Nine years in prison is a long, long time. Thisis on top of the six years the man has already served, 1996-2002 (click). I know there's a tendency to think that longer and longer prison terms are needed for the more heinous crimes, but I think that anything over five years in prison is a lifetime. The current Conventional Wisdom demands harsher and harsher sentences, but there's no evidence that it does any good for anybody but prison employees.
Our current system of "justice" in the Western World is vengeance-based, and it hasn't served to solve our crime problems.

-Joe-