# List of longest prison sentences served

This is a list of longest prison sentences served by a single person, worldwide, without a period of freedom followed by a second conviction. These cases rarely coincide with the longest prison sentences given, because some countries have laws that do not allow sentences without parole or for convicts to remain in prison beyond a given number of years (regardless of their original conviction).

## Longest sentences served

Indicates cases where imprisonment is still ongoing

### More than 70 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Charles Foussard | 1903 | 1974 | 70 years, 303 days | Australia | Homeless French Australian confined in the J Ward mental asylum in Ararat, Victoria after murdering an elderly man and stealing his boots. Died while still incarcerated at the age of 92, making this the longest served prison sentence in the world with a definite end. |
| Francis Clifford Smith | June 7, 1950 | July 8, 2020 | 70 years, 31 days | United States | Longest-serving prison inmate in the United States whose sentence ended in release. Sentenced to death for the murder of a nightwatchman during a robbery at a yacht club in July 1949, his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1954, only two hours before his scheduled execution. Smith was imprisoned in the Osborn Correctional Institution, but was paroled and moved to a nursing home in July 2020. |

### 60–69 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Walter H. Bourque Jr. | December 11, 1955 | ongoing | 69 years, 96 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in New Hampshire. Serving a sentence of 99 years and six months for the axe murder of a four-year-old girl when he was 17. |
| Paul Geidel Jr. | September 5, 1911 | May 7, 1980 | 68 years, 245 days | United States | Sentenced to 20 years to life and incarcerated from 1911, aged 17, for robbery and murder. He was nearing parole for good behavior, but was then found insane in 1926 and transferred to Dannemora State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was confined until 1976. He was finally released in 1980 at 86. He died in a nursing home in 1987, aged 93. |
| John Phillips | July 17, 1952 | March 9, 2021 | 68 years, 236 days | United States | Convicted for the rape of a five-year-old girl. According to the North Carolina DOC, he was released on March 9, 2021, on parole. His parole ends on March 8, 2026. |
| Joseph Ligon | December 18, 1953 | February 11, 2021 | 67 years, 54 days | United States | The oldest juvenile lifer in the US, Ligon at age 15 was sentenced to life without parole for murder, a mandatory sentence at the time. Ligon first rejected a resentencing and parole offer in 2016. Ligon was again resentenced in 2017 and immediately eligible for parole but refused it, pending his appeal. Ligon contends that he should be resentenced to "time served" and released, so he can cut all ties to the justice system. On February 11, 2021, Ligon was released from prison at the age of 83. He spoke to the BBC World Service about his life in May 2021. |
| Johnson Van Dyke Grigsby | 1908 | 1974 | 66 years, 123 days | United States | After killing a man in a bar fight, he was sentenced to life in prison for murder and was denied parole 69 times before he was released at age 89. Returned to prison voluntarily, citing difficulty finding a job, but left again in 1976. Died in 1987, aged 101. |
| Sammie Robinson | September 26, 1953 | December 20, 2019 | 66 years, 85 days | United States | Spent 66 years in prison in Louisiana, beginning when he was 17 and ending with his death at 83. |
| Kenneth Nicely | December 23, 1958 | ongoing | 66 years, 84 days | United States | Longest serving inmate in Arkansas. Convicted of killing a police officer. |
| Warren Nutter | February 2, 1956 | December 8, 2021 | 65 years, 10 months, 6 days | United States | Youngest man ever sentenced to death in Iowa, when he was 18 years old, for the murder of a patrolman during a gas station robbery. Sentence commuted to life in prison in 1957. He died in the hospice room of the Iowa State Penitentiary in December 2021, aged 84. |
| William Heirens | 1946 | 2012 | 65 years, 181 days | United States | Known as the "Lipstick Killer". Reputed to be the longest surviving prisoner in Chicago. Died in prison. |
| Catherine Antonovna of Brunswick | December 6, 1741 | April 9, 1807 | 65 years, 4 months, 3 days | Russia Denmark | Imprisoned as a baby when her brother, Emperor Ivan VI of Russia was overthrown by Elizabeth of Russia. Released to Denmark in 1780 on the condition that she would continue under house arrest until her death. |
| Clarence Marshall | 1950 | 2015 | 64 years, 70 days | United States | Longest-serving prisoner in Michigan. Sentenced to life in prison on one count of armed robbery and another of unarmed assault "with intent to rob and steal". He was paroled in 2015. |
| Richard Honeck | 1899 | 1963 | 64 years, 44 days | United States | Aged 20, Honeck was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a former school friend. He was paroled after 63 years and one month. He died in 1976, aged 97. |
| Howard Christensen | 1937 | 2001 | 64 years | United States | Sentenced to life without parole for the murder of a teacher in 1937, when he was 16, along with a 17-year-old accomplice who hanged himself in prison in 1943. His sentence was commuted to 200 years in the mid-1970s. He was paroled in 2001 and died in 2003, aged 82. |
| Charles Edret Ford | 1952 | 2016 | 64 years | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Maryland. Ford, a black man, was convicted of murder by an all-white jury in 1952, when he was 19. He was granted retrial in 2015, citing an unconstitutional trial and continued ineffective assistance of counsel who failed to inform him of his right to appeal. He was released to a nursing home. |
| Oliver Terpening | 1947 | 2010 | 63 years, 125 days | United States | When he was 16, Terpening shot a 14-year-old school friend and the boy's three sisters, aged 16, 12, and 2. Prosecutors theorized that Terpening wanted to rape the oldest and that he killed the others when they surprised him, while Terpening claimed that he only wanted to know how it felt to kill somebody, and that he had found the experience disappointing. Died in prison. |
| "Old Bill" Wallace | 1926 | 1989 | 63 years | Australia | Imprisoned for shooting a man in an argument over a cigarette in a Melbourne cafe. Died a month before his 108th birthday, still in prison, incarcerated in J Ward. Listed in Guinness World Records as the oldest prisoner in world history. |
| Hugh Alderman | 1917 | 1980 | 62 years, 192 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Florida. Escaped twice in 1919 and 1924. Moved to a mental hospital in 1927, where he died in 1980, aged 86. |
| Michael Anthony Mayola | November 15, 1962 | ongoing | 62 years, 122 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Alabama. Sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old boy, and was last denied parole in 2021. |
| James R. Moore | December 7, 1963 | April 30, 2024 | 60 years, 145 days | United States | Pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to "natural life." Also confessed to the sexual assault of dozens of other young girls. Last parole application rejected in 2019. He was granted parole in May 2022 and was scheduled to be released on or around June 6, 2022. However, as he was unable to provide a suitable residence upon his release, Moore was never paroled. He died in prison in 2024. |
| Booker T. Hillery | November 1, 1962 | January 16, 2023 | 60 years, 76 days | United States | Longest served prisoner in California history. Accused of stabbing and killing fifteen-year-old Marlene Miller with scissors in the small town of Hanford. Originally sentenced to death for murder but changed to life in prison in the 1970s. Appealed, was retried and found guilty again in 1986. Died in prison at the age of 91. |
| Howard Unruh | September 6, 1949 | October 19, 2009 | 60 years, 43 days | United States | Mass murderer who killed 13 people and injured three in Camden, New Jersey. Recluded in a mental hospital without trial or conviction until he died aged 88. |
| Clifford Hampton | 1959 | 2019 | 60 years | United States | Longest serving juvenile lifer in Louisiana. Resentenced due to Montgomery v. Louisiana and paroled in April 2019. |

