Penry v. Lynaugh
E576850
Penry v. Lynaugh is a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held the Eighth Amendment did not categorically prohibit executing individuals with intellectual disabilities, a stance later reversed in Atkins v. Virginia.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Penry v. Lynaugh canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T6224966 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Penry v. Lynaugh Context triple: [opinion in Atkins v. Virginia, overruledPrecedent, Penry v. Lynaugh]
-
A.
Betts v. Brady
Betts v. Brady was a 1942 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held indigent defendants in state criminal cases were not automatically entitled to court-appointed counsel, a rule later overturned by Gideon v. Wainwright.
-
B.
Ray v. Blair
Ray v. Blair is a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld a state's authority to require presidential electors to pledge support for their party's nominees as a condition of appointment.
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C.
Lau v. Nichols
Lau v. Nichols is a landmark 1974 U.S. Supreme Court case that held public schools must take affirmative steps to help non-English-speaking students overcome language barriers to ensure equal educational opportunity under federal civil rights law.
-
D.
Bailey v. Patterson
Bailey v. Patterson is a 1962 U.S. Supreme Court case that addressed the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in transportation facilities.
-
E.
Lucas v. Earl
Lucas v. Earl is a landmark 1930 U.S. Supreme Court tax law case that established the principle that income is taxed to the person who earns it, regardless of contractual arrangements to split or assign that income.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Penry v. Lynaugh Target entity description: Penry v. Lynaugh is a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held the Eighth Amendment did not categorically prohibit executing individuals with intellectual disabilities, a stance later reversed in Atkins v. Virginia.
-
A.
Betts v. Brady
Betts v. Brady was a 1942 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held indigent defendants in state criminal cases were not automatically entitled to court-appointed counsel, a rule later overturned by Gideon v. Wainwright.
-
B.
Ray v. Blair
Ray v. Blair is a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld a state's authority to require presidential electors to pledge support for their party's nominees as a condition of appointment.
-
C.
Lau v. Nichols
Lau v. Nichols is a landmark 1974 U.S. Supreme Court case that held public schools must take affirmative steps to help non-English-speaking students overcome language barriers to ensure equal educational opportunity under federal civil rights law.
-
D.
Bailey v. Patterson
Bailey v. Patterson is a 1962 U.S. Supreme Court case that addressed the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in transportation facilities.
-
E.
Lucas v. Earl
Lucas v. Earl is a landmark 1930 U.S. Supreme Court tax law case that established the principle that income is taxed to the person who earns it, regardless of contractual arrangements to split or assign that income.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
United States Supreme Court case
ⓘ
criminal law case ⓘ death penalty case ⓘ |
| citation |
106 L. Ed. 2d 256
ⓘ
109 S. Ct. 2934 ⓘ 492 U.S. 302 ⓘ |
| constitutionalProvisionInterpreted |
Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| country |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| court | Supreme Court of the United States ⓘ |
| decisionDate | 1989-06-26 ⓘ |
| decisionType | plurality opinion with separate concurrences and dissents ⓘ |
| dissentBy |
Anthony M. Kennedy
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
Antonin Scalia NERFINISHED ⓘ Harry A. Blackmun NERFINISHED ⓘ John Paul Stevens NERFINISHED ⓘ Thurgood Marshall NERFINISHED ⓘ William J. Brennan Jr. NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| docketNumber | 87-6177 ⓘ |
| fullName | Penry v. Lynaugh NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| holding |
Texas’s special-issues capital sentencing scheme did not allow the jury to give full mitigating effect to evidence of Penry’s intellectual disability and childhood abuse
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
The Eighth Amendment did not categorically prohibit the execution of persons with intellectual disabilities ⓘ |
| joinedByInMajority |
Anthony M. Kennedy (in part)
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
Antonin Scalia (in part) NERFINISHED ⓘ Byron R. White (in part) NERFINISHED ⓘ Harry A. Blackmun (in part and in the judgment) NERFINISHED ⓘ John Paul Stevens (in part and in the judgment) NERFINISHED ⓘ Thurgood Marshall (in part and in the judgment) NERFINISHED ⓘ William H. Rehnquist (in part) NERFINISHED ⓘ William J. Brennan Jr. (in part and in the judgment) NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| jurisdiction | Texas NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| keyConcept |
evolving standards of decency
ⓘ
individualized sentencing in capital cases ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| laterCaseCitation | Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002) NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| legalIssue |
adequacy of Texas capital sentencing instructions to consider mitigating evidence
ⓘ
whether executing a person with intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments ⓘ |
| majorityOpinionBy | Sandra Day O’Connor NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| overruledBy | Atkins v. Virginia NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| petitioner | Johnny Paul Penry NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| priorCourt | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| relationshipToCase | precedent limited and effectively reversed on the categorical Eighth Amendment question by Atkins v. Virginia ⓘ |
| respondent | James A. Lynaugh NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| respondentPosition | Director, Texas Department of Corrections NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| result | judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated and case remanded ⓘ |
| stateLawContext | Texas capital sentencing statute ⓘ |
| topic |
capital punishment and intellectual disability
ⓘ
mitigating evidence in capital sentencing ⓘ |
| yearDecided | 1989 ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Penry v. Lynaugh Description of subject: Penry v. Lynaugh is a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held the Eighth Amendment did not categorically prohibit executing individuals with intellectual disabilities, a stance later reversed in Atkins v. Virginia.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.