What is a "cruel and unusual" punishment you know of?

Keeping prisoners from interacting with other prisoners is ‘cruel & unusual’ punishment.

Mankind’s mind knows no bounds on this subject. Drawing and quartering which was done to a guy accused of homosexual acts recently in a desert village in Saudi Arabia. The Pear of Anguish, there is an electrode-laced version being used on females in Syrian prisons as we speak. Cattle prods used as anal probes, Guatemala, Columbia, Panama… Anything to do with genital torture totally sickens me. Homosexual rape in prisons, which gets the blind eye treatment in the US and is fertile fare for late night TV comedians. Lots of laughs in the US, not even considered here on this site when rape is discussed.

The agony booth in Star Trek. Also messing with one’s love life. Waterboarding is nasty too.

Being broken on the rack or burned on the stake.

There’s quite a smorgasbord of them on display at a Madame Tussaud “Chamber of Horrors” exhibit. One, for example, involves being suspended by a large hook sunk through the middle of the abdomen. The wax figure in the exhibit I saw had a rat (also of wax) perched on his body, nibbling away at the entrails exposed by the hook.

In our own time (1970s), Khmer Rouge soldiers practiced their own variant of this one by tying the prisoner to a tree, cutting out his liver, and cooking and eating it in front of him while he watched.

The winner of this week’s prize is this Syrian dude. They are some scary dudes.

Being ostracized.
Excluded from society or a group.
Everyone needs to be acknowledged and accepted, as it is a deep need.

Being kept in a hot box where one can’t stretch out one’s limbs.

Impalement, any number of ways. Describing it is excruciating enough. Just read about Vlad the Impaler. Some good spy novels with this rare, perhaps due to its political incorrectness, run-in with death are The Loo Sanction by Trevanian and Tsar by Ted Bell (refers to a forest with no branches.) The other is “The Death by 1000 Cuts.” Remember Mako’s character in “The Sand Pebbles?” Strung-up then sword cuts, each non-lethal, but cumulatively you bleed out. In the end it’s not so different from flailing, the whipping with a cat o’ nine tails with metal claws rather than knots tied at the ends of the leather straps. Shown in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ.” Use of the cat and various boiling and evisceration remedies were what the Founders considered “cruel and unusual punishment.”

What about some purely psychological ones? No physical harm done but the act targets the mind.

Being held like animals, without trial, formal accusations, or access to a lawyer, in the guantanamo gulag.

I’m currently reading a historical fiction novel about Catherine de Medici and there’s a scene in which a man accused of poisoning her brother-in-law (King Francis’ son) has each of his 4 limbs tied to a different horse who were then whipped until they each took off in a different direction, essentially tearing him apart and leaving his limbless body bleeding and “jumping” around until he eventually died and stopped screaming. It was the most painfully excruciating thing I’ve ever read and I had to set the book aside for a few days because I just couldn’t get the image painted by the author out of my mind…

The Elizabethan punishment for treason was to be hanged, but not until dead. While thus inconvenienced one was eviscerated and allowed to watch one’s entrails spill into boiling lead. Then the Catherine de Medici de rigeur. Beheading followed for good measure. About 40 years later Charles I got off lucky with only the severing of the head from the body.

Total sensory deprivation. That is being confined to a sound and light-proof where there is never anyone to talk to even when the bland, repetative nourishment is provided without any light or interaction even with the guard providing the food.

Delicious food is slowly killing me. It’s like a cruel torture and joke.

But, seriously, the jellies above already touched on many of the worst cruel punishments. I would have to say that it is only cruel depending on the person’s crime. Sometimes I might think a cruel punishment is appropriate. Like those men who kept the Cleveland girls captive, they should live in misery for a while. Deprived of light, beaten, raped, chained. Really, they should know for at least a year what those girls suffered. Maybe they suffered themselves in childhood and beyond; I assume they did to be so incredibly sick. Then go ahead and give them the death penalty. I walk the fence on the dealth penalty, but for them, have at it.

Making someone eat meatloaf.

@Blackberry You would love my meatloaf!

@JLeslie I’m just so used to hamburger between a bun. I don’t know if I could eat a huge slab of meat like that lol.

Being forced to listen to one of my mother-in-law’s 20-minute stories. (Yes, I just bought a ticket on the Hell Express.)

@Blackberry That’s not a punishment. Punishment would be to be served nothing but fried beef liver.

@Blackberry Why does it need to be huge? And, meatloaf sandwich is delicious!

@zenvelo That would be cruel and unusual. Blech. Imagine that as a punishment? Having to live in a place where the only foods available are ones you hate.

@jordym84
That scene was played out in BraveHeart Movie.
That is how he died (William Wallace ).

Being covered with honey and tied down to a giant ant hill.