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Prisoner resuscitated claims he has fulfilled life sentence, motions to be released

Posted at 5:38 PM, Nov 08, 2019
and last updated 2019-11-08 17:37:59-05

A man convicted of murder in 1997 is claiming that he has fulfilled a life sentence after he reportedly was resuscitated in 2015 after going into septic shock, the Des Moines Register reported .

According to prison records, Benjamin Schreiber, 66, is currently incarcerated at the Iowa State Penitentiary for first degree murder.

According to the Register, Schreiber had his heart restarted five times in 2015despite signing a do not resuscitate agreement.

After Schreiber recovered, in 2018, he claimed that he died temporarily at the hospital, and has fulfilled his life sentence. The Register said that Schreiber filed in court that he had a life sentence "but not to life plus one day."

A judge denied the motion, and an appeals court on Wednesday agreed that Schreiber's argument was not persuasive.

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