justice scalia talked about this in holland versus michigan -- involving a guy named titus oates. he was a bad guy. in 2005, he was voted the worst of the 21st-century. not a nice guy. here is what he did -- he was a disreputable anglican clergymen who tried to think of a way to get a fortune. he thought people don't like cap - catholics verymuch. -- very much. i will make up a story about a plot to kill the king. i will give evidence and everyone will love me and give me money, etc. so he makes up a story, implicates 15 people, including the queens as it should. it is really implausible in retrospect because the king at the time was charles ii, who was very friendly to catholics. there is a bunch of trials. 15 people get executed. during the 15th trial, the story unravels. everyone realizes it was all made up and as you can imagine, people are none too pleased. under english law at the time, the only crime he committed was the crime of perjury so he gets tried for perjury and convicted and the judge in his case, the famous justice jeffries, said to him because perjury is a misdem

what more can you say, if only learned about titus oates.[laughter] or had this won't be considered small by all of us catholics to say that we for very long time have been advising people to pay no attention to anglican clergyman. [laughter] we can't be held entirely responsible for titus. i think it's a really interesting and intriguing advance of thinking on cruel and unusual. let me digress and talk about -- i ended my. on the court and she just the michigan was the first place in english speaking world to eliminate the death penalty, in 1850. it did so following a very and just hanging that had inflamed the people. and so in the constitution of 1850 they abolished the death penalty. so we've had a long period of that for which i think most people in michigan are immensely grateful. i know we on the supreme court were because states that have the death penalty, there are slip supreme court's did nothing but death penalty cases. that, of course, did not affect us. one modest question that i have for the professor is this. public the most