seize a $42,000 vehicle under state law in addition to the imposition of a $1,200 fine for drug trafficking charges, house arrest, and probation. Cruel and unusual punishments General aspects The Constitution was amended to prohibit cruel and unusual punishments as part of the United States Bill of Rights as a result of objections raised by people such as Abraham Holmes and Patrick Henry. While Holmes feared the establishment of the Inquisition in the United States, Henry was concerned with the application of torture as a way of extracting confessions. They also feared that the federal government would misuse its powers to create federal crimes as well as to punish those who committed them under the new Constitution and thus use these powers as a way to oppress the people. Abraham Holmes, a member of the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention for the federal constitution, for example noted in a letter from January 30, 1788 that the new Constitution would give the U.S. Congress the power "to ascertain, point out, and determine, what kind of punishments shall be inflicted on persons convicted of crimes." He added with respect those who would belong to the new government under the new Constitution: "They are nowhere restrained from inventing the most cruel and unheard-of punishments, and annexing them to crimes; and there is no constitutional check on them, but that racks and gibbets may be amongst the most mild instruments of their discipline." Relying on the history of the Eighth Amendment and its own caselaw the Supreme Court stated in Ingraham v. Wright (1977) that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause was designed to protect those convicted of crimes. The Supreme Court consequently determined in Ingraham that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause limits the criminal process in three ways: "[F]irst, it limits the kinds of punishment that can be imposed on those convicted of crimes, e.g., Estelle v. Gamble, supra; Trop v. Dulles, supra; second, it proscribes punishment grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime, e.g., Weems v. United States, supra; and third, it imposes substantive limits on what can be made criminal and punished as such, e.g., Robinson v. California, supra." In Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, , the Supreme Court assumed arguendo that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause applied to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Robinson v. California, , the Court ruled