"As far as I know, Winston Talley was a very ordinary guy with low-level crimes, and he asked a federal judge smuggling his papers out of the prison to stop the whip. And I was taken aback because I didn't know that prisoners were whipped and I was yet taken aback twice by the opinion. One part of it is that a federal judge in Arkansas appointed the best lawyers in the state-the leaders of the bar-to represent him."
"And the judge said, "Yes, you have a right to be in court." And then the judge said, "But no, prisoners can be whipped by state officials for not picking enough okra or cucumbers or whatever, as long as it wasn't arbitrary and limited to 10 lashes because that wasn't cruel and unusual punishment." So basically, the facts here are that prisoners are being routinely whipped for not doing farm work, which they're being assigned to do, right?"
A 1960s Arkansas case involved Winston Talley seeking federal intervention to stop state-administered whippings for failing to meet assigned fieldwork quotas. A federal judge appointed prominent counsel and acknowledged court access while upholding limited corporal punishment, permitting up to ten lashes if not arbitrary. The case revealed routine forced sweat labor in prison agricultural assignments and judicial tolerance for corporal sanctions within prescribed limits. The incident highlights tensions between punitive practices and democratic obligations to treat detainees humanely and raises questions about whether many contemporary forms of punishment should end.
Read at Slate Magazine
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