Swedish law states that the longest punishment, other than life imprisonment, is a fixed prison term of 18 years.
Due to new legislation taking effect in January 2022, any offender aged 18 at the commission of the murder can be sentenced to life imprisonment.
As of 2011, Leif Axmyr, who, in 1982, killed his former girlfriend Ulla-Britt Jacobsson and her new fiancée Tommy Larsson, has spent nearly three decades in prison.
He held the longest record of ongoing confinement, during which Axmyr filed eleven appeals for a commutation of the sentence.
[13] In 2022, Axmyr was surpassed by spree killer Tommy Alexandersson, sentenced for a case of both triple and double murder in 1988.
In 2020, a new law was passed that increased the likelihood of a person convicted of murder receiving a life sentence.
[16] The first 18-19-year-old to be given life imprisonment was Fabian Vidar Cederholm (born 23 December 2003), who at age 18 committed a double axe murder at his school in March 2022.
According to current law, a life sentence may be imposed for murder if "the act was preceded by careful planning, was characterised by particular cunning, aimed to promote or conceal other offences, involved severe suffering for the victim or was otherwise particularly ruthless."