Throw in the Whole Damn Library of Congress

Long ago, I came across a great quote in a state supreme court case about the proportionality of long prison sentences:

it is one thing for a sentencing justice to throw the book at a defendant . . . whose crimes indubitably merit severe punishment, but it is quite another to bury him alive under a whole library’s worth of hardback years to serve . . .

State v. Ballard, 699 A.2d 14, 17 (RI 1997).

That quote raced through my head when I saw this story (via Volokh):

A Springtown man was sentenced to 4,060 years in prison Wednesday for sexually assaulting three teenage girls.

James Kevin Pope, 43, will be eligible for parole in the year 3209, according to the Parker County District Attorney’s office.

How can you run up a sentence measured in millennia?

Jurors convicted Pope of 40 counts of sexual assault of a child and three counts of sexual performance of a child, authorities said. They sentenced him to life in prison for each sex assault conviction and 20 years for each sex performance conviction.

At the request of prosecutors, District Judge Graham Quisenberry ordered Pope to serve the sentences consecutively, Swain said.

I wonder if that first parole hearing in the 33rd Century is already on the calendar?