"He told me there was no evidence of the rape but because he admitted he beat the female involved up the judge slapped him with the rape charges also."
That is impossible. If he had a trial, then the jury found him guilty of the rapes beyond a reasonable doubt based on evidence. If he did not have a trial, then he pled guilty to rapes. He cannot plead guilty to assault and then be "slapped" with rape charges.
His appeal would have been the time to ask for a reduction in his sentence, assuming there were good grounds for asking for the reduction. Good grounds would be a legal error in the calculation of his sentence. No judge could be persuaded that a man who committed those crimes does not deserve to be locked away for life.
If he appealed his convictions, he should have a copy of the court papers himself. You can walk down to the court house and look at the court file if you have the case number. It is public record. The court file will probably not include the reporter's transcript, which is the word for word transcription of everything that happened at the trial or plea proceedings, but it will probably be pretty informative. If he does not have that, you can ask the court how to order it. How much it will cost will depend on how long it is - a transcript of a 20 minute plea and sentencing will obviously be much cheaper than a transcript of a 15-day jury trial.
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The late Justice Mosk of the CA Supreme Court wrote in a dissenting opinion that a sentence longer than a man can serve is cruel and unusual, and that the maximum sentence should be life.
A word of caution: prisoners almost always lie to their girlfriends about the nature of their convictions. For example, I had a client who chopped two rival drug dealers up in little pieces while they were still alive, but he told his girlfriend he shot two child molesters he caught in the act. The only way you can know for sure is to read the court transcripts or at least look at the file.