A Prisoner Serving A Life Sentence Thinks He Should Be Released From Jail Because He Technically Died Before Being Resuscitated At A Hospital
USA TODAY- A man convicted of murder was rushed from the Iowa State Penitentiary to a hospital in 2015 where his heart was restarted five times. He claims his life sentence was fulfilled by his short-lived death, and he has overstayed his prison time by four years.
Benjamin Schreiber, found guilty of first-degree murder in 1997 and sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole, was hospitalized in March 2015 after large kidney stones caused him to develop septic poisoning, according to court records. By the time he arrived at the hospital, he was unconscious, records show.
Though Schreiber signed a "do not resuscitate" agreement years earlier, medical staff called his brother in Texas who told them, "If he is in pain, you may give him something to ease the pain, but otherwise you are to let him pass," according to court records. Doctors proceeded to save his life by administering resuscitation fluids through an IV. Then he underwent surgery to fix the damage done by the kidney stones.
Looks like we have ourselves a classic pickle in the US justice system as well as the reason you should give murderers 100 life sentences if they are convicted of killing someone. Because while I think Benjamin Schreiber should rot in jail for the rest of his living days if he did indeed murder another human, I have a hard time debating with the semantics of this all-time spinzone. You know why? Because Jon Snow (SPOILER) ditched his oath to serve in the Night's Watch until his dying day using the very same loophole and that fucking idiot was as honorable as they came, almost always to a fault to himself and whatever army he was commanding to certain doom before someone else saved the day. Granted, being killed by your own men because you are the worst political mind in the history of television is different than flat-lining due to an infection caused by a tiny ball of calcium near your dick. But the alive then dead then alive again thing is all pretty much the same in the eyes of the law.
Which is why you can't allow this loophole to be opened and let Benny boy out of jail, even if he had a DNR. Because once you open up a massive loophole that can break a life sentence, every living scumbag serving a life sentence will try to flop themselves into that sweet spot where they die for a second, get brought back to life, and then leave the hospital a free man while doctors have to debate if they should want to save that human's life. So to protect the conscience of doctors as well as innocent law-abiding citizens by releasing a bunch of evil back into the world than when the containment unit got shut down in Ghostbusters because of the dickless Walter Peck, I suggest we institute the rules of another 80s classic. If you are technically dead for a fraction of time, you are only mostly dead. And as Miracle Max states:
Mostly dead/slightly alive people are still subject to the laws of men. However, once you are dead to the point you are put in a box, buried 6 feet under, and know if your soul is going to a cloud or a raging inferno for the rest of eternity, you are completely dead. If you can somehow come back to life, whether its due to a sexy Red Witch that can pop smoke monsters from her coochie summoning the Lord of Light or just a well-placed miracle, you can walk home a free man provided you can get out of the casket and dig yourself out of the dirt. However, you are likely either a zombie or The Undertaker if that happens, in which case you are already exempt from the laws of man anyway. Your move, Mr. Schreiber.
For those of you that would like to further debate where life truly begins and ends, please tweet at @UncleChaps. He loves a good life discussion.
h/t James