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life imprisonment

British

noun

(in Britain) an indeterminate sentence always given for murder and as a maximum sentence in several other crimes. There is no remission, although the Home Secretary may order the prisoner's release on licence

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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life imprisonment

Hui, 67, was sentenced by a Shenzhen court to life imprisonment and ordered to forfeit all of his personal assets, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026

Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm said sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment without parole was unusual because of their youth.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026

"While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely, it replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment to recognise a profound injustice in this exceptional case," he added.

From Barron's ● Jul. 8, 2026

In many other cases, the courts handed out jail terms or suspended death sentences, which get commuted to life imprisonment after a specified duration.

From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026

Sometimes defenders have well over one hundred clients at a time; many of these clients are facing decades behind bars or life imprisonment.

From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023