### 50–59 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Ruchell Magee | Late 1963 | July 28, 2023 | 59 years and 8+ months | United States | Convicted in 1963 of kidnapping and robbery in an incident with his cousin that court records say involved a loaded gun, a moving car that had been reported stolen, and a $10 marijuana deal. Because of a prior attempted rape conviction (for which he had been imprisoned between 1955 and 1962), Magee was sentenced to life imprisonment. Involvement in the Marin County Civic Center courthouse attacks led to a second life sentence for aggravated kidnapping. He received compassionate release shortly before dying. |
| Raymond L. Shuman | June 13, 1958 | February 3, 2018 | 59 years, 7 months, 20 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Nevada. Jailed for the robbery and murder of two men while he and his partner (who was the one that pulled the trigger) were AWOL from the US Navy. Set another prisoner on fire in 1973 due to a dispute about leaving a window open. Died in 2018. |
| Robert Brim (AKA Robert Mertz) | 1958 | January 7, 2018 | 59 years, 2 months | United States | Killed a pregnant woman and her 3-year-old daughter, and wounded her 4-year-old son, during a shooting spree in South Dakota. Jurors convicted Brim of manslaughter since they did not want him to be executed. He died in prison. |
| Larry Ranes | October 23, 1964 | November 12, 2023 | 59 years, 20 days | United States | Serial killer sentenced to life without parole for the murder of Gary Smock. He was also the brother of fellow serial killer Danny Ranes. He died on November 12, 2023. |
| Harvey Stewart | 1951 | 1957 | 59 years | United States | Longest-serving prisoner in Texas at the time of his third parole in 2011. He was convicted the first and third time for robbery, and the second time for murder. |
| Harvey Stewart | 1958 | 1984 | 59 years | United States | Longest-serving prisoner in Texas at the time of his third parole in 2011. He was convicted the first and third time for robbery, and the second time for murder. |
| Harvey Stewart | 1986 | 2011 | 59 years | United States | Longest-serving prisoner in Texas at the time of his third parole in 2011. He was convicted the first and third time for robbery, and the second time for murder. |
| Hans-Georg Neumann | 1963 | 2022 | 59 years | West Berlin Germany | Abducted and shot a young couple at a lovers' lane. Longest serving prisoner in Germany and European Union. On March 17, 2021, the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe ordered his release on parole at an undisclosed future date, with preparations for reintegration to begin immediately. Neumann was paroled in 2021, and died in 2022. |
| Chester Weger | April 4, 1961 | February 21, 2020 | 58 years, 323 days | United States | Convicted for the murder of a woman in Starved Rock State Park in 1960. Granted parole November 21, 2019, though he was not released until February 21, 2020. |
| Terry Caspersen | September 17, 1964 | May 23, 2023 | 58 years, 248 days | United States | Longest-serving inmate in Wisconsin. Sentenced in 1964 for the stabbing of an 18-year-old woman who survived the initial attack but died of her injuries two days later. He was up for parole in July 2021 but was denied. Caspersen died in May 2023. |
| James Earl Hinton | January 26, 1967 | ongoing | 58 years, 50 days | United States | Hinton is serving life without parole for the 1966 stabbing death of Pickens County, Alabama cab driver Zach Rufus Collins. Initially, Hinton was sentenced to death, but the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a new trial. |
| Jesse Pomeroy | December 1874 | September 29, 1932 | 57 years, 9 months | United States | Teenage serial killer nicknamed "The Boy Fiend", who tortured nine younger children and killed two in Boston, Massachusetts. Sentenced to death when he was 15 years old, this was changed to life in solitary confinement after two consecutive governors refused to sign his death warrant. The solitary confinement was lifted in 1917, and he died in 1932, still in prison. |
| Henry Montgomery | February 1964 | November 17, 2021 | 57 years, 263 days | United States | Shot and killed a police officer in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the age of 17. He was sentenced to death but in 1966, the Louisiana Supreme Court annulled the verdict after finding he had not received a fair trial due to public prejudice. In 1969, he was again convicted of murder, which triggered an automatic sentence of life without parole. In 2016, his life sentence was vacated and he was remanded for resentencing. He was denied parole twice but was finally granted parole and released on November 17, 2021. |
| Michael Herrington | July 8, 1967 | ongoing | 57 years, 252 days | United States | Second longest-serving inmate in Wisconsin. Sentenced in 1967 for two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder. |
| Edward Albert Seibold | September 20, 1967 | ongoing | 57 years, 178 days | United States | Seibold is serving multiple life sentences for the slayings of three girls and the injury of a mother in Lee County, Alabama in 1967. |
| Lester Pearson | 1964 | October 2021 | 57 years | United States | Convicted of murder in Louisiana and sentenced to life in prison with chance of parole after 10 years and 6 months due to a guilty plea agreement, however Louisiana banned parole for all defendants who plead guilty to serious crimes before 1973 due to changes in state laws which prevented him from getting a chance of parole until he was resentenced and released in October 2021. |
| Wyman Hall | 1897 | 1954 | 57 years | United States | Hall was jailed in 1897 for the murder of a constable. He was paroled in 1954 at the age of 81 and was, at the time, the longest serving inmate in Illinois as well as the oldest. |
| Robert Mone | January 23, 1968 | ongoing | 57 years, 53 days | United Kingdom | In 1967 he shot a teacher at his old school, and in 1976 he and another man escaped from the State Hospital, Carstairs, killing three people in the process. |
| Emmett James Paramore | 1968 | ongoing | 56 years, 340 days | United States | As part of a group who attempted to steal goods from a delivery van, he shot and killed a bakery truck salesman. |
| Thomas Fuller | 1968 | ongoing | 56 years, 323 days | United States | Shot and killed five children in Coles County, Illinois. |
| John Mikulovsky | June 15, 1968 | ongoing | 56 years, 275 days | United States | Murdered his parents in December 1967. |
| John David Smith | July 12, 1968 | ongoing | 56 years, 248 days | United States | Convicted of the murder of William Straight |
| Mehmet VI | 1861 | 1918 | 56 years | Ottoman Empire | Kept in the Seraglio and the Kafes from his birth to his accession to the throne, aged 56. He was both the last Ottoman prince to be ritually imprisoned by his family and the one who was imprisoned for the longest time. |
| Joe Carr | 1941 | 1997 | 56 years | United States | Longest-serving prisoner in Kansas. Convicted of murder for strangling a newborn and tossing his body in the Arkansas river. Carr refused to apply for parole until he was released, aged 79. |
| Sheldry Topp | 1963 | February 2019 | 56 years | United States | Oldest juvenile lifer in Michigan. He was originally sentenced to life without parole for a murder he committed at age 17 in 1962 but his sentence was later lowered to 40 to 60 years due to Montgomery v. Louisiana because of his age at the time of the crime. He was also given 10 years' worth of good behavior credits which allowed him to be released in February 2019 without having to go through a parole hearing. |
| George Yutaka Shimabuku | 1964 | 2020 | 56 years | United States | Shimabuku was convicted of three killings, including one in prison. He was transferred to Arizona from Hawaii and died in December 2020 due to complications from COVID-19. |
| William Holly Griffith | 1915 | 1971 | 55 years, 359 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in West Virginia, known as "the bestial killer" and the "leading bad man" in the state. Sentenced to life for murdering the police chief who was going to arrest him and a constable during his escape to Ohio, where he was arrested. Tried to flee prison several times, the last one when he was already suffering from cancer. Died in prison. |
| Nobuo Oda | December 14, 1968 | ongoing | 56 years, 93 days | Japan | One of two perpetrators of the 1966 Maruyo Wireless Incident. Oda, a 20-year-old employee at the Maruyo radio station at the time of the crime, was found guilty and sentenced to death for beating two other employees with a hammer, robbing the place, and setting a fire that killed one of the employees. He is the prisoner longest held in death row in the world. |
