The Court, however, could and did follow previous interpretations of cruel and unusual punishments in pre-Charter case law, namely Miller and Cockriell v. The Queen (1977).
Justice Lamer, writing for the Court in R. v. Smith, went on to provide some guides as to how to measure proportionality, listing as special considerations the seriousness of the crime committed by the individual, the "personal characteristics" of the individual, and the various types of punishments available that could effectively "punish, rehabilitate or deter this particular offender or to protect the public from this particular offender."
In Steele v. Mountain Institution (1990),[4] Justice Cory wrote for the Court that a judicial discovery of a cruel and unusual punishment should be "rare and unique".
[7] Latimer, who had murdered his disabled daughter, argued the 10 years that he would definitely serve (he could be in prison for longer if denied parole) was so long as to be cruel and unusual.
They did, however, state that execution certainly "engages the underlying values of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment," noting its impossibility to correct (in cases of wrongful conviction) and its perceived "arbitrary" nature, as well as the skepticisms that it really would decrease crime rates.
As the Supreme Court wrote in Suresh v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) (2002),[9] torture is "so inherently repugnant that it could never be an appropriate punishment, however egregious the offence."