I see a lot of people playing language lawyer with what it means "to die."
I think another fruitful thing to think about what "for life" means. It is not unreasonable to interpret "for life" as "while living", instead of "until dead."
Indeed, the sentence if "life in prison" is logically equivalent to "no life outside of prison." No one debates the fact that this man is alive now. If his sentence is to live only in prison, then there is no issue.
The interesting case is whether declining to honor his DNR counts as cruel and unusual punishment by extending his term in prison.
But remember that this is America, where super-natural sentencing is a norm. Prisons are filled with people serving double, triple or "life plus 100 years" sentences. Logic isn't running this show.
I honestly think there's nothing more disgusting than imprisoning someone.
I've actually made this argument in my social sciences class that the reason prison sentences are so long is that people generally thought/think the afterlife exists. It's easy to take away an individuals right to life when you think there's going to be another one in another life.
I would personally much rather have the death penalty than anything above 5 years in prison. I don't understand how we're collectively okay with just caging a human being... It's so terrifying and disgusting.
The act of imprisonment for over 5 years itself is a cruel and unusual punishment :(
I'm not trying to pull a "gotcha!" or oversimplify your position or anything else devious. I am honestly curious about your answer to this question, given your position above:
What do you think about cases where the accused is found not guilty after some long period of time (longer than your five years, or any other threshold we might negotiate)? There are certainly cases where accused have been released after such time spans. There are also cases of accused being pardoned or having their sentences commuted after this period of time. These people would be denied that chance if they were killed instead.
Oh I'm not for killing anyone. Heck I have a problem with a LOT of our system. I'm just saying if I knew I was guilty I would like to have the option to die.
I think in the short term we're kinda fucked. But in the long term I would like if we tried to make these crimes not happen. Find out why they're happening.
Can we help these criminals before they become criminals essentially?
And I wasn't saying we should get rid of prison, rather allow the person to choose death if they wish.
I'd also like to see if we can actually slowly introduce them back to society, slowly give more freedoms back or help them take jobs that gives their life meaning.
It's a hard problem and we definitely don't have the correct solution right now.
The person already suggested an alternative: execution.
That’s what human societies did for those crimes for thousands of years after all. The replacement of execution with prison is relatively modern, pre-industrial societies couldn’t afford to run prisons and punished using capital punishment, slavery, or exile instead.
(Of course we did switch for a reason, prison was thought to be more humane than the above)
Could you please not post flamebait to HN or take threads further into flamewar? We're hoping to avoid that here.
(Also, if you read them to the end, you'll find that the site guidelines you not to go on about downvotes in comments. Downvotes can be annoying but the posts about them are boring and do no good.)
The logic there is if the criminal appeals and gets a charge dropped due to a technicality or some other issue then they are still in jail. Not ideal but not without logic.
"Technicality" is a euphemism for "constitutional rights". You don't get out of prison because the cop spelled your name wrong as he booked you. You get out because, in the eyes of the system that sentenced you in the first place, someone steamrolled over rights enshrined at the heart of the American system. Those rights are meaningless if governments may violate them without repercussion. The sum of all the "technicalities" is the thing we call freedom.
I not sure where you're going with this. If someone committed 10 murders, but the turns out to have been wrongly accused for the 11th, should that be a get-out-of-jail for the other 10?
This so much. Not only are the length strange but it seems like if you don't have a good lawyer and you really didn't do anything you get convicted for attempted (fill in the blank) I've seen people get convicted of attempted assault what even is attempted assault.
Attempted assault is a bit weird, simply because the crime of assault is typically defined to include both attempts at and successes at causing bodily harm to another.
That said, the concept of punishing attempted crimes is well established. After all, if one of the goals of having a criminal legal system is to prevent crime, we should punish those who attempt to commit crimes.
If someone fires a loaded gun at you, and you're lucky enough for them to miss, they should still be punished for the attempt to inflict harm on you or potentially kill you.
We can certainly debate whether the legal system should take more of a "no harm, no foul" kind of approach, but I hope the explanation above helps to clarify why our current legal system penalizes attempted and successful crimes.