| Clyde Johnson | 1969 | ongoing | 56 years, 31 days | United States | Fatally shot a man at a party after a night of drinking in 1968. At a commutation hearing in 2021, Johnson alleged that the victim had called him a racial slur and reached for a gun. |
| Allen Smith | c. December 1953 | September 7, 2009 | c. 55 years, 8 months | United States | A former reform schooler who shot an elderly couple during a robbery north of Newberry, Michigan some days before his 17th birthday. His sentence was commuted for medical reasons in August 2009, only 12 days before his death. He died before he could be released. |
| Sirhan Sirhan | 1969 | ongoing | 55 years, 334 days | United States | Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy. Originally sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted in 1971 to life in prison. Parole has been denied 15 times. On August 27, 2021, Sirhan was recommended parole by a California parole board. Prosecutors declined to participate or to oppose his release under a policy by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón. On January 13, 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom reversed the decision, stating that Sirhan had "not developed the accountability and insight required to support his safe release" and refused to accept responsibility for his crime. |
| Norman Santiago | 1969 | ongoing | 55 years | United States | Serving life without parole for the murder of a police officer in Hawaii. |
| Antonio "Tony" Wheat | November 1, 1965 | November 11, 2020 | 55 years, 10 days | United States | The longest serving prisoner in Washington state, a U.S. Air Force airman originally sentenced to death for the murders of three gas station attendants during an armed robbery spree with another colleague. His sentence was stayed four days before his scheduled execution on July 11, 1969, then changed to three life sentences after a retrial in 1971. Paroled. |
| Diego de Castilla | 1379 | 1434 | 55 years | Castile | Illegitimate son of King Peter I of Castile, imprisoned in Curiel Castle by his uncle Henry II when he was 14 years old, and released by his uncle's great-grandson, John II. Died in 1440. |
| András Toma | 1945 | 2000 | 55 years | Soviet Union Russia | Believed to be the last POW of World War II. Toma, a Hungarian soldier, was captured in southern Poland in 1945 and later interned in a mental hospital of rural Kotelnich, in Russia. His documents were lost, and he was listed as KIA by the Hungarian Army. He was returned to Hungary after a Czech linguist realized that he spoke an eastern dialect of the Hungarian language. Died in 2004, aged 79. |
| John Straffen | 1952 | 2007 | 55 years | United Kingdom | Multiple child killer. Sentenced to death for his third murder, which took place after he escaped from a mental hospital; the sentence was commuted to life in prison. Longest-serving prisoner in the United Kingdom at the time of his death. |
| Frank Edward Wetzel | 1957 | 2012 | 55 years | United States | Sentenced to two life sentences for the murders of two highway patrolmen when he was driving to Mississippi to break his brother out of death row. His brother was executed two months later. Wetzel maintained his innocence and died of Alzheimer's disease when he was 90 years old, still in prison. |
| Clarence Shepherd | 1965 | 2020 | 55 years | United States | Shepherd was serving life without parole for separate murders, including the 1965 stabbing and strangulation of a Birmingham woman. He died in prison at the age of 80 due to COVID-19. |
| Earl Perry | June 11, 1943 | March 23, 1998 | 54 years, 9 months, and 12 days | United States | Convicted of the April 1943 rape and strangulation of Theresa "Chi-Chi" Williams, age 4. Perry, who was 17 when he committed the murder, was sentenced to life in prison on June 11, 1943. He was denied parole in 1958, 1963, 1968 and 1974. Died in prison on March 23, 1998. |
| Garold Rheinschmidt | 1960 | May 1, 2015 | 54 years, 8 months, 12 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Wisconsin at the time of his death. |
| Verdell Miles | April 27, 1967 | December 14, 2021 | 54 years, 231 days | United States | Inmate in Wisconsin who was sentenced in 1967. Paroled on December 14, 2021. |
| Bobby Beausoleil | April 18, 1970 | ongoing | 54 years, 333 days | United States | Member of the Manson Family originally sentenced to death for the murder of Manson's former associate Gary Hinman in 1969. The Family perpetrated the 10050 Cielo Drive and Tate-LaBianca murders in a failed attempt to make police believe that Beausoleil was wrongfully accused. He was recommended for parole in January 2019, but was denied by the Governor of California. |
| Richard Robles | December 1, 1965 | May 21, 2020 | 54 years, 5 months, 21 days | United States | Perpetrator of the Career Girls Murders. He was paroled in May 2020 as per the New York Department of Corrections. |
| Tony Rawlins | December 28, 1955 | April 17, 2010 | 54 years, 3 months, 20 days | Australia | Convicted of the "Kissing Point mutilation murder", strangling a 12-year-old girl who rejected his advances. Was Australia's longest serving prisoner when he died, with 18 parole applications being rejected. |
| Willie Gaines Smith | 1960 | 2014 | 54 years, 105 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Kentucky. Rejected parole because no nursing home accepted him and he would receive better medical care in prison but was released on medical parole in 2014. Died at the age of 76 in December 2014. |
| John Norman Collins | August 19, 1970 | ongoing | 54 years, 210 days | United States | Suspected serial abductor, rapist, and murderer of seven women in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area during the late 1960s, though only convicted of one murder. |
| Arthur Norman Duncan | June 3, 1970 | August 13, 2024 | 54 years, 68 days | United Kingdom | Convicted of murder and rape in England when he was 18 in 1970, before later being transferred to Scotland. Died in prison at the age of 72. |
| Jerry Lee Duffey | September 1970 | ongoing | 54 years | United States | Originally sentenced to 1,000 years in prison for robbing and raping a pregnant woman. His sentence was reduced to two life terms on appeal. |
| Louis Mitchell | 1967 | October 5, 2021 | 54 years | United States | Imprisoned for raping a white woman, a crime which Mitchell said he did not do and has always maintained his innocence about. Sentenced to life in prison and resentenced and released on October 5, 2021 |
| Machal Lalung | 1951 | 2005 | 54 years | India | Originally arrested for "causing grievous harm," Lalung was interned in a psychiatric hospital until he was declared "fully fit" in 1967. However, he was mistakenly transferred to prison rather than released, and forgotten about until 2005. He was released without ever being tried or convicted, aged 77. |
| Robert Stroud | 1909 | 1963 | 54 years | United States | Known as "the Birdman of Alcatraz" for the research on bird diseases that he conducted alone in his cell, although he actually did it at Leavenworth Penitentiary before he was moved to the federal prison in Alcatraz Island. |
| Jerry Lee Hansen | May 20, 1965 | May 11, 2019 | 53 years, 11 months, 21 days | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Nebraska. Jailed for the murder of his parents in law and the attempted murder of his then wife. Disarmed a corrections officer and shot his ex-wife a second time in 1973, paralyzing her for which he received two 20 years to life sentences, he had been eligible for parole since 1977 and had been turned down, time after time. Committed suicide at the age of 82 while in the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution. |
| Michael Wilber Wade | October 28, 1966 | September 2, 2020 | 53 years, 10 months, 5 days | United States | When he was 19, he killed a 16-year-old girl he had met that day. The death penalty was a common sentence for murder in Florida at the time, but the jury spared him. Died in prison. |
| James Albert Findley | February 1971 | ongoing | 53 years | United States | Convicted in 1971 of the murder of a 16 year old, Findley was originally sentenced to death. In 1972, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the US Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty. He is eligible for parole, with his next hearing in June 2028. |
