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* The last in this line of cases before ''Robinson'' was ''[[Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber|Francis v. Resweber]]''. In ''Francis'', the Court considered whether Louisiana could try a second time to electrocute a convicted murderer, after the first attempt failed because of a defect in the State's electric chair. The Court held, 5-4, that re-electrocuting the defendant Francis was not cruel and unusual.<ref>{{ussc|name=Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber|volume=329|page=459|pin=|year=1947}}.</ref>
However, in ''[[Weems v. United States]]'', 217 U.S. 349 (1910), in which a punishment of twelve years in irons at hard and painful labor was imposed for the crime of falsifying public records, the Court held that the penalty was cruel in its ''excessiveness'' and unusual in its character (''i.e.'', its disproportionality).<ref>{{ussc|name=Weems v. United States|volume=217|page=349|pin=|year=1910}}.</ref> The Court quoted ''[[obiter dicta]]'' by Justice Field in dissent in [https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/144/323/ ''O'Neil v. Vermont'',] 144 U.S. 323 (1892): "the inhibition was directed not only against punishments which inflict torture, 'but against all punishments which, by their excessive length or severity, are greatly disproportioned to the offenses charged.'".<ref>''Weems'', 217 U.S. at 371.</ref> Justices [[Edward Douglass White|White]] and [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.|Holmes]] dissented on the grounds that the Eighth Amendment did not prohibit excessive or disproportionate penalties. ''Weems'' may have been the earliest "disproportionality" Eighth Amendment holding.
==Supreme Court ruling in ''Robinson''==
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