the manufac- turer sued both the buyer and the trucking company. The buyer did not know whether the manufacturer or the trucking company was responsible for the damage, so the buyer served an answer containing a denial that he owed money to the manufacturer for unusable desks and a cro ss-claim demanding that the trucking company compensate him for the damage to the desks. A counterclaim is comparable to a cross- claim except that it is a claim against an adverse party in the lawsuit, not a party on the same side of the lawsuit. CROSS-COMPLAINT A type of pleading that asserts a claim against any of the parties suing the person making the complaint, or against anyone else involved in the same controversy or having an interest in the same property that is the subject of the lawsuit. The rules in many states permit or require a DEFENDANT to make claims for recovery from another party using a counterclaim or a CROSS-CLAIM within the answer rather than using a different kind of pleading, but some jurisdic- tions permit a cross-complaint to be used instead of an answer for this purpose. CROSS-DEMAND A claim made against someone who has already made a demand of the person asserting that claim. These mutual claims are called cross- demands. A counterclaim is a kind of cross- demand. CROSS-EXAMINATION The questioning of a witness or party during a trial, hearing, or deposition by the party opposing the one who asked the person to testify in order to evaluate the truth of that person’s testimony, to develop the testimony further, or to accomplish any other objective. The interrogation of a witness or party by the party opposed to the one who called the witness or party, upon a subject raised during direct examination—the initial question- ing of a witness or party—on the merits of that testimony. The scope of cross-examination is generally restricted to matters covered during DIRECT EXAMINATION . CRUEL AND INHUMAN TREATMENT Another name for cruelty, or for the intentional, hostile infliction of physical or mental suffering upon another individual, which is a ground for divorce in many states. Cruel and inhuman treatment ordinarily encompasses mental and physical cruelty of any kind and is also known as cruel and abusive treatment and as cruel and barbarous treatment. CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT Cruel and unusual punishment refers to such punishment as would amount to torture or barbarity, any cruel and degrading punishment not known to the common law, or any fine, penalty, confinement, or treatment that is so disproportionate to the offense as to shock the moral sense of the community. The EIGHTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Consti- tution prohibits the federal government from imposing cruel and unusual punishment for federal crimes. The amendment states: “Exces- sive bail shall not be required, nor excessive GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT 319 fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punish- ment inflicted.” The due process clause of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution bars the states from inflicting such punishment for state crimes, and most state constitutions also prohibit the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. In attempting to define cruel and unusual punishment, federal and state courts have generally analyzed two aspects of punishment: the method and the amount. As to the method of punishment, the Eighth Amendment clearly bars punishments that were considered cruel at the time of its adoption, such as burning at the stake, crucifixion, or breaking on the wheel (see In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 10 S. Ct. 930, 34 L. Ed. 519 [1890]). In Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 112 S. Ct. 995, 117 L. Ed. 2d 156 (1992), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the use of excessive physical force against a prisoner may constitute cruel and unusual punishment even if the prisoner does not suffer serious injury. When an inmate does suffer serious injury from the excessive use of force by prison officials, a violation of the cruel and unusual pu nishment clause is clear. In Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 122 S. Ct. 2508, 153 L. Ed. 2d 666 (2002), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment had been contravened when prison officials had disciplined an inmate for disruptive behavior by handcuffing him to a “hitching post,” once for two hours and once for seven hours, depriving the inmate of his shirt, exposing him to the sun, denying his requests for hydration, and refusing to allow him the opportunity to use the bathroom. At the same time, the cruel and unusual punishment clause does not demand that the state avoid of all risk of pain to a DEFENDANT in carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence. For example, In Baze v. Rees, —U.S.