except in accordance with the degree of the offence; and for a serious offence he shall be [fined] according to its gravity." By 1400, the English common law had embraced the principle, not always followed in practice, that punishment should not be excessive either in severity or length. One commentator's survey of English law demonstrates that the "cruel and unusual punishments" clause of the English Bill of Rights of 1689 "was first, an objection to the imposition of punishments which were unauthorized by statute and outside the jurisdiction of the sentencing court, and second, a reiteration of the English policy against disproportionate penalties." Granucci, supra, at 860. See Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 169 (1976) (opinion of STEWART, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.).

In Weems v. United States, 217 U. S. 349 (1910), a public official convicted for falsifying a public record claimed that he suffered cruel and unusual punishment when he was sentenced to serve 15 years' imprisonment in hard labor with chains. The sentence also subjected Weems to loss of civil rights and perpetual surveillance after his release. This Court agreed that the punishment was cruel and unusual. The Court was attentive to the methods of the punishment, id., at 363-364, but its conclusion did not rest solely upon the nature of punishment. The Court relied explicitly upon the

3 J. Holt, Magna Carta 323 (1965).

R. Perry, Sources of Our Liberties 236 (1959). The principle that grossly disproportionate sentences violate the Eighth Amendment was first enunciated in this Court by Mr. Justice Field in O'Neil v. Vermont, 144 U. S. 323 (1892). In that case, a defendant convicted of 307 offenses for selling alcoholic beverages in Vermont had been sentenced to more than 54 years in prison. The Court did not reach the question whether the sentence violated the Eighth Amendment because the issue had not been raised properly, and because the Eighth Amendment had yet to be applied against the States. Id., at 331-332. But Mr. Justice Field dissented, asserting that the "cruel and unusual punishment" Clause was directed "against all punishments which by their excessive length or severity are greatly disproportioned to the offences charged." Id., at 339–340.

relationship between the crime committed and the punishment imposed:

"Such penalties for such offenses amaze those who have formed their conception of the relation of a state to even its offending citizens from the practice of the American commonwealths, and believe that it is a precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to offense." Id., at 366–367.

In both capital and noncapital cases this Court has recognized that the decision in Weems v. United States "proscribes punishment grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime." Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651, 667 (1977); see Hutto v. Finney, 437 U. S. 678, 685 (1978); Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 584, 592 (1977) (opinion of WHITE, J.); Gregg v. Georgia, supra, at 171 (opinion of STEWART, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S., at 325 (MARSHALL, J., concurring)."

In order to resolve the constitutional issue, the Weems Court measured the relationship between the punishment and the offense. The Court noted that Weems had been punished more severely than persons in the same jurisdiction who committed more serious crimes, or persons who committed a similar crime in other American jurisdictions. 217 U. S., at 381-382.'

* See also Jeffries & Stephan, Defenses, Presumptions, and Burden of Proof in the Criminal Law, 88 Yale L. J. 1325, 1377 (1979); Note, Disproportionality in Sentences of Imprisonment, 79 Colum. L. Rev. 1119 (1979).

7 The Court notes that Graham v. West Virginia, 224 U. S. 616, 631 (1912), rejected an Eighth Amendment claim brought by a person sentenced under the West Virginia statute to mandatory life imprisonment for the commission of three felonies. But the Graham Court's entire discussion of that claim consists of one sentence: "Nor can it be maintained that cruel and unusual punishment has been inflicted." The Court then cited six cases in support of its statement. The first case was In re Kemmler, 136 U. S. 436, 448-449 (1890), in which the Court declined to apply the Eighth Amendment against state action. The Graham opinion also cited Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas, 212 U. S. 86, 111 (1909), in

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Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660, 667 (1962), established that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause applies to the States through the operation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that imprisonment for the crime of being a drug addict was cruel and unusual. The Court based its holding not upon the method of punishment, but on the nature of the "crime." Because drug addiction is an illness which may be contracted involuntarily, the Court said that "imprisonment for ninety days 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." Ibid.