| Daniel Wheeler | March 1971 | ongoing | 53 years | United States | Sentenced to life without parole for murdering his 16-year-old pregnant ex-girlfriend in 1970 when he was 17. |
| Patricia Krenwinkel | April 28, 1971 | ongoing | 53 years, 323 days | United States | Member of Manson family; longest serving female prisoner in US penal history. |
| George Nassar | June 26, 1965 | December 3, 2018 | 53 years, 5 months, 7 days | United States | Convicted of two murders, he was originally sentenced to death in 1965, but in 1966 his sentence was struck down and replaced with life imprisonment. Also known for being the person to whom Albert DeSalvo allegedly confessed to being the Boston Strangler in late 1965. |
| Edward Arthur Webb | October 22, 1963 | January 19, 2017 | 53 years, 89 days | United Kingdom | Beat a woman to death with an axe, he died in prison. |
| Harry Hebard | October 4, 1968 | December 24, 2021 | 53 years, 81 days | United States | Murdered five of his relatives, including three children, in 1963. Died in prison. |
| Giulio d'Este | 1506 | 1559 | 53 years | Ferrara | Illegitimate son of Ercole I d'Este, duke of Ferrara. Organized a failed plot aimed at eliminating his half-brothers duke Alfonso I d'Este and cardinal Ippolito d'Este. Sentenced to death, his penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. Freed by his grandnephew Alfonso II d'Este in 1559 at the age of 81. |
| Tex Watson | October 21, 1971 | ongoing | 53 years, 147 days | United States | Second in command of the Manson Family and leader in the Cielo Drive and Tate-LaBianca murders. |
| William Jones | October 28, 1971 | ongoing | 53 years, 140 days | United States | Convicted of first degree murder in Hempstead County, Arkansas. |
| Peter Woodcock | 1957 | 2010 | 52 years, 328 days | Canada | Declared not guilty by reason of insanity and recluded in a mental hospital for the murder of three young children. Murdered a fellow patient in 1991. Died in 2010, still interned. |
| Carlos Eduardo Robledo Puch | 1972 | ongoing | 53 years, 41 days | Argentina | Serial killer. Longest serving prisoner in South America. |
| Peter Antonovich of Brunswick | March 30, 1745 | January 13, 1798 | 52 years, 9 months, 9 days | Russia Denmark | Born in captivity after his brother, Emperor Ivan VI of Russia was overthrown by Elizabeth of Russia. Released in 1780 to Denmark on the condition that he would live under house arrest until his death. |
| Bruce M. Davis | April 21, 1972 | ongoing | 52 years, 330 days | United States | Member of the Manson Family involved in the murders of Hinman and Donald Shea. He was recommended for parole in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2017; every time the sitting Governor ordered a review or reversed the decision. |
| Julia Belle Rollins | August 2, 1972 | ongoing | 52 years, 227 days | United States | Convicted of murder for shooting a 24-year-old woman in a bar. |
| Alfred "Alf" Vincent | 1968 | February 18, 2021 | 52 years | New Zealand | Man held in preventive prison for the longest time in the world: sentence was imposed for assaulting five boys. Suspected of having molested between 200 and 500 children. He was held in Rimutaka Prison's high dependency unit due to suffering from dementia and a heart condition. He was released in February 2021. |
| William MacDonald | May 1963 | May 12, 2015 | 52 years | Australia | English-born serial killer known as "the Sydney Mutilator." Oldest and longest serving prisoner in New South Wales at the time of his death. |
| Jimmy Ennis | November 9, 1964 | 2016 | 52 years | Ireland | Longest held prisoner in Ireland. Sentenced to life in prison for fatally bludgeoning a farmer in County Cork following a dispute. He had just finished a prison term for attacking a woman with a hatchet. He refused to apply for release until he was freed in 2016, aged 87. |
| Winston Moseley | July 7, 1964 | March 28, 2016 | 51 years, 291 days | United States | Murderer of Kitty Genovese. Died in prison. |
| Ian Brady | 1966 | 2017 | 51 years, 10 days | United Kingdom | Perpetrator of the Moors murders together with his girlfriend, Myra Hindley, who died in prison in 2002. Longest serving prisoner in the United Kingdom at the time of his death. |
| Walter B. Kelbach | 1967 | 2018 | 51 years | United States | Spree killer who murdered five people and raped two women in Utah in December 1966 with his cousin Myron Lance. Kelbach died in August 2018 of natural causes. |
| Alfred Tai | 1963 | 2014 | 51 years | United States | Longest serving prisoner in Hawaii. Paroled at the age of 72. |
| Theo H. | 1960 | 2011 | 51 years | Netherlands | Involuntarily committed when he was 17 after a sex offense in which the victim was a minor. He relapsed twice while on leave, in 1967 and in 1985. Died in 2018. |
| Sam Glass | 1967 | 2018 | 51 years | United Kingdom | He was ordered to be detained indefinitely in 1967 after he indecently assaulted, stabbed and strangled a five-year-old girl. |
| David Brault | 1969 | July 13, 2020 | 51 years | Canada | Was convicted in 1969 of the shooting deaths of two men, as well as two sexual assaults and several other offences. |
| Willie Ingram | 1970 | 2021 | 51 years | United States | Convicted of armed robbery and aggravated rape in 1970, he spent 51 years in prison in Louisiana, before being released in 2021. |
| Edmund Kemper | November 8, 1973 | ongoing | 51 years, 129 days | United States | Serial killer convicted of murdering eight women, including his mother. He was previously institutionalized as a juvenile for murdering his grandparents. |
| Carl Macedonio | June 12, 1972 | April 25, 2023 | 50 years, 10 months, 13 days | United States | Raped and murdered an 18-year-old woman in New York in 1971. He was sentenced in 1972 to 33 years to life, and was paroled in April 2023. |
| Wayne Coleman | January 24, 1974 | ongoing | 51 years, 52 days | United States | Sentenced to several terms of life without parole for his role in The Alday Murders. |
| John Joseph Kenny | June 18, 1974 | ongoing | 50 years, 272 days | Ireland | Bludgeoned an elderly woman with a candlestick during a break-in, when he was 19 years old. He has been allowed outside prison several times and returned every single one after breaching the terms of his release. |
| Elmer Wayne Henley | July 16, 1974 | ongoing | 50 years, 244 days | United States | Accomplice of serial killer Dean Corll in the Houston Mass Murders, found guilty of committing seven of them. The crimes were discovered when Henley shot Corll in self defence. |
| Staf Van Eyken | 1974 | ongoing | 50 years | Belgium | Convicted for 3 murders. |
| John Weber | 1926 | 1976 | 50 years | United States | Originally an immigrant from Austria-Hungary, Weber was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the fatal shooting of his 18-month old daughter, which he served in Columbus' Ohio Penitentiary. In 1972, Governor John J. Gilligan commuted his sentence to murder in the second degree. This made him eligible for parole, but he never benefited from it. Was the oldest prisoner in the United States at the time of his death, only a few months from his 100th birthday. |
| Hugo Pinell | 1965 | August 12, 2015 | 50 years | United States | Nicaraguan national sentenced to life in prison for rape. See below.August 12, 2015 |
| John Franzese | March 1967 | June 23, 2017 | 50 years | United States | Italian-American mobster of the Colombo crime family who was sentenced to 50 years in prison for masterminding several bank robberies. He broke parole and was returned to jail six times, the last time when he was 92 years old. At the time of his release at the age of 100, he was the oldest federal prisoner in the United States and the only centenarian ever. |
| Bobby Gene Griffin | May 27, 1968 | June 6, 2018 | 50 years | United States | Juvenile lifer in the state of Michigan who at the age of 16 along with three other male teens forced their way into Minnie Peapples’ Benton Harbor home seeking money. Griffin beat, stabbed and sexually assaulted Peapples, who bled to death after the teens fled for which Griffin was sentenced to life without parole until he was resentenced on July 10, 2017, to 40 to 60 years and he was paroled on June 6, 2018. |
| James Ferguson | 1969 | 2019 | 50 years | United Kingdom | Serial child rapist who was detained in Carstairs State Hospital for fifty years. |
| Gloria Williams | 1971 | January 25, 2022 | 50 years | United States | Williams and several others robbed a grocery store with a toy gun and, after a struggle with the store owner, who was armed, someone in her group shot the owner with his own gun. Williams was paroled in January 2022. |