—, 128 S. Ct. 1520, 170 L. Ed. 2d 420 (2008), a group of Kentucky death-row inmates argued that the state’s three-drug lethal injection method of CAPITAL PUNISHMENT posed an unacceptable risk of significant pain in violation of the cruel and unusual punishment clause. The Court rejected their argument, concluding that existing proto- col for carrying out a death sentence in Kentucky incorporated several safeguards, in- cluding (1) a requirement that the person responsible for inserting intravenous catheters and injecting the lethal drugs possess a mini- mum level of professional experience; (2) a requirement for practice sessions; (3) a require- ment that backup intravenous lines be made readily available; and (4) a requirement that the warden be present in the execution chamber. However, a defendant need not suffer actual physical injury or pain before a punishment will be declared cruel and unusual. In Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 78 S. Ct. 590, 2 L. Ed. 2d 630 (1958), the Supreme Court held that the use of denationalization (the deprivation of citizen- ship) as a punishment is barred by the Eighth Amendment. The Court reasoned that when someone is denationalized, “[t]here may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture. There is instead the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society. It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development.” The Court also opined that the Eighth Amendment must “draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The Supreme Court has held that the death penalty itself is not inherently cruel but has described it as “an extreme sanction, suitable to the most extreme of crimes” (Gregg v. Georgia , 428 U.S. 153, 96 S. Ct. 2909, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859 [1976]). Federal and state courts have upheld The “hitching post” at Alabama’s Limestone Correctional facility was the subject of former inmate Larry Hope’s (not pictured) lawsuit, Hope v. Pelzer, alleging cruel and unusual punishment. AP IMAGES GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 320 CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT modern methods of carrying out the death penalty, such as shooting, hanging, electrocu- tion, and lethal injection, as constitutional. The Court has held that statutes providing a mandatory death sentence for certain degrees or categories of MURDER are unconstitutional because they preclude SENTENCING authorities from considering aspects of a particular defen- dant’s character or record or from considering circumstances that might mitigate a particular crime (see Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S. Ct. 295 4, 57 L. Ed. 2d 973 [1978]). In Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 106 S. Ct. 2595, 91 L. Ed. 2d 335 (1986), the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits states from inflicting the death penalty upon a prisoner who is insane. Applying this test, the Court initially ruled that the death penalty may be imposed upon 16- year-old U.S. citizens who have been convicted of murder, because a national consensus, as reflected by state legislation, supported capital punishment for juveniles of that age (Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361, 109 S. Ct. 2969, 106 L. Ed. 2d 306 [1989]). Under the same reasoning, the Court initially permitted the states to execute a mentally retarded person who had been convicted of murder, despite claims that the defendant’s handicap minimized his moral culpability (Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S. Ct. 2934, 106 L. Ed. 2d 256 [1989]). In the years after the Court decided Penry, several states, including Texas, exempted men- tally retarded individuals from their death- penalty statutes. Moreover, very few state s that permitted such executions actually executed mentally retarded defendants, meaning those individuals with IQs of lower than 70. In 2002, the Court reviewed its holding in Penry in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S. Ct. 2242, 153 L. Ed. 2d 335 (2002). Because so few states allowed execution of the mentally retarded, the Court observed, the practice had indeed become “unusual.” Moreover, justifications for the death penalty, such as retribution against the defendant and deterrence of capital crimes by prospective offenders, did not apply to the mentally retarded. Accordingly, the Court categorically excluded the mentally retarded from execution under the Eighth Amendment. Atkins demonstrated that the Eighth Amendment, like other constitutional provi- sions, evolves as soc iety evolves. Nevertheless, Justice ANTONIN SCALIA, in a scathing dissent in Atkins, attacked the majority opinion as lacking in p recedent. He noted: “Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members.” According to Scalia, the ABOLITION of executions of mildly mentally retarded individuals by 18 states did not amount to a “national consensus” that such executions were so “morally repugnant as to violate our national ‘standards of decency.’” Mo reover, Scalia noted that execution of