A plea deal with a range of sentence
and the Judge took the upper range? Or a plea deal with 40? Makes a difference for appeal purposes.
At first glance, it looks like the judge deliberately imposed the larger sentence, hoping that an appeals court would reduce it as being overly harsh. However, the part about the defendant shooting at the convenience store on the way to killing the scumbag makes me wonder a bit about the whole thing...
Sounds like a job for the late Paul Harvey and "The Rest of the Story!"