## Longest spells in solitary confinement

The sentence duration refers to the time spent in solitary confinement, regardless of time spent in normal prison before or after. Death row prisoners, who are usually also held in isolation, are not included.

### More than 40 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Walerian Łukasiński | 1822 | 1868 | 46 years | Congress Poland Russia | Polish military officer suspected of harboring anti-Russian sentiments, kept in prison even after completing his original sentence of 14 years. |
| Hugo Pinell | 1969 | 2015 | 46 years | United States | Murdered by another inmate two weeks after his solitary confinement was lifted. |
| Albert Woodfox | 1972 | 2016 | 44 years | United States | Placed in solitary confinement for the murder of a corrections officer. Released in 2016. |
| Mark David Chapman | August 24, 1981 | ongoing | 43 years, 205 days | United States | Placed in solitary confinement after pleading guilty to murdering John Lennon on December 8, 1980. |
| Robert Stroud | 1916 | 1959 | 42 years | United States | Imposed for murdering a prison guard at USP Leavenworth. |
| Jesse Pomeroy | 1875 | 1917 | 41 years | United States | See above. |
| Woo Yong-gak | 1958 | 1999 | 41 years | South Korea | Captured during a North Korean commando raid after the armistice. Released to North Korea in 2000. |
| Herman Wallace | 1972 | 2013 | 41 years | United States | Placed in solitary confinement for the murder of the same corrections officer as Woodfox. Released in 2013, when he had advanced liver cancer, but re-indicted two days later. Died the next day before he could be arrested. |
| Robert Maudsley | 1983 | ongoing | 40–41 years | United Kingdom | Serial killer imprisoned in 1977. Placed in a specially-built solitary cell after killing three other prisoners. |

### 30–39 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Thomas Silverstein | October 22, 1983 | May 11, 2019 | 35 years, 201 days | United States | Called "America's most isolated man." Placed in solitary confinement for the murder of two inmates and a guard during a prison riot. Died on May 11, 2019 |
| Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova | 1768 | 1801 | 33 years | Russia | Countess convicted of killing 38 female serfs by beating and torturing them to death. Imprisoned at Ivanovsky Convent in Moscow; for the first 11 years, she was chained in a basement dungeon without a window and only given a candle during meals. |

### 20–29 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Man in the Iron Mask | 1669? | 1675 | c. 29 years | France | A mysterious prisoner kept in a solitary cell with double doors (to mute conversations) and forced to wear a black velvet mask at all times, following direct orders of Louis XIV. Much debate exists about the identity of the prisoner (variously called Marchioly or Eustache Dauger) and the reason of his confinement. After his death, myths arose claiming that the prisoner wore a full-headed iron mask, rather than velvet, and that two Musketeers of the Guard were posted with orders to shoot him if he removed it. The solitary spell was interrupted between 1675 and 1680, when the man in the mask served the also imprisoned Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle-Îlle as his valet. |
| Man in the Iron Mask | 1680 | 1703 | c. 29 years | France | A mysterious prisoner kept in a solitary cell with double doors (to mute conversations) and forced to wear a black velvet mask at all times, following direct orders of Louis XIV. Much debate exists about the identity of the prisoner (variously called Marchioly or Eustache Dauger) and the reason of his confinement. After his death, myths arose claiming that the prisoner wore a full-headed iron mask, rather than velvet, and that two Musketeers of the Guard were posted with orders to shoot him if he removed it. The solitary spell was interrupted between 1675 and 1680, when the man in the mask served the also imprisoned Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle-Îlle as his valet. |
| Robert Hillary King | 1972 | 2001 | 29 years | United States | Placed in solitary confinement for the same murder as Woodfox and Wallace, until his original conviction was overturned. |
| Yolanda Saldívar | 1995 | ongoing | 29 years, 142 days | United States | Found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez on March 31, 1995. Placed in solitary confinement after receiving numerous death threats from fellow inmates. |
| Luis Felipe | 1997 | ongoing | 28 years, 31 days | United States | Leader of the New York chapter of the Latin Kings. Convicted and placed in solitary confinement for ordering several murders when he was already in prison for other offenses. |
| Salvatore "Totò" Riina | January 15, 1993 | November 17, 2017 | 24 years, 306 days | Italy | Reputed "boss of bosses" of the Sicilian mafia, nicknamed "The Beast". Believed to have ordered over 150 murders in Italy. Died in prison, aged 87. |
| Mary Mallon | March 27, 1915 | November 11, 1938 | 23 years, 229 days | United States | First known case of asymptomatic carrier of typhoid. Quarantined for life in New York City's North Brother Island after refusing to have her gallblader removed or stop working as a cook. |
| Ian Manuel | 1993 | 2016 | 23 years | United States | Tried as an adult and sentenced to life for non-fatally shooting a woman during a robbery, when he was 13 years-old. His sentence was reduced after it was ruled that imprisoning minors who had not killed anyone for life was unconstitutional. Released. |
| Ivan VI of Russia | December 6, 1741 | July 16, 1764 | 22 years, 7 months, 10 days | Russia | Overthrown when he was one year old and imprisoned in solitary until he was assassinated at the age of 23, in order to prevent his release. |
| Frank De Palma | February 3, 1992 | March 11, 2014 | 22 years, 36 days | United States | Kept in solitary for attacking a guard while serving a 42+ years stay in a Nevada prison for murder and other offenses. Released in 2018. |
| Leonora Christina Ulfeldt | 1663 | 1685 | 22 years | Denmark | Daughter of Christian IV of Denmark. Confined to a small cell in the Blue Tower of Copenhagen Castle by her brother, Frederick III, accused of treason. Released after 22 years by Christian V, she joined a convent where she died in 1698, aged 76. |
| Russell Melvin Shoats | 1992 | 2014 | 22 years | United States | Member of the Black Unity Council, Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of a police officer. Shoats spent his time in solitary in a 7-by-12 foot cell, always illuminated by lights, for 23 or 24 hours a day. |
| Anthony Gay | 1994 | 2016 | 22 years | United States | Originally imprisoned in Illinois for stealing a dollar bill and a hat, was added time to his sentence for disciplinary reasons until he served 24 years and almost all in solitary. |
| Clayton Fountain | 1983 | 2004 | 21 years | United States | Marine sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his staff sergeant in 1974, and placed in solitary after murdering three other prisoners and one corrections officer. Converted to Catholicism and was accepted as a lay brother of the Trappist monks posthumously. |
| Rudolf Hess | October 1, 1966 | August 17, 1987 | 20 years, 320 days | West Berlin (Allied occupation) | Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany sentenced to life in prison for "crimes against peace". He was the only remaining prisoner of Spandau Prison after the release of all other inmates, until his suicide at the age of 93. |
| John T. Downey | 1952 | 1973 | 20 years, 3 months and 14 days | China | CIA agent captured along Richard Fecteau in Manchuria after their plane was shot down by Chinese forces during the Korean War; the mission was part of a failed attempt to establish an anti-Communist guerrilla in mainland China. Released after the thaw of Chinese-American relations. There was a three-week break in their solitary confinement in 1955, when they were allowed to interact with the crew of a downed American B-29. |
| Giovanni Passannante | 1879 | 1899 | 20 years | Italy | Attempted assassin of Umberto I of Italy. Locked in a dark, small cell below sea level in Portoferraio, Isle of Elba. His conditions became a scandal after they were revealed and he was moved to an asylum in Montelupo Fiorentino, where he died in 1910. |

