In Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989), the Supreme Court held that it was not cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the federal constitution to impose the death penalty on an individual who was sixteen or seventeen years of age at the time of the crime. The Court stated that the focus was on the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. " Id. at 369. The Court held that it was the sixteen- and seventeen-year-old petitioners' burden to establish a national consensus against imposing the death penalty upon a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old. The Court concluded that based on the pattern of enacted laws, the petitioners failed to carry that burden.