History Main / LongerThanLifeSentence

* Parodied with [[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19940505&id=1ZlQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BxMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2735,1189137 David Demone Reel]], sentenced to 100 years instead of 120 by Wisconsin because he pleaded guilty and showed remorse.

* [[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=20010703&id=LbtNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hP0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6250,2228645 Patrick Sykes]] got sentenced by Illinois state to 120 years for a rape causing the muteness, blindness and the crippleness of the 9-years-old victim.

Bob commits a crime.
The jury convict him of this crime and thus
TheJudge must determine an appropriate sentence.

The Judge decides to sentence to Bob 400+ years of prison or 11 life sentences, essentially rotting in a cell. Bob got Longer Than Life Sentence.

The reasons for such sentences are the desire for the judge to ensure a criminal never leave prison alive or insuring for the eventuality of an acquittal.

%%Keeping a criinal from getting freed

This trope can be used by an author as a manner to indicate that a judge is a HangingJudge or a jurisdiction is ruthless toward criminals, and could also show to the readers and/or other characters this criminal is truly hardcore and dangerous.

* All three protagonists of the cyberpunk anime ''Anime/CyberCityOedo808'' are cons serving astronomical sentences on a prison satellite, to the tune of 300 years or more. For duty served, they get a few years of that sentence taken off, though if they screw up a job or piss off Hasegawa, the warden, time gets ''added'' to their sentences -- if he doesn't just [[ExplosiveLeash pop their collars, that is]].

--> '''Lemongrab''': "''[[NoIndoorVoice ONE MILLION YEEEAAARS!! DUNGEON!]]''" *jail door slams*
-->--''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime''

* Bobbie Joe Long was sentenced to 28 life sentences, 99 years sentence and one death sentence by {{Florida}} for his murders and rapes.

The Judge decides to sentence to Bob 400+ years of prison or 11 life sentences, essentially rotting in a cell. Bob got LongerThanLifeSentence.

Basically, ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill [[XMeetsY applied]] to sentencing.

[[AC:StandUpComedy]]

-->[[WesternTerrorist Sgt.Pepper]], you are sentenced to 31695 consecutive life terms in prison.

* How 'bout a non-murder one? Just before the release of ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'', several Xbox 360 players managed to download an almost complete pirate of the game. Microsoft responded by banning the consoles with illegal copies from Xbox Live until December 31st, 9999.
* Here's one for a ''human'' criminal that didn't involve murder. Bernard Madoff, the infamous Ponzi scheme mastermind, was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 after pleading guilty to eleven counts, including securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements, and perjury, the maximum sentence allowed. (The judge rejected his lawyer's plea of only seven years due to his age.)

Such sentences can be enabled by the ability of consecutive sentencing or the fact that the upper limits to prison terms are very high or even nonexistant in the concerned jurisdiction. In real life, there's also the consideration that a criminal who was convicted of multiple crimes might have some but not all of those convictions overturned on appeal, shortening his overall sentence but still leaving him with a substantial amount of jail time left to serve.

%%
%% QUOTE PAGE:
%%-->'''Doc Hudson''': "I'm gonna put him in jail 'til he %%rots! — No, %%check that — I'm gonna put him in jail 'til %%the %%''jail'' rots on %%top of him, then I'm gonna move him %%to a %%new jail and let ''that %%jail'' rot...!"
%%-->--''WesternAnimation/Cars''

* Here's one for a ''human'' criminal that didn't involve murder. Bernard Madoff, the infamous Ponzi scheme mastermind, was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 after pleading guilty to eleven counts of including securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements, and perjury, the maximum sentence allowed. (The judge rejected his lawyer's plea of only seven years due to his age.)

!!Examples

* The Daltons are serving a 4200-years hard labor sentence in the beginning of ''[[ComicBook/LuckyLuke La Ballade des Daltons]]'' before escaping.
** In another Lucky Luke comic, an escaped convict lampshades this when his hostage tells him that if he turns back now, he'll get a lighter sentecne. The convict responds with "I can't see much of a difference between being sentenced to 236 or 295 years in prison".
* In ''[[ComicBook/AchilleTalon Le Grain de la folie]]'' Achille Talon expects being sentenced to 745 years (with mitigating circumstances) for [[spoiler:breaking in Surrender's base]].
* [[ComicBoo/{{Shazam}} Captain Marvel, Jr.]] had a foe called Greybeard. As a young man, he was sentenced to 99 years in prison, to which he sarcastically told the judge how considerate he was to not make it a life sentence. However, he served out his entire sentence and, once free, began a crime spree based on the theme of old age.

* In the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "Justice", Rimmer gets sentenced to ten thousand years imprisonment. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] as he is expected to be able to serve his sentence and be released at the end since he is a hologram. Of course as always StatusQuoIsGod and the ResetButton is hit by the episode end.

* In ''[[Music/JohnnyCash Cocaine Blues]]'' Willy Lee end sentenced, for murdering his girlfriend, to:

* ''GrandTheftAutoIV'': After she's arrested and judged, [[spoiler:Elizabeta Torres]] is sentenced to 300 years of imprisonment for thirty charges (ten years each) of cocaine distribution.

* How 'bout a non-murder one? Just before the release of ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'', several Xbox360 players managed to download an almost complete pirate of the game. Microsoft responded by banning the consoles with illegal copies from Xbox Live until December 31st, 9999.

* This is pretty much the whole point of "100 Years" by Plies. Here is the hook as it goes:

-->99 years in the Folsom pen
-->99 years underneath that ground

* How 'bout a non-criminal one? Just before the release of ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'', several Xbox360 players managed to download an almost complete pirate of the game. Microsoft responded by banning the consoles with illegal copies from Xbox Live until December 31st, 9999.

* James Earl Ray got a 99-years sentence for murdering MartinLutherKing.

Such sentences can be enabled by the ability of consecutive sentencing or the fact that the upper limits to prison terms are very high or even nonexistant in the concerned jurisdiction.