### 10–19 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Richard Fecteau | 1952 | 1971 | 19 years | China | CIA agent captured along John T. Downey in Manchuria after their plane was shot down by Chinese forces during the Korean War; the mission was part of a failed attempt to establish an anti-Communist guerrilla in mainland China. Released after the thaw of Chinese-American relations. There was a three-week break in their solitary confinement in 1955, when they were allowed to interact with the crew of a downed American B-29. |
| Viktor Ilyin | 1969 | 1988 | 19 years | Soviet Union | Attempted assassin of Leonid Brezhnev. Released in 1990. |
| Ian Manuel | 1990 | 2008 | 18 years | United States | |
| Clarence Carnes | 1946 | 1963 | 17 years | United States | Placed in solitary for his part in the "Battle of Alcatraz". The measure ended with the closing of the prison. |
| Wazir Ali Khan | December 1799 | May 15, 1817 | 17 years | British India | Former Nawab of Awadh held in an iron cage at Fort William until his death, for leading the Massacre of Benares. |
| Christopher Scarver | 1994 | 2010 | 16 years | United States | Placed in solitary confinement for the double murder of Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson. All three men were serving life sentences for murder at the time of the crime. |
| Rathakrishnan Ramasamy | 1984 | 1996 | 12 years | Singapore | Placed in solitary confinement for 12 years at Changi Prison for the 1981 murder of Kalingam Mariappan in Singapore. Ramasamy was 16 when he helped his older friend to assault and burn the 45-year-old victim to death. The friend, 22-year-old lorry driver Ramu Annadavascan, was sentenced to death and executed by hanging on 19 September 1986. As he was below 18 at the time of the crime, Rathakrishnan was spared the death sentence and instead sentenced to indefinite detention at the President's Pleasure. Rathakrishnan was released in September 2001 after serving 20 years behind bars. |
| Mordechai Vanunu | 1987 | March 12, 1998 | 11 years | Israel | Israel nuclear whistleblower |
| Abdullah Öcalan | February 1999 | November 2009 | 10 years, 9 months | Turkey | Leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, sentenced to death for treason and separatism in 1999, commuted to a life sentence after Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2002. He was the only inmate of İmralı prison until 2009. |

## Longest spells on death row

These prisoners were sentenced to death rather than prison, but their execution was stalled for a prolonged time due to different reasons.

### More than 40 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Nobuo Oda | December 14, 1968 | ongoing | 56 years, 93 days | Japan | See above. |
| Tommy Zeigler | July 16, 1976 | ongoing | 48 years, 247 days | United States | Quadruple murder of Eunice Zeigler, Perry and Virginia Edwards, and Charlie Mays. He is Florida's longest serving death row inmate. |
| Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. | October 19, 1976 | ongoing | 48 years, 149 days | United States | Longest serving death row inmate in Georgia. Sentenced to death for kidnapping, raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl. |
| Richard Gerald Jordan | March 2, 1977 | ongoing | 48 years, 15 days | United States | Sentenced to death for the abduction and murder of a woman in Mississippi. Jordan is Mississippi's longest serving death row inmate. |
| James Franklin Rose | May 13, 1977 | ongoing | 47 years, 308 days | United States | Sentenced to death in Florida for killing the daughter of his ex-girlfriend. In 2018, he was sentenced to life without parole for the rape and murder of a woman in 1975. |
| Harvey Earvin | October 26, 1977 | ongoing | 47 years, 142 days | United States | Longest held prisoner on death row in Texas. Sentenced to death for shooting and killing a service station attendant in 1976. |
| Clarence Curtis Jordan | September 12, 1978 | ongoing | 46 years, 186 days | United States | Sentenced for the 1977 murder of a market clerk in Texas. |
| Arturo Daniel Aranda | May 18, 1979 | ongoing | 45 years, 303 days | United States | Sentenced for the 1976 murder of a police officer in Texas. |
| Iwao Hakamada | September 11, 1968 | March 27, 2014 | 45 years, 197 days | Japan | Granted a retrial and found innocent after it was determined that the evidence used to convict him the first time was forged. |
| Raymond Riles | April 2, 1976 | April 14, 2021 | 45 years, 12 days | United States | One of the longest held prisoners on death row in Texas. His execution was stayed several times from 1980 onward for different reasons. He was later diagnosed with mental problems and is considered not mentally fit to be executed. He tried to commit suicide in 1985 by setting his jail cell on fire. His death sentence was thrown out on April 14, 2021. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 9, 2021. |
| Albert Greenwood Brown | March 2, 1982 | ongoing | 43 years, 15 days | United States | Pedophile who abducted and murdered a 15-year-old on her way to school while being on parole for molesting another girl in California. Brown was scheduled for execution on September 30, 2010, but it was put on hold due to lethal injection supplies being unavailable at the time. |
| Hiroshi Sakaguchi | June 18, 1982 | ongoing | 42 years, 272 days | Japan | United Red Army member who murdered two police officers and an innocent bystander in a shootout with police in 1972 |
| Thomas Eugene Creech | January 1, 1983 | ongoing | 42 years, 75 days | United States | Sentenced to death for killing a fellow prisoner while incarcerated in Idaho 1981. Creech had been previously on death row for another murder, but his death sentence was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 1977 after appeal. |
| Ronald Allen Smith | March 22, 1983 | ongoing | 41 years, 360 days | United States | Only Canadian on death row in the United States and one of two death row inmates in Montana. Smith, along with another man, murdered two Native American men who offered them a ride while the former were under the influence of LSD. His accomplice accepted a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, while Smith refused and requested capital punishment for himself. |
| George Banks | June 22, 1983 | ongoing | 41 years, 268 days | United States | Spree killer sentenced to death for the murders of twelve people in the 1982 Wilkes-Barre Shootings, including his five children. Although his insanity defence was rejected at the trial, he was later ruled incompetent to be executed in 2004 and 2010. |
| Michael Morales | June 30, 1983 | ongoing | 41 years, 260 days | United States | Raped and murdered a 17-year-old girl who was in a love triangle with Morales's cousin and another man in California; his cousin was sentenced to life in prison as inductor. Though Morales did not deny his guilt, doubts about the evidence presented in his trial mounted as his scheduled execution for February 26, 2006, came near. The execution was postponed indefinitely due to medical professionals refusing to participate in executions, as their presence is obligatory under California law. |
| Arthur Lee Giles | August 18, 1979 | September 30, 2020 | 41 years, 43 days | United States | Was the longest-serving inmate on Alabama's death row, having been convicted of the 1978 murders of a couple in Blount County, Alabama. Giles died of pneumonia while on death row. |
| Patrick McKenna | 1980 | April 19, 2021 | 41 years | United States | Spent most of his adult life in prison for various violent crimes, and was sentenced to death for the murder of his cell mate. He died on death row in Nevada. |
| Douglas Stankewitz | October 12, 1978 | May 3, 2019 | 40 years, 203 days | United States | Longest serving death row inmate at California's San Quentin State Prison, a member of the Mono nation sentenced to death for the abduction and murder of a 22-year-old woman. Retried twice and sentenced to death on both occasions. Retried a third time and sentenced to life in prison without parole. |
| Doug Clark | March 24, 1983 | October 11, 2023 | 40 years, 201 days | United States | One of the couple known as the "Sunset Strip Killers", who raped and murdered six women in Los Angeles during the summer of 1980. His partner, Carol Bundy, died in prison in 2003. Clark died of natural causes at a medical facility in 2023. |
| Richard Dean Turner | 1980 | March 23, 2024 | 44 years | United States | Shot and killed a couple during a burglary in California in 1979, whilst under the influence of alcohol and drugs. He died in prison in 2024. |
| William Theodore Boliek Jr. | December 11, 1984 | ongoing | 40 years, 96 days | United States | Sentenced to death for the murder of an 18-year-old girl in Kansas City in 1983. In 1997, Boliek was granted a stay of execution by Governor Mel Carnahan. Carnahan died in a plane crash in 2000 and Boliek's case was not resolved. A court determined only Carnahan could overturn the stay, effectively leaving Boliek's case in permanent limbo. Governor Jay Nixon's office determined Boliek would not be executed and he will spend the remainder of his life in prison. Boliek is Missouri's longest-serving death row inmate. |
| Richard Delmer Boyer | December 14, 1984 | ongoing | 40 years, 93 days | United States | Fatally stabbed an elderly couple. |