mildly retarded individuals in 1791, when the Eighth Amend- ment was adopted, would not have been considered “cruel and unusual.” Rather, only the severely and profoundly retarded were historically protected. Three years later the Court applied the same logic in overturning Stanford v. Kentucky, concluding that evolving standards of decency demonstrated that application of the death penalty to persons under 18 years of age constituted cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth Amendment (Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 125 S. Ct. 1183, 161 L. Ed. 2d 1 [2005]). As in Atkins, the Court in Roper wrote: “the objective INDICIA of national consensus here—the rejection of the juvenile death penalty in the majority of states; the infrequency of its use even where it remains on the books; and the consistency in the trend toward abolition of the practice—provide suffi- cient evidence that society today views juveniles, in the words Atkins used respecting the mentally retarded, as ‘categorically less CULPABLE than the average criminal.’” The evidence of such consensus in Roper was similar to the evidence in Atkins: Thirty states prohibited the juvenile death penalty, including 12 that rejected it altogether and 18 that maintained it but, by express provision or judicial interpretation, excluded juveniles from its reach. Even in the 20 states without a formal prohibition, the Court observed, execution of juveniles was infrequent. With regard to the amount of punishment that may be inflicted, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment also bars pun- ishment that is clearly out of proportion to the offense committed. The Supreme Court has considered the issue of proportionality, particu- larly in the context of the death penalty. In Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S. Ct. 2861, 53 L. Ed. 2d 982 (1977), the Court held that death was a disproportionate penalty for the GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT 321 crime of raping an adult woman. Twenty-one years later the Court affirmed the Coker decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, —U.S.—, 128 S. Ct. 2641, 171 L. Ed. 2d 525 (2008), a case in which the defendant was convicted for raping an eight- year-old girl. The young age of the victim does not make death a constitutional punishment for RAPE, the Court concluded, unless the victim died as a result of the crime or the PERPETRATOR intended for the victim to die. In Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 103 S. Ct. 3001, 77 L. Ed. 2d 637 (1983), the Court applied its proportionality analysis to FELONY prison sentences. In Solem, the defendant had passed a bad check in the amount of $100. Although this crime ordinarily would be punishable by a maximum five-year sentence, the defendant had been sentenced to life imprisonment without PAROLE because of six prior felony convictions. The Court held that the sentence was signifi- cantly disproportionate to the defendant’s crime and that it was thus prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied the proportionality analysis in overturning the life sentence of a defendant who had been convicted under California’s three- strikes law, which requires that courts impose harsh sentences upon defendants who have been convicted of three felonies. Cal. Penal Code Section 667. In Brown v. Mayle, 283 F.3d 1019 (9th Cir. 2002), the defendants were charged with MISDEMEANOR petty theft for stealing three videotapes and a steering wheel alarm, together worth less than $400.00. However, because both defendants had two Is Death by Electrocution Cruel and Unusual under Evolving Standards? C onvicted killer Kenneth Spivey’s attorneys argued that Spivey’s impending death in Georgia’s electric chair constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the EIGHTH AMENDMENT and the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT to the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.Ina March 2001 opinion that initially stayed s punishment, Justice Leah J. Sears wrote, “Electrocution offends the evolving stan- dards of decency that characterize a mature, civilized society” (Spivey v. State of Georgia, 544 S.E. 2d 136 [Ga. 2001]). Georgia’s attorney general and a county prosecutor asked the court for reconsid- eration. In October of the same year, the Georgia Supreme Court outlawed elec- trocution as a means of execution in the state because it was deemed cruel and unusual punishment under the state constitution and because of the implica- tions of the state’s year 2000 revised CAPITAL PUNISHMENT statute (Dawson v. State of Georgia, 554 S.E. 2d 137 [Ga. 2001]). The 4–3 ruling gave momentum to the movement against death by electrocution, which culminated in its ABOLITION in 2008, when the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment. In early May 2001, several radio stations, including WYNC in New York, aired audiotapes of electrocutions in Georgia’s prisons spanning a period from 1983 