Cite as: 538 U. S. 63 (2003)
Souter, J., dissenting
by the dollar value of the things taken; and the government charged both thefts in a single indictment. Cf. United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual § 3D1.2 (Nov. 2002) (grouping temporally separated counts as one offense for sentencing purposes). The state court accordingly spoke of his punishment collectively as well, carrying a 50-year minimum before parole eligibility, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 77 ("[W]e cannot say the sentence of 50 years to life at issue in this case is disproportionate"), and because Andrade was 37 years old when sentenced, the substantial 50-year period amounts to life without parole. Solem, supra, at 287 (when considering whether a punishment is cruel or unusual " 'the question cannot be considered in the abstract' " (quoting Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660, 667 (1962))); cf. Rummel, supra, at 280-281 (defendant's eligibility for parole in 12 years informs a proper assessment of his cruel and unusual punishment claim). The results under the Eighth Amendment should therefore be the same in each case. The only ways to reach a different conclusion are to reject the practical equivalence of a life sentence without parole and one with parole eligibility at 87, see ante, at 74 ("Andrade retains the possibility of parole"), or to discount the continuing authority of Solem's example, as the California court did, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 76 ("[T]he current validity of the Solem proportionality analysis is questionable"). The former is unrealistic; an 87-year-old man released after 50 years behind bars will have no real life left, if he survives to be released at all. And the latter, disparaging Solem as a point of reference on Eighth Amendment analysis, is wrong as a matter of law.
The second reason that relief is required even under the § 2254(d) unreasonable application standard rests on the alternative way of looking at Andrade's 50-year sentence as two separate 25-year applications of the three-strikes law, and construing the challenge here as going to the second, consecutive 25-year minimum term triggered by a petty
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