Will Kennedy have any cross-over impact for non-capital cases?

A week after it was handed down, I am now re-reading the Supreme Court's work in the Kennedy child rape case to ponder whether any aspects of the majority's Eighth Amendment holding or dicta might have an impact in non-capital cases. 

As regular readers know, I have always been troubled by the eagerness of the Supreme Court (and some lower courts) to find many constitutional problems with death sentences and yet few constitutional problems with extreme non-capital sentences.  Disappointingly, most parts of the Kennedy ruling have a "death is very different" quality that may keep Kennedy from helping non-capital defendants.  Nevertheless, I think these snippets from the Kennedy majority opinion could and should have some resonnnace in non-capital contexts (all cites/quotes omitted):

The [Eighth] Amendment proscribes all excessive punishments, as well as cruel and unusual punishments that may or may not be excessive [and its] protection against excessive or cruel and unusual punishments flows from the basic precept of justice that punishment for a crime should be graduated and proportioned to the offense.  Whether this requirement has been fulfilled is determined not by the standards that prevailed when the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791 but by the norms that currently prevail.  The Amendment draws its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.  This is because the standard of extreme cruelty is not merely descriptive, but necessarily embodies a moral judgment.  The standard itself remains the same, but its applicability must change as the basic mores of society change.  (Kennedy slip op. at 8.)

The constitutional prohibition against excessive or cruel and unusual punishments mandates that the State’s power to punish be exercised within the limits of civilized standards.  (Kennedy slip op. at 24.)

In addition, the Kennedy ruling suggests that, whenever a defendant challenges an authorized punishment under the Eighth Amendment, the judiciary's "own understanding of the Constitution and the rights it secures" must be part of the constitutional analysis.  (Kennedy slip op. at 24).  And, in turn, this appears to require the judiciary to consider "the fundamental, moral distinction between a 'murderer' and [and other crime that] is not like death in its severity and irrevocability."  (Kennedy slip op. at 27.)  Indeed, suggests the Kennedy court, as a matter of constitutional law and Eighth Amendment doctrine, even crimes that "may be devastating in their harm ... cannot be compared to murder."  (Kennedy slip op. at 27.)

If read to be more than just a death penalty ruling, one might reasonably assert that Kennedy's holding or dicta would preclude a jurisdiction from ever punishing a non-murder crime with the same terms it uses to punishes its worst murders.  This, in turn, would mean that Kennedy could raise serious constitutional questions for all sorts of non-homicide LWOP sentences and extremely long prison terms imposed for relatively minor offenses.  Sadly, however, I do not expect many (any?) lower courts to extend the logic of the Kennedy holding and dicta to non-capital settings.