In Furman v. Georgia, supra, the Court held that the death penalty may constitute cruel and unusual punishment in some circumstances. The special relevance of Furman to this case lies in the general acceptance by Members of the Court of two basic principles. First, the Eighth Amendment prohibits grossly excessive punishment. Second, the scope of

which the Court recognized that no claim was made that the Eighth Amendment controlled state action, and stated that "[w]e can only interfere with such legislation and judicial action of the States enforcing it if the fines imposed are so grossly excessive as to amount to a deprivation of property without due process of law." The Eighth Amendment was not applied as a prohibition on state action until this Court's decision in Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660, 667 (1962). A one-sentence holding in a preincorporation decision is hardly relevant to the determination of the case before us today.

Badders v. United States, 240 U. S. 391 (1916), also adds "little to our knowledge of the scope of the cruel and unusual language." Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 325 (1972) (MARSHALL, J., concurring). In Badders, this Court rejected a claim that concurrent 5-year sentences and a $7,000 fine for seven counts of mail fraud violated the Eighth Amendment. 240 U. S., at 394. Badders merely teaches that the Court did not believe that a 5-year sentence for the commission of seven crimes was cruel and unusual.

• Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S., at 280 (BRENNAN, J., concurring); id., at 312 (WHITE, J., concurring); id., at 331-332 (MARSHALL, J., con

the Eighth Amendment is to be measured by "evolving standards of decency." See Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 101 (1958) (opinion of Warren, C. J.).o

In Coker v. Georgia, supra, this Court held that rape of an adult woman may not be punished by the death penalty. The plurality opinion of MR. JUSTICE WHITE stated that a punishment is unconstitutionally excessive "if it (1) makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment and hence is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering; or (2) is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime." Id., at 592.10 The plurality concluded that the death penalty was a grossly disproportionate punishment for the crime of rape. The plurality recognized that "Eighth Amendment judgments should not be, or appear to be, merely the subjective views of individual Justices; judgment should be informed by objective factors to the maximum possible extent." Ibid. To this end, the plurality examined the nature of the crime and attitudes of state legislatures and sentencing juries toward use of the death penalty in rape cases. In a separate opinion, I concurred in the plurality's reasoning that death ordinarily is disproportionate punishment for the crime of raping an adult woman. Id., at 601. Nothing in the Coker analysis suggests that principles of disproportionality are applicable only

curring); id., at 457-458 (POWELL, J., dissenting, joined by BURGER, C. J., and BLACKMUN and REHNQUIST, JJ.).

Id., at 266 (BRENNAN, J., concurring); id., at 329 (MARSHALL, J., concurring); id., at 382 (BURGER, C. J., dissenting, joined by BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ.); id., at 409 (BLACKMUN, J., dissenting); id., at 420 (POWELL, J., dissenting, joined by BURGER, C. J., and BLACKMUN and REHNQUIST, JJ.).

10 The Coker standard derived from the joint opinion in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 173 (1976) (opinion of STEWART, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.), which stated that "the inquiry into 'excessiveness' has two aspects. First, the punishment must not involve the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain. . . . Second, the punishment must not be grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime."

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to capital cases. Indeed, the questions posed in Coker and this case are the same: whether a punishment that can be imposed for one offense is grossly disproportionate when imposed for another.

In sum, a few basic principles emerge from the history of the Eighth Amendment. Both barbarous forms of punishment and grossly excessive punishments are cruel and unusual. A sentence may be excessive if it serves no acceptable social purpose, or is grossly disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime. The principle of disproportionality has been acknowledged to apply to both capital and noncapital sentences.

III

Under Texas law, petitioner has been sentenced to a mandatory life sentence. Even so, the Court of Appeals rejected the petitioner's Eighth Amendment claim primarily because it concluded that the petitioner probably would not serve a life sentence. 587 F 2d, at 659 (en banc). In view of goodtime credits available under the Texas system, the court concluded that Rummel might serve no more than 10 years. Ibid. Thus, the Court of Appeals equated petitioner's sentence to 10 years of imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Id., at 660.

It is true that imposition in Texas of a mandatory life sentence does not necessarily mean that petitioner will spend the rest of his life behind prison walls. If petitioner attains sufficient good-time credits, he may be eligible for parole within 10 or 12 years after he begins serving his life sentence. But petitioner will have no right to early release; he will merely be eligible for parole. And parole is simply an act of executive grace.

Last Term in Greenholtz v. Nebraska Penal Inmates, 442 U. S. 1 (1979), we held that a criminal conviction extinguishes whatever liberty interest a prisoner has in securing freedom before the end of his lawful sentence. The Court stated unequivocally that a convicted person has "no constitutional or