to 1998. The recordings were made by state officials to protect themselves from litigation over the manner in which they followed policies to ensure smooth executions. The tapes were void of emotion and merely recorded the voices of the executing officials during the process. There were no shouts or cries of pain, but several tapes contained the final words of the inmates. The tapes might support the argument that elec- trocution, when properly conducted, is as humane as other alternatives. Dr. Chris Sparry, Georgia’s chief MEDICAL EXAMINER, who has testified on the matter, stated: The BEST EVIDENCE that exists to indicate that people who are judicially executed never feel any conscious pain or suffering rests in the tens of thousands of people who have sustained acci- dent electrocutions and have survived. None of those people can even remember the event if the current goes through their head … consciousness is obliter- ated instantly when the current is passed through the body because the amount of the current is so very, very great. Georgia was one of four states still employing the use of electric chairs for execution of condemned criminals, although both Georgia and Florida changed their primary means of execu- tion to lethal injection for the newly convicted starting in 2000. In 2002 Alabama enacted a law that gave inmates the choice of lethal injection or electrocution. In 2008 the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment. The state legislature enacted a law making death by lethal injection the means of execution. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 322 CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT prior felony convictions involving violent crimes, the misdemeanor petty theft char ges were enhanced and prosecuted as felonies. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the defendants’ sentences constituted cruel and unusual pun- ishment, for the trial court was effectively imposing life sentences for what the legislature classified as a misdemeanor under any other circumstances. The U.S. Supreme Court granted CERTIORARI, reversed, and remanded the case with instructions for the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its decision in light of Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 123 S. Ct. 1166, 155 L. Ed. 144 (2003), where the Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s proportionality principle was not violated by the imposition of two 25-years-to-life sentences under the Califor- nia three-strikeslaw,ona conviction oftwo counts of petty theft with a prior conviction. The defendant in Andrade had been convicted of stealing videotapes worth $153.54. The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment may also forbid penal sanctions of any kind in certain situations. For example, in Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 82 S. Ct. 1417, 8 L. Ed. 2d 758 (1962), the Court ruled that punishment may not be inflicted simply because a person is in a certain condition or has a particular illness. Robinson concerned a Califor- nia statute (Cal. Health & Safety Code § 11721 [West]) that criminalized addiction to narcotics, rather than the possession, use, or sale of them. The Court, in striking down the statute, stated: We hold that a state law which imprisons a person thus afflicted as a criminal, even though he has never touched any narcotic In many states, condemned persons are given the opportunity to elect the method by which they will die. Some Americans bristle at the thought that “humane consideration” should be given to those who have wreaked heinous inhumanity upon others. There remains some who believe that execution should hurt, not only because it may serve to deter future wrongdoers but also because of the belief that death is intended as a punishment, not an escape. As of 2009, all 35 states with death penalty laws employed lethal injection as the preferred method. With lethal injec- tion, the victim is first put to sleep with sodium pentothal, after which other drugs are administered to paralyze the body and stop the heart. The person never regains consciousness. The U.S. Supreme Court has pro- vided guidance as to what should constitute cruel and unusual punish- ment under the Eighth Amendment, but made it clear that the standards must be evolving and dynamic. “Diffi- culty would attend the effort to define with exactness the extent of the consti- tutional provision which provides that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted; but it is safe to affirm that punishments of torture [such as drawing and quarter ing, emboweling alive, beheading, public dissecting, and burning alive],andallothersinthe same line of unnecessary cruelty, are forbidden by that amendment to the Constitution,” the Court said , more than 100 years ago, in Wilkerson v. Utah (99 U.S. 130, 25 L. Ed. 345 [1878]), which uphe ld an execution by firing squad. Twelve years later, in In re Kemmler (136 U.S. 436, 10 S. Ct. 930, 34 L. Ed. 519 [1890]), the Court, under the Fourteenth Amendment’sduepro- cess clause, found electrocution to be a permissible method of execution. Moreover, in assuming the applicability of the Eighth Amendment to the States, the Court, many years later, held that a second electrocution, resulting from the failure of the first one, did not violate the proscription. “The cruelty against which the Constitution protects a convicted man is crue lty inherent in the method of punishment, not the necessary suffering involved in any method employed to extinguish life humanely ,” the majority opinion stated (Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459, 67 S. Ct. 374, 916 L. Ed. 422 [1947]). In Trop v. Dulles (356 U.S. 86, 78 S. Ct. 590, 2 L. Ed. 2d 630 [1958]), the Supreme Court, in referring to the United States as “an enlightened democ- racy,” held that “The [Eighth] Amend- ment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. ” That language was repeated again in Gregg v. Georgia (428 U.S. 153, 96 S. Ct. 2909, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859 [1978]), wherein the Court noted that the Eighth Amendment was to be interpreted “in a flexible and dynamic manner to accord with evolving stan- dards of decency.” Most likely, this is the language from which the Georgia Su- preme Court formed their ultimate Spivey ruling. FURTHER READINGS Macready, Dawn. 2000. “The ‘Shocking’ Truth about the Electric Chair: An Analysis of the Unconstitutionality of Electrocution.” Ohio Northern University Law Review 26 (summer). Roy, Patricia. 2002. “Not So Shocking: The Death of the Electric Chair in Georgia at the Hands of the Georgia Supreme Court.” Mercer Law Review 53 (summer). Weinstein, Bob, and Jim Bessant. 1996. Death Row Confidential. New York: HarperPa- perbacks. CROSS REFERENCES Capital Punishment; Eighth Amendment; Fourteenth Amendment. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT 323 drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there, inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment. … To be sure, impris- onment for ninety days [the sentence im- posed in this case] is not, in the abstract, a punishment which is either cruel or unusual. But the question cannot be considered in the abstract. Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the “crime” of having a common cold. The so-called WAR ON TERRORISM led by the Bush administration added a new wrinkle to the evolving jurisprudence under the cruel and unusual punishment clause. In a potentially groundbreaking case, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether the cruel and unusual punishment clause applies to persons who are not U.S. citizens but who are detained by the U.S. military on foreign soil (Rasul v. Myers, —U.S.—, 129 S. Ct. 763, 172 L. Ed. 2d 753 [2008]). Four British citizens, former detainees at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, brought an action against then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and commanding officers at the detainment facility to recover compensation for the torture the detainees allegedly endured while imprisoned there. The U.S. district court for the District of Columbia dismissed the action. Rasul v. Rums- feld, 414 F.Supp.2d 26 (2006). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed. It held: (1) the plaintiffs had no constitutional rights because they were not U.S. citizens and had no property or presence in the United States; and (2) even if such rights theoretically existed, the doctrine of qualified IMMUNITY would operate to protect the individ- ual defendants from liability because such rights were not clearly established at the time of the alleged events , and thus no reasonable govern- ment official would have known that these detainees were protected by the constitution (Rasul v. Myers,, 512 F.3d 644 [2008]). Without opinion, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and then summarily vacated the judgment of the court of appeals. The Court also remanded the case for reconsideration in light of Boumediene v. Bush, —U.S.—, 128 S. Ct. 2229, 171 L. Ed. 2d 41 (2008), which held that the U.S. Constitution grants Guantanamo Bay detainees the right to seek HABEAS CORPUS relief in U.S. courts. Upon REMAND to the D.C. circuit, however, the co urt of appeals in Rasul affirmed its earlier holding. It ruled that the former detainees at Guantanamo Bay did not have clearly established rights under the due process clause or cruel and unusual punishment clause. Thus, Rumsfeld and the other federal officials named in the complaint were entitled to qualified immunity from liability for alleged violations of the detainees’ rights. Rasul v. Myers,—F.3d—-, 2009 WL 1098707 (2009). The court’s ruling had not been appealed as of summer 2009. FURTHER READINGS Denno, Deborah W. 2000. “Adieu to Electrocution.” Ohio Northern University Law Review 26 (summer): 665–88. Erickson, Patricia E., and Steven K. Erickson. 2008. Crime, Punishment, and Mental Illness: Law and the Behavioral Sciences in Conflict. