30,000 years in prison, or Why in the US they give sentences that cannot be served

Surely, you have often seen in the news how a criminal in the United States is sentenced to several life sentences or tens of thousands of years in prison. Naturally, he will not be able to serve such a term physically, since he simply will not live.

But why, in this case, do federal laws and the laws of some states provide for such preventive measures? Read about this in our material.

In the United States, unlike Russia, there are no maximum prison terms for criminals convicted under several articles. Moreover, if a person has committed a number of crimes at once, the penalties for them are summed up. Thus, some attackers get terms of several thousand years. But isn't it easier to replace them with the death penalty?

It turns out that it is not easier, because in many US states the death penalty has been abolished, but there is a minimum period after serving which a prisoner can ask for parole. Thanks to this rule, a particularly dangerous criminal can be released ahead of time. But if he is sentenced to several life sentences at once, even after receiving parole, he will immediately begin serving the next sentence.

In Oklahoma, for example, there is an "85% rule". According to it, before requesting early release, a prisoner must serve at least 85% of the term in prison. And if his term is equal to several thousand years, there can be no question of any parole.

The term, which got into the Guinness Book of Records, was received by the rapist Charles Scott Robinson. The jury insisted that the district judge of the state of Oklahoma appointed a criminal for 5 thousand years in prison for each proven case of child rape. Thus, Robinson received 30 thousand years of imprisonment with the clarification that all the terms should be served by him sequentially.

In 1996, Allan Wayne McLaurin was sentenced to 12,750 years in prison in the same Oklahoma. The man was accused of kidnapping, rape and robbery. McLaurin had an accomplice — Darron Anderson. Back in 1993, the criminal received a sentence of 2200 years. But Anderson was not satisfied with this verdict, and he asked for a review of the case.

After re-examining the episodes involving the man, the judge sentenced Darron to 11 thousand years in prison. One of the subsequent appeals of the prisoner led to the fact that he was "mowed down" for half a thousand years.

"Killer Clown" John Wayne Gacy is included in the list of the most ruthless maniacs in history. In the 70s, a man kidnapped, raped and killed 33 young guys, for which he received a sentence of 12 death sentences and 21 life sentences.

In 1994, one of the sentences was executed — Gacy was executed by injection.

But such punishments are popular not only in the United States. For example, in 1989, in Thailand, the fraudster Chama Thipyaso and her seven accomplices were sentenced to 141,078 years in prison for large-scale fraud in banking operations. This case is also listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

And here is a former influential official in the Palestinian Authority Administration Abdullah Ghaleb Al-Barghouti received 67 life sentences for organizing numerous terrorist attacks against Israelis.