If somebody tells you they’re dead, are you expected to take their word for it?
In 2019 convicted murderer Benjamin Schreiber of Wapello County argued because his heart had briefly stopped during a kidney stone operation while incarcerated both he and his life sentence had expired and he was entitled to be set free.
Schreiber was convicted in 1996 of the premeditated murder of John Dale Terry whom he beat to death with an ax handle next to an abandoned trailer in Agency, Iowa, population 620—um – 619. Schreiber’s claim that he had died sounded almost comical, but he insisted he was dead serious. Judge Amanda Potterfield, however, thought he was dead wrong and that his legal argument was dead in the water. But Schreiber was dead set on proving his point, claiming he died on the operating table and his Fort Dodge doctors revived him with epinephrine five times (against the terms of his living will). But following Schreiber’s challenge to the judge’s ruling, the Iowa Court of Appeals declined to defibrillate his case.
Potterfield argued Schreiber couldn’t have it both ways—on one hand, being classified as legally deceased while, on the other hand, allowed to live his life as a free man.
In the world of medicine, dead is dead. The condition is, by definition, irreversible. In the world of religion, there may be some precedent to the contrary.
In the world of quantum physics, things are even more uncertain. In 1935, Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrodinger illustrated the difficulty describing the nature of reality with a paradoxical thought experiment now known as “Schrodinger’s Cat”. It goes like this: If you place a cat in a sealed box along with something that could kill it (yes, this part seems unnecessarily gruesome) like radioactive particles, you wouldn’t know after a while if the cat was alive or dead unless you opened the box. In physics, this condition is called “indeterminacy”, meaning, in this case that there is an equal probability that the cat is alive and that it is dead and, scientifically speaking, until its condition is verified, the cat must be considered both alive and dead. At the same time.
Which brings us to Mr. Schreiber, Iowa’s version of Schrodinger’s Cat. Schreiber’s heart had stopped, generally an indication of one’s demise. Still, he was able to vigorously advocate for his rights, an ability generally limited to the living. The judge had to make a judgment call. She might have ruled in favor of the plaintiff, agreeing Schreiber was in fact dead. And had him quickly buried. Or she could have ruled he was both alive and dead and let him continue to serve his life sentence and just stop feeding him because—why feed a dead guy? But Potterfield ruled that Schreiber’s pretensions to death were greatly exaggerated thereby avoiding setting any awkward precedents, encouraging other death row inmates dying to get out of jail.
Last week, the Iowa Department of Corrections announced that Benjamin Schreiber, age 70, had died for better or worse, for good, thereby fulfilling the conditions of his life sentence. But what will they write on his tombstone? Something like: “Now do you believe me?”
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