The Iowa Court of Appeals has dismissed the case of a prisoner convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for releasing him because he once died.
Benjamin Schreiber, 66, was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of beating someone to death in 1997, but filed a lawsuit last year demanding his release as having served his sentence when his heart stopped in 2015 for five minutes while in hospital. Surgery.
Schreiber argued that upon his death he would have served his sentence (life imprisonment), and the authorities would not be entitled to imprison him in his new life.
However, the court rejected the case on the grounds that as long as he filed the case he is still alive, and therefore must remain in prison and the sentence does not end unless he dies.