A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#2I'm not fully convinced the courts got this one completely right.
This is a very interesting legal argument and lays emphasis on the need for legislators to express their intentions in writing more fully as opposed to writing laws with such loose and widely applicable terms such as "Life" without giving the term or their intent in using it more context.
If, as the Judge argues, that "he did not legally die as his presence in this courtroom indicates":
1. He's indicating the existence of a written law stating that a person may only die once.
2.Additionally, there are actually legal provisions that delegate to the medically accepted definition of "Death" instead of deciding it themselves.
3. The Judge indicates that ruling in the plaintiffs favor would cause chaos for situations where medically induced resurrections would confuse laws from insurance to banking. That is not the plaintiffs burden to bear. That does not sound like a valid reason to rule on the interpretation of a law.
Finally, and i believe the most important part here: The US Constitution lays liberty and freedom at the heart of individual rights conferred upon people from God or a superior force. All laws enforced by the Government must be explicitly legislated within these bounds since it prevents the default case moving from "Individual God given rights, unless expressly regulated within constitutional boundaries" to "Rights conferred by the Government discretion" -> The second case is explicitly prohibited by the Constitution.
The burden of legislation (And clearly elucidating intent) is upon the Legislative body. By leaving ambiguous the part within the letter of the law that regulates individual liberties for individuals found guilty of a crime, the Legislative has "given up" their jurisdiction in the edge case scenario which is in front of the court since it is "undefined" - This would have been a great case for the courts to weigh in and restrict legislative over reach and force more clearly written laws.
For those who think this is picking on too many nits - it sets precedent. A better example for argument might be the tax code and the popular saying that there is no living person capable of declaring that they are fully operating within the letter of the tax code due to the many levels of discretionary interpretation it allows.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#3If he's in New York or California, just let him go.
They have more criminals on the streets than in jail.
Being in jail means you're so stupid you got caught, that's all.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#4Perhaps the easiest patch would be to make all life sentences “life plus 500 years”. Methuselah can work around it this way; it should cover everyone else...
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#5It’s the DNR that makes this one tricky. His lawyer should have made the argument that keeping him alive against his will instead of letting him die constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#6It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.
- Miracle Max
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#7I'm not fully convinced the courts got this one completely right. This is a very interesting legal argument and lays emphasis on the need for legislators to express their intentions in writing more fully as opposed to writing laws with such loose and widely applicable terms such as "Life" without giving the term or their intent in using it more context. If, as the Judge argues, that "he did not legally die as his pre…
It absolutely feels like a judge deciding “here’s the decision I want because it fits my personal understanding of conmon sense in this situation” — which is frightening since, based on my mom’s experience working in a variety of state & county judges’ offices, there’s not much reason to trust the common sense of judges at all, even when they are basically benevolent people (a lot of them aren’t).
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#8I'm not fully convinced the courts got this one completely right. This is a very interesting legal argument and lays emphasis on the need for legislators to express their intentions in writing more fully as opposed to writing laws with such loose and widely applicable terms such as "Life" without giving the term or their intent in using it more context. If, as the Judge argues, that "he did not legally die as his pre…
Legal and medical definitions of death I’ve seen include the terms “permanent” and/or “irreversible”.
The prisoner being alive would imply that he never actually died, at least not medically or legally.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#9I'm not fully convinced the courts got this one completely right. This is a very interesting legal argument and lays emphasis on the need for legislators to express their intentions in writing more fully as opposed to writing laws with such loose and widely applicable terms such as "Life" without giving the term or their intent in using it more context. If, as the Judge argues, that "he did not legally die as his pre…
Point 2 is where this man's argument falls apart. The medically accepted definition of death is the permanent, irreversible cessation of 1) the circulatory system, 2) the respiratory system, and 3) cerebral function.
Just having your heart stop is not "death" and hasn't been for a very long time. That definition only hangs around these days colloquially for people to enhance the drama of their medical stories.
Oh, and off topic, but the US Constitution does not actually mention anything about God given rights. That's the Declaration of Independence. In fact, the Constitution does not really address the rights of the people at all so much as the limitations of the government. The bill of rights does mention some of the rights of the people, but only in directing the government to specifically not encroach upon them, and the 10th amendment was added to make it clear that the bill of rights does not in any way abridge any unmentioned natural rights.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#10It seems to me that defining clinical death as the loss of heart beat and breathing is outdated and it should instead be defined as the cessation of higher brain activity.[1]
Alternately, it seems to me like referring to that as death is playing semantics. It seems to me that the defining feature of death is that you cannot come back from it[2].
I'd be interested to hear other perspectives or if I might be overlooking something.
[1] I'm guessing there might still be a place for the current definition of clinical death in situations where its not viable to monitor brain activity such as triaging disaster victims.
[2] As a Christian I would see an exception for a case where someone dies and and God violates the laws of nature to bring them back. However, I realize that Atheists don't believe that's possible and even from a Christian perspective it's exceedingly rare (I can think of 4 times where it potentially happens in the entire Bible) so I don't think that really impacts practical discussions of death.