Volume 4 Issue 2 | July-September 2024

Quiz: Cruel and Unusual

In this short quiz, we listed a number of scenarios and asked readers to select what they thought was a fair judgement. Here’s what happened in real life…

 

Sarah Reed, a British woman, had a history of mental illness. In 2012, she was arrested for shoplifting. While in police custody, she was subjected to a violent assault by a police officer. Despite suffering from severe mental health issues, she was charged with assaulting a police officer and sentenced to prison. Considering she was not of sound mind, what should be the correct sentence?
A: She should have been provided with appropriate mental health support instead of incarceration.
B: Due to her mental illness, she should have been allowed to return home and rest.
C: She should have been given two months’ social work penalty.

Though any of these could have been the correct way to deal with reed’s issues, she was instead imprisoned, and committed suicide while in prison. She was 32.

 

Oscar Grant was an unarmed African American man who was shot and killed by a transit police officer in Oakland, California, in 2009. The officer claimed it was an accident, but many who recorded the incident pointed to police brutality. The videos went viral and showed the young man was shot while lying face down on the train platform. There were two police officers. One pinned his back and face down on the platform and the second officer shot him. What do you think was the court’s verdict in the case?
A: Both officers were held accountable for excessive use of force. One charged for voluntary manslaughter as he shot Oscar while the young man was lying face down with his hands pinned behind his back. The other officer was charged as an accomplice to murder. Further, stricter laws were passed to protect people from police brutality and racism.
B: The officer who shot him was charged with involuntary manslaughter and not guilty of a murder charge. The officer who pinned him down was fired but not charged in the incident.
C: No action was taken on the police officers who were deemed to be acting in the line of duty.

It was C. No action was taken on the police officers who were deemed to be acting in the line of duty. That has been overwhelmingly the court verdict in cases in the US where police has been in the dock for excessive use of force resulting in the death of suspects, often unarmed.

 

Fariba Adelkhah is a French-Iranian academic. She was sentenced to six years imprisonment and house arrest by Iranian authorities in 2020 for alleged conspiracy against national security and for propaganda against the state. Her real ‘crime’, though, was her vocal stand against Iran’s repressive political and social dynamics. With no concrete evidence to support the allegations, how should her case have been dealt with?
A: The court should have applied political motivations over academic freedom.
B: Due to a lack of evidence, the case should have been dismissed and Farida permitted to return to France and pursue her academic research.
C: Political dissent is a crime and anyone who questions their government’s draconian laws should be imprisoned without trial.

While B would be the appropriate choice made by any thinking individual, it was A and C that were applied in real life.

 

Long before the famous ‘Madame Guillotine’ was causing a bloody mess in the French Revolution, a similar device was separating heads from bodies in a Yorkshire town. This was the Halifax Gibbet. Between about 1541 and 1650, around 50 people were decapitated by the 5-metre-tall machine. However, nobody in Halifax wanted the job of official executioner. So, how was justice carried out?
A: Permit anyone from the crowd to pull the rope
B: The victim of the criminal could pull the rope. If the victim was a stolen cow or sheep, the animal could act as the headsman.
C: All of the above. Moreover, if it was an animal, it offered a great opportunity for audience participation as the crowd would call out to get the animal running.

As you can figure from the trend in this quiz, it was C in action.

 

In 1591, a town bell in Uglich, Russia had sounded to raise the alarm of insurrection following the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry, Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s last son. However, this led to a riot and several people lost their lives. There was also a call to destabilise the political rule of the Tsar. Who should be held accountable and what should be the sentence?
A: The person who rang the bell calling the people to rise against the Tsar. The sentence: Imprisonment in Siberia.
B: The one who instigated the insurrection. The sentence: Beheading.
C: The bell which rang the call to insurrection. The sentence: Rip its `tongue’ out, whip it and exile it to Siberia.

Astonishingly, C is what happened. The bell came to be known as the ‘Exile of Uglich’.

 

A 17-year-old boy was driving his brand new Porsche under the influence of alcohol. He rammed into a bike killing two young IT professionals. CCTV footage shows the boy drinking with friends at a pub before taking the wheel. The police allege the boy was drunk at the time of the accident. Which of the following punishments do you think is / are appropriate?
A: Being less than 18 years old, he should be charged with drunken driving, drinking while underaged, and driving without a licence, and sentenced to a juvenile home without provision for bail, with a stringent social work penalty for the duration of his sentence.
B: His father should be charged with neglect of a minor and arrested for permitting the boy to drive a vehicle without a licence.
C: The pub owners should be heavily fined for serving alcohol to a juvenile.
D: All of the above.
E: Despite the heinous nature of the crime, the minor should receive bail just hours after the incident, under the condition that he would work with the traffic police for 15 days and write a 300-word essay on road accidents.

This is, of course, what happened in Pune in May this year. The case is ongoing, but we thought we should highlight the absurdity of the conditions for bail granted to the killer driver by a lower court.