3.9. Substantive Law: Physical Punishment Sentences 
LORE RUTZ-BURRI 
 Physical Punishment 
Corporal Punishment 
Until 1978, the Supreme Court upheld the use of corporal punishment (physical punishment).  Ingraham 
v. Wright  430 U.S. 651 (1978). However, it is no longer an approved sanction for a criminal offense in 
the United States. Nonlethal corporal punishment, such as flogging, was used extensively in English and 
American common law for non-felony offenses. The misdemeanant was taken to the public square, bound 
to the whipping post, and administered as many lashes as the law specified. 
“An American judge during the early American Republic was able to select from a wide array of 
punishments, most of which were intended to inflect intense pain and public shame. A Virginia statute 
of 1748 punished the stealing of a hog with twenty-five lashes and a fine. The second offense resulted in 
two hours of pillory (public ridicule) or public branding. A third theft resulted in a penalty of death. False 
testimony during a trial might result in mutilation of the ears or banishment from the colony. These penalties 
were often combined with imprisonment in a jail or workhouse and hard labor. . . 
We have slowly moved away from most of these physically painful sanctions. The majority of states 
followed the example of the U.S. Congress, which in 1788 prohibited federal courts from imposing 
whipping and standing in the pillory. Maryland retained corporal punishments until 1953, and Delaware 
only repealed this punishment in 1972. Delaware, in fact, subjected more than 1600 individuals to whippings 
in the twentieth century. This practice was effectively ended in 1978 when the Eighth Circuit Court of 
Appeals ruled that the use of the strap, “offends contemporary standards of decency and human dignity and 
precepts of civilization which we profess to possess.” 
1 
Controversial Issue: Capital Punishment: Death Penalty 
Capital punishment (lethal physical punishment) is a popular topic, and much has been written about the 
death penalty. One excellent resource for learning about the death penalty is the death penalty information 
center (DPIC), a nonprofit organization that publishes studies and analyzes trends in death penalty law and 
application. 
Link to Death Penalty Information Center: 
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/ 
1. Lippman, M.R. (2016) Contemporary Criminal Law: Concepts, Cases, and Controversies (4th ed., pp. 57). SAGE Publishing. 
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