Yes and no, there is a real debate on this point in most countries without death penalties for murder.

20 years for "life" may seem pretty light, compared with say a death penalty, and in some cases it is, especially for multiple murders etc.
Its even lighter when you can be out within 10 years under the old rules.

In other cases the minimum automatic rule is at least 1/3rd of the sentence must be served, the remaining 2/3rds depends on how much "reform" you go through, i.e. do you actually try and turn your life around etc, show remorse for what you did.
Of course there are lots of cases where people fake this to get a early release.

After the "20 years" is up, you're let out no matter how "bad" you are [if you offend while in prison or escape etc you may get more added to your sentence but generally not much extra].

The big issue is, if you have a policy that "life" means life with no chance of early (or any) release (before you die of old age in prison) for good behaviour, why not just put someone to death immediately after conviction? as in that case - its going to save a lot of time and money for someone who is going to die in Prison if life means life.

Now, assuming you don't take that position (which most first world countries without death sentences do and this includes all the EU, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada as well I think, and some states in the US), then you are left with a decision, how long do you stick someone inside if they commit murder - i.e. what is the length of a "life" imprisonment - in most countries thats considered to be 20 years give or take a bit for the type of crime or other factors (like multiple murders).
Some countries have a concept where if you kill multiple people or commit multiple crimes, the sentences add up, so you get ludicrous situaition where someone is sentenced to 100+ or 200+ years of prison - why bother, they aren't coming out again with that length of time before them.

They tend to make sentences here "concurrent" i.e. you do all the sentences together (concurrently) - which means you end up doing the longest sentences of all the crimes you commit. ( - in this case the guy got 7 years for pointing a gun at someone who tried to assist the girl, and 20 years for the murder, but they don't add up to 27 years).

If you do lots of crimes - especially for sex crimes (like rape) then you can be sentenced to "preventative detention" which means locked away for good until the "Minister of Justice" (basically the politician in the government of the day in charge of administering the law courts etc in the country), lets you out.
[The British equivalent would the "Minister in charge of the Home Office"].

The other issue is that there are always mistakes made - sometimes people are convicted of crimes (like murder) when they are not guilty - I know the US has had a few cases like this recently where convicted criminals have been released years after they were found guilty of a crime that DNA or other evidence showed later that they had not committed.

Now, if you have a death penalty and you gassed them or whatever then you can't bring them back to life. And of course if you lock someone up wrongfully then they lose many years of their life and should be compensated for this - and in the cases where wrongful imprisonment has happened down this way, that has been the case.

So, the issue is really where do you draw the line if you don't have a death penalty?

In this guys case, he got 17 years - we have had other more brutal murders of more people, which resulted is less jail time - so he got a pretty touch sentence.

Heck there have been people who got drunk, drove their car and killed someone (or in some cases more than one person) and ended up with much lighter sentences - who in some ways were just as guilty of murder as this guy was.

One reason for this is that we don't have "degrees of murder", you're either convicted of murder, or "manslaughter" (accidental death), or nothing.
None of this 1st degree, 2nd degree stuff.