In People v. Anderson (1972), the California Supreme Court had ruled “that capital punishment is both cruel and unusual as those terms are defined under article I, section 6, of the California Constitution, and that therefore death may not be exacted as punishment for crime in this state.” In that same decision, the Court noted that the “cruel or unusual punishment clause of the California Constitution, like other provisions of the Declaration of Rights, operates to restrain legislative and executive action and to protect fundamental individual and minority rights against encroachment by the majority. It is the function of the court to examine legislative acts in light of such constitutional mandates to ensure that the promise of the Declaration of Rights is a reality to the individual.”

Later that same year, voters passed an initiative which constitutionalized the death penalty. This initiative affected the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, a right of a minority.

Lawyers for Lavelle Frierson, in their appeal of his death sentence, argued that the initiative amounted to a revision. The Court rejected that argument in People v. Frierson .

So case law states that amendments can be used to reduce (and extend) the scope of the cruel and unusual punishment clause.