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Harding, Roberta M. 1994. “‘Endgame’: Competency and the Execution of Condemned Inmates—A Proposal to Satisfy the Eighth Amendment’s Prohibition against the Infliction of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.” St. Louis University Public Law Review 14. LaFave, Wayne R., and Austin W. Scott Jr. 1986. Substantive Criminal Law. St. Paul, Minn.: West. Macready, Dawn. 2000. “The ‘Shocking’ Truth about the Electric Chair: An Analysis of the Unconstitutionality of Electrocution.” Ohio Northern University Law Review 26 (summer): 781–800. Nelson, Diane A. 1993. “Hudson v. McMillian: The Evolving Standard of Eighth Amendment Application to the Use of Excessive Force against Prison Inmates.” North Carolina Law Review 71 (June). CROSS REFERENCES Capital Punishment; Determinate Sentence; Eighth Amend- ment; Juvenile Law; Sentencing. CRUELTY The deliberate and malicious infliction of mental or physical pain upon persons or animals. As applied to people, cruelty encompasses abusive, outrageous, and inhumane treatment that results in the wanton and unnecessary infliction of suffering upon the body or mind. Legal cruelty involves conduct that warrants the granting of a DIVORCE to the injured spouse. Phrases such as “cruel and inhuman treatment,” “cruel and abusive treatment,” or “cruel and barbarous treatment” are commonly employed in matrimonial law. The term comprehends mental and physical harm, but a single act of cruelty is usually insufficient for divorce; a pattern of cruel conduct must occur over a period of time. This ground of divorce is of diminished significance due to the enactment of no-fault legislation by most jurisdictions. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 324 CRUELTY Cruelty to children, also known as CHILD ABUSE , encompasses mental and physical batter- ing and abuse, as defined by statutes in a majority of jurisdictions. Cruelty to animals involves the infliction of physical pain or death upon an animal, when unnecessary for disciplinary, instructional, or humanitarian purposes, such as the release of the animal from incurable illness. A person commits a MISDEMEANOR if he or she intentional- ly or recklessly neglects any animal in his or her custody, mistreats any animal, or kills or injures any animal without legal privilege or the consent of its owner. CROSS REFERENCE Animal Rights. CTA An abbreviation for cum testamento annexo, Latin for “with the will attached.” CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a dangerous moment in the COLD WAR between the United States and the Soviet Union. The actions taken by President John F. Kennedy’s administration prevented the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida. The crisis also illustrated the limitations of INTERNATIONAL LAW, as the United States relied on military actions and threats to accomplish its goal. The crisis grew out of political changes in Cuba. In the 1950s Fidel Castro, a young lawyer, led a guerrilla movem ent against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista lost the confidence of the Cuban people and on January 1, 1959, fled the country. Castro became premier of the new government. At first, the United State s supported the Castro government. This changed when Castro seized U.S owned sugar estates and cattle ranches in Cuba. The United States subse- quently embargoed trade with Cuba, and the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA) began covert operations to topple Castro. In 1960 Castro openly embraced COMMUNISM and signed Cuba’s first trade agreement with the Soviet Union. Many Cubans had left the island of Cuba for the United States following the Castro revolution. Aided by the United S tates, a Cuban exile army was trained for an invasion. Although most of the planning took place in 1960, when President DWIGHT D. EISENHOWE R was finishing his se cond term, the final decision to invade c ame during the first months of the Kennedy administration. In April 1961 Cuban exiles invaded C uba at the Bay of Pigs. The invasion was a debacle, in part because U.S. air support that had been promised was not provided. The exile army was captured. Convinced that the United States would attempt another invasion, Castro asked Premier Nikita Khrushchev, of the Soviet Union, for nuclear missiles. Khrushchev agreed to what would be the first deployment of NUCLEAR WEAPONS outside the Soviet Union. President Kennedy at first did not believe the Soviets would follow through on their promise. On October 14, 1962, however, photographs taken by reconnaissance planes showed that missile sites were being built in Cuba. The president convened a small group of trusted advisers, called the Executive Committee of the NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL (Ex Com). Attorney General ROBERT F. KENNEDY served on Ex Com and became the key adviser to President Kennedy during the crisis. Military officials advocated