United States v. Joe Caldwell Hodge

Appellant, who is presently serving a life sentence for rape in the North Carolina prison system, asks the Court to overturn a conviction of kidnapping in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. The kidnapping conviction was entered on a plea of guilty, 1 but the defendant contends that the fifty year concurrent sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. We reject this contention and affirm.

18 U.S.C. § 1201 provides that a violation shall be punished by, among…