Iowan convicted of murder claims his life sentence was served when he died, was revived in medical emergency. The court disagrees.

Anna Spoerre | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Tour the new Iowa State Penitentiary with Warden Nick Ludwick The Iowa State Penitentiary will move into it's new home in 2014. Both old and new prisons are located in Fort Madison, Iowa.

A man convicted of murder was rushed from the Iowa State Penitentiary to the hospital in 2015, where his heart was restarted five times.

Now he claims his life sentence was fulfilled in his short-lived death, and that he has over-stayed 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.

Schreiber had signed a "do not resuscitate" agreement years earlier. But 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.

Schreiber filed for post-conviction relief in April 2018, claiming that because he momentarily died at the hospital, he fulfilled his life sentence and therefore should be freed immediately.

He was sentenced to life without parole, “but not to life plus one day," Schreiber argued in court records.

The district court denied Schreiber's request, writing that it found his claim "unpersuasive and without merit."

The Iowa Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed the district court's decision, agreeing that Schreiber's sentence isn't up until a medical examiner declares he is deceased.

"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 in the court of appeals opinion.

The district court did not address Schreiber's additional claim that his due process rights were violated when the doctors failed to follow his "do not resuscitate" request, court records show. Because of this, the court of appeals in its ruling said it could not address it either, because the lower court had not made any judgment on it.

Schreiber's attorney could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

Anna Spoerre covers crime and courts for the Des Moines Register. She can be contacted at aspoerre@dmreg.com, 515-284-8387 or on Twitter at @annaspoerre.

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