Benjamin Schreiber says life sentence served after he briefly died and was resuscitated - The Washington Post

The most bizarre stories always come from North America and this is another example.

A guy was convicted to a life sentence and he died. The doctors were able to resuscitate the guy in the hospital and the guy claims his sentence was completed. Now he wants to get out but the courts don't agree.

This is how it went down:

"After the convicted murderer collapsed in his prison cell in 2015, doctors restarted his heart five times. (...) Because he died before he was resuscitated, he had technically fulfilled his life sentence, he claimed."

"Judges, however, aren't buying it. Dying for a brief amount of time doesn't amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card (...) the 66-year-old will remain in prison until a medical examiner determines that he is dead for good."

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

If this story was strange already, wait. It gets even weirder.

So, the guy was not interested in being brought back to life and he says that the doctors acted against his will. The hospital records confirm his story.

"In his appeal, Schreiber had also argued that doctors violated his rights by failing to follow his "do not resuscitate" order when they pulled him from the brink of death."

"According to court records obtained by the Des Moines Register, hospital staffers made the decision after conferring with Schreiber's brother, who only consented to giving him medicine to ease his pain. The panel declined to address that question because a lower court has yet to rule on it."

The judges are not happy with this appeal and they have concluded that he should remain in prison.

"Noting that they couldn't find any case law that would back Schreiber's position, the appeals court judges also ruled that he couldn't have it both ways - claiming to be dead as far as the criminal justice system was concerned while simultaneously going on with his life."

Just like we say in Europe: "Only in America, only in America."

I can't wait to see how this soap opera will end. I will not be surprised if Hollywood makes a movie out of this. 

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