bombing the missile sites or invading Cuba. Others argued for a nuclear strike on Cuba. These ideas were rejected in favor of a naval blockade of Cuba. All ships attempting to enter Cuba were to be U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (seated, far right) addresses members of the U.N. Security Council on October 25, 1962. On display are aerial photographs of missile sites in Cuba—proof that the Soviet Union had indeed been building missile sites on the island. AP IMAGES GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS 325 stopped and searched for missiles and related military material. President Kennedy, believing that the Soviets were using the missiles to test his will, resolved to make the crisis public. Bypassing private, diplomatic procedures, Ken- nedy went on national television on October 22 and informed the United States of the missile sites, the naval blockade, and his resolve to take any action necessary to prevent the missile deployment. Tension built during the last days of October as the world awaited the approach of Soviet missile-bearing ships at the blockade line. If Soviet ships refused to turn back, it was likely that U.S. ships would either stop them or sink them. If that happened, nuclear war seemed probable. During the crisis, the UNITED NATIONS was not used as a vehicle for negotiation or mediation. The United States and the Soviet Union ignored an appeal by Secretary General U Thant, of the United Nations, that they reduce tensions for a few weeks. Instead, the Security Council of the United Nations became a stage for both sides to trade accusations. Ambassador ADLAI STEVENSON, from the United States, presented photographs of the missile sites to back up U.S. claims. On October 24 the crisis began to ease, as 12 Soviet ships on their way to Cuba were, on orders from Moscow, diverted or halted. However, construction on the missile sites continued. On October 26, Premier Khrushchev sent a long, emotional letter to President Kennedy, claiming that the missiles were defensive. He implied that a pledge by the United States not to invade Cuba would allow him to remove the missiles. President Kennedy replied, accepting the proposal to exchange withdrawal of the missile s for the promise not to invade. He also stated that if the Soviet Union did not answer his reply in two or three days, Cuba would be bombed. On October 28 the Soviets announced on Radio Moscow that the missile sites were being dismantled. Some historians maintain that President Kennedy acted heroically to meet a threat to the security of the United States. Others claim that the missiles at issue were of limited range and were purely defensive, and that Kennedy was reckless in brandishing the threat of nuclear war. Most agree that the crisis was probably the closest the Soviet Union and the United States ever got to nuclear war. The significance of the crisis to international law and the management of international crises has led to many books, articles, and scholarly conferences. In October 2002 a conference hosted by Fidel Castro was held in Havana. It was a rare event because participants from the United States, Soviet, and Cuban governments attended the gathering, sharing their impres- sions of what had happened during the crisis. Participants included former U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara, Kennedy presi- dential aides Arthur Schlesinger, Ted Sorensen, and Richard Goodwin, as well as Ethel Kennedy, the widow of ROBERT KENNEDY. The Cuban government declassified docu- ments relating to the crisis and Castro took center stage, arguing that Khrushchev had inflamed the situation by lying to Kennedy that there were no nuclear weapons in Cuba. McNamara confirmed that most of Kennedy’s advisers, both military and civilian, had recom- mended he attack Cuba. The conference ended with a trip to a former missile silo on the western side of Cuba. FURTHER READINGS Acosta, Tomás Diez. 2002. October 1962: The “Missile” Crisis as Seen from Cuba. New York: Pathfinder. Blight, James G., Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch. 2002. Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. Garthoff, Raymond. 2002. “The Havana Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. O’Neill, William L. 2005. Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s. Chicago: Dee. CROSS REFERENCE Embargo. CULPA [Latin, Fault, blame, or neglect.] A civil law term that implies that certain conduct is actionable. The word culpa is applied to acts of commission and omission in both tort and contract cases. It implies the failure to perform a legally imposed duty, or NEGLIGENCE. Lata culpa means gross or wanton fault, or neglect. Levis culpa is common or ordinary negligence, or the absence of reasonable care. Levissima culpa is slight neglect or fault. