Kennedy v. Louisiana
2008 United States Supreme Court case
Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for a crime in which the victim did not die and the victim's death was not intended.
Background
Rape was a capital crime in most jurisdictions during the 19th and early-20th century. In 1972 the Court decided in Furman v. Georgia that arbitrary and capricious sentencing outcomes in death penalty cases were unconstitutional. States revised their statutes to comply with Furman. The new statutes and constitutionality of the death penalty were upheld in Gregg v. Georgia (1976).
The categorical exclusion of some classes of defendants from death penalty eligibility in Atkins v. Virginia, Enmund v.
The public source identifies “Kennedy v. Louisiana” as 2008 United States Supreme Court case. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kennedy, Louisiana and United.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1738811. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008, 1972 and 1976.
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