Reading what was written, this is what I think I know.
Ok, Let me see if I have this down.  The individual state has the right to pick its own punishment for the crime. That punishment has to then be applied evenly to every person committing the same crime.  The only way it should have even gotten to SCOTUS if there had been evidence that this particular case had not been administered to in the same vein as previous cases of the same crime. I.e. one criminal was given a different punishment than another criminal doing the same crime based on his gender or race etc.  It is therefore not a federal issue to begin with.

Please correct me if I still don’t have right.

A simple language version of the laws would really help such as Constitutional Law for Dummies Handbook.

watcher wrote:
A simple language version of the laws would really help such as Constitutional Law for Dummies Handbook.

There was such a book but "Justice" Kennedy evidently bought ALL the copies.  He has read them all but it evidently didn't help at all.