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 326 CULPA CULPABLE Blameworthy; involving the commission of a fault or the breach of a duty imposed by law. Culpability generally implies that an act performed is wrong but does not involve any evil intent by the wrongdoer. The connotation of the term is fault rather than malice or a guilty purpose. It has limited significance in CRIMINAL LAW except in cases of reckless HOMICIDE in which a person acts negligently or demonstrates a reckless disregard for life, which results in another person’s death. In general, however, culpability has milder connotations. It is used to mean reprehensible rather than wantonly or grossly negligent behavior. Culpable conduct may be wrong but it is not necessarily criminal. Culpable ignorance is the lack of knowledge or understanding that results from the omission of ordinary care to acquire such knowledge or understanding. CULPRIT An individual who has been formally charged with a criminal offense but who has not yet been tried and convicted. Culprit is a colloquial rather than a legal term and is commonly applied to someone who is guilty of a minor degree of moral reprehensi- bility. According to SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, the term is most likely a derivative of the archaic mode of ARRAIGNMENT during which upon a prisoner’s PLEA of not guilty the cleric would say culpabilis prit, meaning “he is guilty and the crown is ready.” The more common derivation is from culpa, meaning “fault or blame.” CUM TESTAMENTO ANNEXO [Latin, With the will annexed.] A phrase that describes an administrator named by a probate or surrogate court to settle and distribute an estate according to the terms of a will in which the testator, its maker, has failed to name an executor, or in which the one named refuses to act or is legally incapable of acting. The term is often applied to the administra- tion conducted by such a person. v CUMMINGS, HOMER STILLE Homer Stille Cummings was the 55th attorney general of the United States, serving from 1933 to 1939 in the administration of President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. Cummings was a DEMO- CRATIC PARTY leader and an advocate for reform of prisons in the United States. He was instrumental in establishing the Alca traz Island Prison, which was envisioned as a model for housing maximum security-level inmates in the federal prison system. Cummings was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 30, 1870. He attended Yale University where he received his undergraduate degree in 1891 and two years later, his law degree. Cummings was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1893 and began a private practice in Stamford. He rose in prominence as a litigator, becoming a member of the New York bar. He also was admitted to practice before a number of federal district courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Cummings became involved with the Dem- ocratic Party and was elected mayor of Stamford for three terms. He also served, from 1908 to 1912, as the city’s corporation counsel. In 1902 Cummings ran for a seat as congressman at large from Connecticut and lost; he also ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in 1916. Cummings’s entry on the national scene began when he served seven terms as a delegate at large to the Democratic National Convention. From 1919 to 1920, he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Beginning in 1914, Cummings served for a decade as the state’s attorney for Fairfield County, Connecticut. His interest in the topic of prison reform paid off in 1930 when he was appointed chairman of Connecticut’s Commit- tee on State Prison Conditions. Cummings’s long years of labor on behalf of the Democratic Party and his work on the successful 1932 presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt were rewarded. In 1933 President Roosevelt appointed Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Mon- tana to be his attorney general, but Walsh died suddenly of a heart attack on a train trip to Washington, D.C., to attend the presidential inauguration. Roosevelt then appointed Cum- mings as U.S. attorney general. Cummings turned out to be the first of four attorneys general appointed by Roosevelt, the nation’s longest-serving president. The 63-year-old Cummings’s interest in and experience concerning prison reform proved to be significant in his work as at torney general. Cummings proposed and oversaw improvements GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION CUMMINGS, HOMER STILLE 327 . the subject of former inmate Larry Hope’s (not pictured) lawsuit, Hope v. Pelzer, alleging cruel and unusual punishment. AP IMAGES GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 32 0 CRUEL AND. punishment. The state legislature enacted a law making death by lethal injection the means of execution. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 32 2 CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT prior felony. Eighth Amendment; Fourteenth Amendment. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT 32 3 drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there, inflicts