### 30–39 years

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Cesar Fierro | February 14, 1980 | December 19, 2019 | 39 years, 307 days | United States | Mexican national arrested in Ciudad Juarez for the murder of a cab driver in El Paso and convicted in spite of no existing physical evidence linking him to the case. Formerly held on death row in Huntsville, Texas. His sentence was changed to life in prison on December 19, 2019. |
| Murray Hooper | February 11, 1983 | November 16, 2022 | 39 years, 278 days | United States | Convicted of participating in the December 31, 1980, robbery and murders of William Patrick Redmond and his mother-in-law Helen Phelps and the attempted murder of Redmond's wife Marilyn. He was executed by lethal injection on November 16, 2022. |
| Malcolm Robbins | May 12, 1983 | January 27, 2023 | 39 years, 260 days | United States | Sentenced to death in 1983 for first degree murder in Santa Barbara County, California. |
| Kevin Cooper | May 21, 1985 | ongoing | 39 years, 300 days | United States | Career burglar sentenced to death for the murders of four members of the same family and attempted murder of two others during a home invasion in Chino Hills, California in 1983, shortly after he escaped from prison. Cooper was scheduled for execution on February 10, 2004, but it was postponed to allow DNA testing of the crime scene and getaway vehicle that did not exist at the time of his conviction. The results of both tests supported the case against Cooper. |
| Gary Alvord | April 9, 1974 | May 19, 2013 | 39 years, 40 days | United States | Schizophrenic sentenced to death in Florida for the murder of three women over the price of one game of pool. Died of a brain tumor after several delays. |
| Richard Norman Rojem Jr. | July 15, 1985 | June 27, 2024 | 38 years, 348 days | United States | Sentenced for the July 1984 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of his former stepdaughter, 7-year-old Layla Cummings. Executed on June 27, 2024. According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Richard Rojem was the state's longest-serving death row prisoner at the time of his execution. |
| Douglas Stewart Carter | December 27, 1985 | ongoing | 39 years, 80 days | United States | Killed an elderly woman during a burglary in Provo, Utah. Assigned lethal injection. |
| Michael Owen Perry | January 8, 1986 | ongoing | 39 years, 68 days | United States | Murdered his parents, two of his cousins, and his 2-year-old nephew in Lake Arthur, Louisiana. Perry is Louisiana's longest serving death row inmate. |
| Lawrence Bittaker | March 24, 1981 | December 13, 2019 | 38 years, 264 days | United States | One of the two "Toolbox Killers" who kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered five teenage girls in southern California during a period of five months in 1979. Died of natural causes in 2019. His partner in crime, Roy Norris, was sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole after 30 years in exchange for testifying against Bittaker. |
| Thomas Knight | April 21, 1975 | January 7, 2014 | 38 years, 261 days | United States | Sentenced to death for the murders of three people in Florida. Knight murdered a couple in Miami in 1974 and later murdered a corrections officer while on death row in 1980. He was executed by lethal injection on January 7, 2014. |
| Gerald Ross Pizzuto Jr. | May 1, 1986 | ongoing | 38 years, 320 days | United States | Beat a Marsing, Idaho woman and her nephew to death in July 1985. He was scheduled for execution on June 2, 2021, despite being terminally ill. He was granted a stay of execution on May 18, 2021, until a commutation hearing in November 2021. |
| Tiequon Cox | May 7, 1986 | ongoing | 38 years, 314 days | United States | Member of the Crips sentenced to death for the hired mass murder of five relatives of former NFL player Kermit Alexander in their home. Cox was 18 at the time of the crimes. |
| Carey Dean Moore | June 20, 1980 | August 14, 2018 | 38 years, 55 days | United States | Sentenced to death for the murders of two taxicab drivers in Nebraska. He was executed by lethal injection on August 14, 2018. He was Nebraska's longest serving death row inmate. |
| Danny Lee Hill | March 5, 1986 | ongoing | 39 years, 12 days | United States | Hill was one of the two people convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of 12-year-old Raymond Fife in Warren, Ohio. Only Hill, who was 18 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to death, and currently scheduled for execution on July 22, 2026. His accomplice Timothy Combs, who was 17 when the crime happened, was spared the death sentence and instead sentenced to life imprisonment; Combs died in prison in 2018. |
| Sadamichi Hirasawa | 1950 | 1987 | 37 years | Japan | Confessed under torture to have committed the Teikoku Bank Incident of 1948, a mass poisoning of Imperial Bank employees that killed ten people. Hirasawa was never executed because no Justice Minister wanted to sign his death warrant, as all believed that he had been falsely charged. However, he wasn't granted a retrial either, and he was still in death row when he died from pneumonia in 1987. |
| David Earl Miller | March 17, 1982 | December 6, 2018 | 36 years, 264 days | United States | Sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of 23-year-old intellectually disabled woman, Lee Standifer. Miller was executed by electric chair in December 2018. He was Tennessee's longest serving death row inmate. |
| Ralph Leroy Menzies | March 23, 1988 | ongoing | 36 years, 359 days | United States | Abducted and strangled a female gas station attendant in Kearns, Utah. Requested death by firing squad. |
| David Carpenter | May 10, 1988 | ongoing | 36 years, 311 days | United States | Known as the "Trailside Killer", killed at least ten hikers and attacked another one in state parks near San Francisco. He was attributed to a 1979 murder after a DNA match in December 2009. |
| David Allen Raley | May 24, 1988 | ongoing | 36 years, 297 days | United States | Security guard who abducted, raped, beat, and stabbed two teenage girls in the abandoned Carolands mansion where he worked, before throwing them in a landfill. One of his victims died and the other survived. |
| Ronald Gray | June 29, 1988 | ongoing | 36 years, 261 days | United States | Convict held for the longest time ever on the US Military death row, a serial rapist and murderer who committed his crimes while stationed in Fort Bragg as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division. |
| Bigler Jobe Stouffer II | July 22, 1985 | December 9, 2021 | 36 years, 140 days | United States | Sentenced to death for the murder of Linda Reaves in 1985. Stouffer intended to murder another man named Douglas Ivens, the boyfriend of his wife, for Ivens's life insurance, but Ivens survived the shooting incident that killed Reaves, Ivens's other girlfriend. Stouffer, whose death sentence was reversed at one point before the courts reinstated the death sentence, was executed by lethal injection on December 9, 2021. |
| Brandon Astor Jones | October 17, 1979 | February 3, 2016 | 36 years, 109 days | United States | Sentenced to death for his involvement in the felony murder of a convenience store manager in Georgia. Was retried and sentenced to death again in 1997 because the jurors at the first trial had brought a Bible into the deliberation room. Oldest prisoner in Georgia at the time of his execution, aged 72. |
| Tomiyama Tsuneki | 1967 | 2003 | 36 years | Japan | Died of kidney failure in prison, at the age of 86. |
| Byron Lewis Black | March 10, 1989 | ongoing | 36 years, 7 days | United States | Found guilty of the 1988 murders of his girlfriend and her two daughters in Nashville, Tennessee, and sentenced to death on March 10, 1989. |
| Romell Broom | October 24, 1985 | December 28, 2020 | 35 years, 65 days | United States | Abducted, raped, and strangled a 14-year-old girl returning from a football game in East Cleveland, Ohio, and also attempted to kidnap two of her friends. Survived an attempted execution by lethal injection on September 15, 2009, because the executioners couldn't find a suitable vein. He died in prison from COVID-19 complications on December 28, 2020. |
| Cynthia Coffman | August 31, 1989 | ongoing | 35 years, 198 days | United States | Convicted for the murders of four women from October to November 1986. Coffman admits to committing the murders, but claims she suffered from battered-woman syndrome. |
