Is this sentence a deterrent or just an exercise in judicial penalarithmetizing?

"Pillowcase robber" gets 184-year term
Seattle Times, Saturday, July 9, 2005

Extract:

"Rejecting defense arguments that the punishment was cruel and unusual, a federal judge yesterday sentenced an Auburn man to 184 years in prison for robbing 10 financial institutions, eight of them while armed.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly imposed the stiff sentence on 41-year-old bank robber Ivy Gaines because of legislatively mandated minimum terms for defendants who use firearms during robberies, and because higher courts have upheld heavy sentences in comparable cases."

http://snipurl.com/g4x8

For this 41 year old bank robber, a "mandated minimum" term of 50 years would have been a lifetime.

Perhaps they plan to keep his corpse incarcerated as a deterrent to other inmates.

It gives a whole new meaning to the term "death row".