Buzz
Ariel Castro, the man responsible for the abduction of Amanda Berry, Georgina 'Gina' DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, who endured years of captivity, abuse, and assault in his Cleveland home, was sentenced last week to life in prison plus an additional 1000 years without parole. How does such an extensive sentence compare to other lengthy prison terms?
In the broader context, Castro's sentence pales in comparison. Juan Corona, who was convicted of murdering 25 migrant farm workers in California between 1970 and 1971, received a single life sentence for each victim. Given that Corona was born in 1934 when the average life expectancy for American men was around 61 years, these sentences cumulatively amount to 1525 years*.
Bobbie Joe Long, a Florida serial killer convicted of multiple murders, assaults, and kidnappings, received a sentence in 1985/1986 that included one five-year sentence, four 99-year sentences, 28 life sentences, and one death sentence. By calculating these life sentences based on Long’s life expectancy at the time of his birth, they total an astounding 2305 years.
Darron Bennalford Anderson received a staggering 2200-year sentence in 1993 for crimes including rape, robbery, and kidnapping in Oklahoma. After appealing, he was retried and convicted once more, with the court extending his sentence by thousands of years—totaling over 11,000 years. Following another appeal, he managed to get a reduction of 500 years.
The longest prison term on record we could locate was given to Oklahoma child rapist Charles Scott Robinson in 1994. Amid a grim wave of violence in Oklahoma in the early '90s (with Anderson, Robinson, and Timothy McVeigh all linked to the state), Robinson was sentenced to 30,000 years—5,000 years for each of the six charges he was found guilty of.
Even Robinson's 30,000-year sentence pales in comparison to what Spanish prosecutors sought for Gabriel Granados in his 1972 trial. Granados, a mailman, was charged with failing to deliver 42,768 letters, and prosecutors pushed for a sentence of 9 years for each undelivered piece of mail—resulting in a potential 384,912-year sentence. The judge, however, imposed a much shorter sentence of 14 years and two months.
*A life sentence means being imprisoned for the rest of one's life or until parole is granted. If Corona were a vampire or somehow immortal, he wouldn't be released at the end of the 1525th year. This comparison is only for the sake of illustrating sentence durations. A supernatural prison drama on HBO exploring such a plot would be an intriguing watch, though.
