A US Prisoner Briefly Died, Later Argued He's Served His Life Sentence

A convicted murderer serving a life sentence in an Iowa prison argued in 2018 that his conviction had expired after his heart briefly stopped, claiming he was technically 'dead.' Benjamin Schreiber, convicted of first-degree murder in the mid-1990s for clubbing a man to death with a pickaxe handle, argued that he had completed his life sentence when he momentarily died in the hospital but was subsequently resurrected.

Schreiber developed kidney stones and septic poisoning according to CNN. He lost consciousness and was transferred from the Iowa State Penitentiary to a nearby hospital. After his heart stopped briefly, the man was resurrected five times. Doctors used epinephrine and adrenaline to revive him. Once he stabilized, they treated his sepsis and he was sent back to jail.

After the incident, the prisoner asked the three-judge panel to let him get on with his life. 

However, the judges rejected his argument this week, ruling that a lower court had been right to dismiss his petition, the New York Times reported. 

"Schreiber is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is dead, in which case this appeal is moot," Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote for the court.

According to The Des Moines Register, Schreiber was sentenced to life without parole after being convicted of murder for killing a man with the handle of an axe in 1996.

In 2018, he argued that he was resuscitated against his will, and that because he had, his "sentence has expired."

"We do not find his argument persuasive," Judge Potterfield wrote, adding that the judges found it unlikely the Legislature would have wanted "to set criminal defendants free whenever medical procedures during their incarceration lead to their resuscitation by medical professionals."