| James Gregory Marlow | August 31, 1989 | ongoing | 35 years, 198 days | United States | Convicted for the murders of four women from October to November 1986. Coffman admits to committing the murders, but claims she suffered from battered-woman syndrome. |
| Donald Ray Middlebrooks | September 22, 1989 | ongoing | 35 years, 176 days | United States | Found guilty and sentenced to death for the 1987 racially-motivated murder of a 14-year-old African-American boy named Kerrick Majors. |
| Randy Steven Kraft | November 29, 1989 | Ongoing | 35 years, 13 days | United States | Sentenced to death for 16 murders committed between 1972-1983 suspected of committing up to 67 murders |
| Oscar Franklin Smith | July 26, 1990 | ongoing | 34 years, 234 days | United States | Found guilty of the 1989 murders of his estranged wife and her two sons, and sentenced to death. |
| Edmund Zagorski | March 27, 1984 | November 1, 2018 | 34 years, 219 days | United States | Sentenced to death by the state of Tennessee for the 1983 murders of two men, and was executed by electrocution in 2018. |
| Ronald Watson Lafferty | May 7, 1985 | November 11, 2019 | 34 years, 188 days | United States | Self-proclaimed prophet from Utah who claimed to have been divinely mandated to murder a number of people starting with his sister-in-law and her baby daughter. A death sentence was overturned on the grounds that he was not competent to stand trial, but he was deemed competent, retried, and sentenced to death again in 1996. Lafferty had requested to be executed by firing squad. |
| Edward Harold Schad | December 27, 1979 | October 9, 2013 | 33 years, 286 days | United States | Oldest prisoner in Arizona death row at the time of his execution by lethal injection, aged 71. Sentenced to death for the murder and robbery of a 74-year-old man in 1978, while he was in parole for another murder ten years prior. |
| Pervis Tyrone Payne | February 16, 1988 | November 18, 2021 | 33 years, 275 days | United States | Murdered an acquaintance and her 2-year-old daughter. Payne was scheduled to be executed in December 2020, but was given a reprieve until April 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2020, DNA testing was ordered to investigate his claims of innocence. Payne was resentenced to two concurrent life sentences on January 31, 2022. |
| Sakae Menda | March 23, 1950 | July 15, 1983 | 33 years, 114 days | Japan | After being arrested for stealing rice, Menda was tortured until he confessed to the murders of a Buddhist priest and his wife, which he did not commit. He was not represented by a lawyer, no physical evidence linking Menda to the murders was ever produced, and the testimony of witnesses backing his alibi was deliberately kept out of his trial. In 1979 he was granted a retrial and in 1983 he was acquitted, becoming the first person in the History of Japan to be released from death row. |
| Henry Eugene Hodges | January 30, 1992 | Ongoing | 33 years, 46 days | United States | Convicted serial killer sentenced to death for the murder of Ronald Bassett in Tennessee and given two life terms for killings in Tennessee and Georgia. Suspect behind at least five more killings. |
| Jack Alderman | June 1975 | September 16, 2008 | 33 years | United States | Murdered his wife with a wrench in Georgia. Executed by lethal injection. |
| Bobby Joe Long | July 25, 1986 | May 23, 2019 | 32 years, 302 days | United States | Known as "The Classified Ad Rapist" or "The Adman Rapist", kidnapped, raped and killed at least ten women in Tampa Bay Area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984. He was executed on May 23, 2019, by lethal injection. |
| Thomas Warren Whisenhant | September 7, 1977 | May 27, 2010 | 32 years, 262 days | United States | Sentenced to death for the murder of a convenience store clerk in Alabama. He later admitted to murdering a further three women in Mobile County. He was executed by lethal injection on May 27, 2010. At the time of his execution, he was Alabama's longest serving death row inmate. |
| Dayton Leroy Rogers | June 9, 1989 | November 12, 2021 | 32 years, 156 days | United States | Rogers was convicted in May 1989 for the murders of 23-year-old Lisa Marie Mock, 26-year-old Maureen Ann Hodges, 35-old Christine Lotus Adams, 20- year-old Cynthia Devore, 26-year-old Nondace "Noni" Cervantes, and 16-year-old Riatha Gyles. Removed from death row for the final time on November 12, 2021, due in part to a new law signed by Governor Kate Brown, which limited the amount of aggravating factors required for seeking the death penalty. |
| Stephen Michael West | March 25, 1987 | August 15, 2019 | 32 years, 143 days | United States | Murdered a mother-daughter pair in Tennessee in 1986. Executed by the electric chair on August 15, 2019. |
| Christopher Sepulvado | May 24, 1993 | February 22, 2025 | 31 years, 274 days | United States | Tortured and murdered his stepson in 1992. Sepulvado's execution was stayed several times due to legal issues, and originally, Sepulvado was scheduled to be executed on March 17, 2025, but he died of natural causes less than a month before he could be executed. |
| James H. Roane Jr. | June 1, 1993 | December 23, 2024 | 31 years, 205 days | United States | Convicted for the murders of multiple persons to expand the influence of their drug trafficking syndicate in Virginia between January 1992 and February 1992. Roane, Tipton and a third accomplice named Corey Johnson were sentenced to death by the U.S. federal government, while the fourth man, Vernon Lance Thomas, was sentenced to life without parole. Johnson was executed by lethal injection on January 14, 2021. On December 23, 2024, outgoing President Joe Biden exercised his clemency powers and commuted the death sentences of 37 inmates on federal death row, including Roane and Tipton, and allowed them to serve life without parole. Roane and Tipton were the longest-serving prisoners on federal death row at the time of their pardon. |
| Richard Tipton | June 1, 1993 | December 23, 2024 | 31 years, 205 days | United States | Convicted for the murders of multiple persons to expand the influence of their drug trafficking syndicate in Virginia between January 1992 and February 1992. Roane, Tipton and a third accomplice named Corey Johnson were sentenced to death by the U.S. federal government, while the fourth man, Vernon Lance Thomas, was sentenced to life without parole. Johnson was executed by lethal injection on January 14, 2021. On December 23, 2024, outgoing President Joe Biden exercised his clemency powers and commuted the death sentences of 37 inmates on federal death row, including Roane and Tipton, and allowed them to serve life without parole. Roane and Tipton were the longest-serving prisoners on federal death row at the time of their pardon. |
| Robert Brian Waterhouse | September 3, 1980 | February 5, 2012 | 31 years, 155 days | United States | Murdered and mutilated a woman in Florida while he was on parole from a life sentence for murder. Executed in 2012. |
| Henry McCollum | 1983 | September 2, 2014 | 31 years | United States | Longest serving death row inmate in North Carolina. Sentenced for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, while his half-brother Leon Brown was sentenced to life in prison. Both men were intellectually disabled. They were exonerated following DNA tests and released. |
| Larry Roy | August 30, 1994 | Ongoing | 30 years, 199 days | United States | Dubbed the "Cheneyville Slasher", Roy was found guilty of the 1993 murders of his ex-girlfriend's husband and aunt in Cheneyville, Louisiana. Roy was sentenced to death on July 19, 1994. |

## False claims

| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
| Jean-Baptiste Mouron | 1684 | 1784 | 100 years and 1 day | France | A man claimed in the 1934 edition of Ripley's Believe It or Not! to have been condemned to galleys for one hundred years and one day as a teenager, and lived to be released as a supercentarian after completing his sentence. The source claimed by Ripley, Jean Marteilhe's Mémoires d'un protestant, condamné aux galères de France pour cause de religion references the arrest and sentence to galleys of 500 Huguenots in 1684 but not Mouron's story, and actually predates his supposed release. |