From yesterday's Metro (in the story about Josef Fritzl who hadn't yey been sentenced)

The prosecuter said that he will ask for a life sentence followed by incarceration in a secure unit.

I know that Fritzl's a monster but surely he won't be rising from the dead?

A life sentence followed by incarceration? That is a strange way to put it. I suppose he's talking about the prosecutor asking for the sentencing first, followed by the defendant going to jail to serve the life sentence. But it just doesn't sound right.

I quoted from memory and it seems it was actually the defence who said "my client expects" followed by the rest of the quote. My suspicion is that maybe in Austria, as in the UK, "life sentence" doesn't really mean "life" and that "lifers" can be out in ten years. This may have been a pay of preventing that. If you've seen the case in the US papers you'll know that no sentence is really adequate for him.

On the other hand it could just be that the people who wrote the article got the translation wrong. It just struck me as an amusing turn of phrase.

Doesn't the sentencing come before the incarceration? (It might also be a translation problem. IIRC, the justice system in Austria does not use English.

Here too "life sentence" doesn't necessarily mean what it says. Sometimes it means listening to a politician's bloviation on a single thought.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Asa Lovejoy>, March 22, 2009 13:49

Food is an important part of a balanced diet."
--Fran Lebowitz

Oh my.