Chad Schaffner at risk for more life sentences than a cat with nine lives could survive

crime spree that puts Chad Schaffner at risk for more life sentences than a cat with nine lives could survive, the 37-year-old Indiana man yawned.He was equally nonplussed when Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Reeves announced the parolee's probable fate."It would be a total of 12 life sentences consecutive to each other," Reeves said.In just five months, Schaffner robbed 13 banks in six states, including Tennessee. These, however, were no run-of-the-mill heists. Court records show Schaffner, fresh out of prison for two Illinois robberies, seized control of the banks, wielding a gun, issuing orders and threatening to kill tellers.

In heist after heist, he ordered frightened tellers to lie down on the floor as he made his getaway."He told the tellers to lie on the floor and count to 60 and, if they did not comply, that he would return and send them all to hell," Reeves wrote of a July 29 robbery in Hendersonville, N.C.Schaffner told tellers at a Fletcher, N.C., bank that "he had a police scanner and would return and kill them if they called police."In another robbery, Schaffner struck three teller windows at once, walking from window to window with his gun and ordering each teller to fill his bag with cash - sans any dye packs or silent alarms, Reeves wrote.Schaffner, who was nabbed in Missouri in September after a state trooper there recognized him from a media report, is on the receiving end of two powerful weapons in the federal justice system - armed career criminal status and "the hammer."
"The hammer" is a moniker prosecutors have given the harsh consecutive sentencing federal law requires for criminals who use guns to carry out their misdeeds.
In Schaffner's case, the math works this way: As an armed career criminal, he faces life for each robbery and each related count of using a gun in a crime of violence. The hammer means each of those gun crimes will be stacked on top of each other and the life sentence for the bank robberies.Schaffner last month pleaded guilty to robbing banks in Jefferson County and Hamblen County. On Wednesday, he agreed via Assistant Federal Defender Tim Moore to have his out-of-state cases settled here in Greeneville.