"This defendant’s brutality and the horror of that evening warrant the maximum penalty that I can impose under the law," said King County Superior Court Judge Michael Hayden as he sentenced Isaiah Kalebu just now to life in prison plus 1,186 months (or about 98 years) for committing the South Park rapes and murder.

“That’s as close as I can come to giving him three consecutive life sentences," Judge Hayden added, noting that Kalebu's current life expectancy is 47 years.

Kalebu interrupted Judge Hayden as the sentence was delivered, objecting to the judge's lament that Jennifer Hopper, the survivor of the attacks, and her partner Teresa Butz, who was killed by Kalebu, could not have legally married under Washington State law during Butz's lifetime.

Addressing Hopper, Judge Hayden had said: "I think that in your lifetime, your next ceremony, whoever it’s with, may be a marriage ceremony.”

Kalebu interrupted at that point with a monologue spoken so fast the words blurred together. It involved a warning to “all you people who are advocating for gay marriage," a restating of the so-called slippery slope argument (“So we have gay marriage, and then we have polygamy..."), and a somewhat nonsensical question: "Do you want to live in a sharia country?”

The judge let Kalebu rant until he stopped, then delivered the sentence.

In contrast to the grace and generosity of the "victim impact" statements that preceded this exchange, Kalebu's outburst ended up seeming small. (And though the outburst may raise questions for some about the assumption that Kalebu's attacks were not motivated by anti-gay sentiment, Kalebu defense attorney Ramona Brandes told me after the hearing: "They were not motivated by anti-gay animus. We have specific reason to know that." She did not elaborate.) I'll post more shortly about what was said at the sentencing hearing by Norbert Butz, the father of Teresa Butz; Jim Butz, one of the brothers of Teresa Butz; Jennifer Hopper; and the defense team.