Considering the guy went 18 years without committing a crime, I wouldn't call that a career. This isn't the kind of person the law was intended to take off the street permanently. You are clearly driven by emotion and not any reasonable analysis of the situation.
Murder = 7 years. Burgulary + Armed Robbery + ID fraud = 32+ years? That's ridiculous and out of proportion in the extreme.
Whatever the good people of California may have decided in this case, it does not trump the basic rights enumerated in the Constitution. That's the difference between a republic and a democracy - a democracy is mere mob rule. A 26-year sentence for ID fraud meets every and any reasonable test of "excessive" as spelled out in the 8th Amendment.
Didn't you read the article? "Between 1981 and 1997, he committed six crimes and spent almost seven years behind bars, five of which were passed in state prison." And of course, these are only the ones he got caught doing.
"...the guy went 18 years without committing a crime..."
They mention specifically crimes committed in 1981 and 1997. But the article also says he committed six crimes between those years (16, not 18) and out of those 16 he was in jail seven of them. So that makes it six crimes that we know of in nine years. Looks like a career to me. Of course, I've only gone 59 years without any felony convictions so what do I know?