It’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.
first, as this is an American prison you will probably want to be using the money on your accounts to buy food that to eat instead of depending on the often inedible, non-nutritious stuff that is available from the prison kitchen.
second, it's quite a well known scandal regarding how systems are set up to rip off inmates for phone services https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2015/jul/31/inside-shad... so if you are a prisoner with money that is nice that you can actually call people when you want as long as you want.
third, depending on where you are at the commissary probably has other things you want, and if you have enough of those things you can trade that for other things inside that you might want.
(of course you do not legally access the money, it is on an account that you can use, you can also - although the process can be convoluted - release money to visitors and those visitors could give it to other people who are related or confederates of other people inside allowing you to buy other things that way [which is of course going to be against the rules])
I could go on, but I find the question somewhat weird - I'm guessing you must be from a country with no knowledge of American pop-culture or anything because this is quite a bit past even 10000 territory https://www.xkcd.com/1053/
On what grounds? He is serving a life sentence. He is in the custody of the correctional facility. They have every duty to keep him alive and healthy, up to the point of him expiring naturally.
Ridiculous logic games like this are a pretty good reason why excessive legalese is mocked in mainstream culture - because it is totally disconnected from reality and enthralled with their own existence.
The correctional facility's role is to incarcerate him, restrict his freedoms. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there's a line that needs to be drawn there, from my perspective as an emergency medical provider.
There's still some role of autonomy here. Even as a prisoner he is allowed to determine what he may read, may do (within restriction), when he goes to the bathroom. Saying "No, you have no right to determine what medical treatment you do or do not receive", to me, undermines a civilized society, even for the incarcerated.
"Sorry you were diagnosed with amazingly painful metastasizing bone cancer. If you should go into cardiac arrest, be advised, though, we will not let you pass - we are going to work to keep you alive. This may result in brain damage to you. But so be it. It may result in long, expensive and painful procedures for the rest of your life. But so be it".
Note that this is different to, say, hunger strikes and force feeding, but instead about medical conditions.
Should they keep him on life support for fifty plus years, in theory, just so he can "serve out his life sentence" to the satisfaction of the state, for example?
From a medical provider's perspective, and similarly, someone with custody over another, ignoring and actively violating their medical treatment wishes (in my state, the POLST form - Physician's Orders for Life Sustaining Treatments, which has replaced and expanded upon DNRs) is just as much assault and battery as anything else, and may also be considered negligent and malpractice.
It seems to me that the Ship of Theseus is relevant [1]. A temporary loss of heart beat/breathing in a body receptive to resuscitation - and which is resuscitated - shouldn't really be considered dying. We don't consider the continual loss and replacement of bodily tissue over the course of several decades to result in a new person, or that waking after sleeping is classified as a new birth.
And anyway, if the guy was declared dead, should he have expected a new birth certificate and to have his age reset to 0? Would he really suggest someone could be "born" into someone elses body? In that case, perhaps he should be "exorcised", or is he claiming he's now a zombie? Do zombies have legal rights? If not, what was he proposing was the relationship between his pre "dead" personality/identity and his new one?
I'm currently reading the book "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" by Neal Stephenson. Speaking in general terms to avoid too many spoilers, there's a scene where it's strongly implied one character is responsible for the death of another. Both end up having their brains scanned and uploaded to a simulated afterlife. (The other dying of natural causes soon after.) Not addressed (at least, not yet) in the book, but something I couldn't help wondering, is how or should this crime be punished? Perhaps the killer shouldn't have been allowed to be uploaded, but that had already occurred.
Perhaps 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...
It 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.
There are all kinds of interesting implications and questions here.
1. What is the meaning and intent of a "life sentence", or other punishment?
2. Does it apply to a singular life, or all lives a prisoner might have?
3. What (if any) legal definitions for "life" and "death" are there, in relevant jurisdictions. And how are they treated in sentencing laws?
4. Is clinical death the same as legal death?
5. Is there legal precedent for obligations lifted (or privileges revoked / denied) on the basis of temporary clinical death? E.g., lifetime obligations for debt, etc.?
6. With advances in medical technology, what are the implications of either induced death (e.g., the film "Flatliners") or extended / eternal life (Singularity, cryopreservation) on future legal matters -- not only sentencing but contracts and the like.
6a. If a convict were sentenced to death and were clinically but reversably killed, would that sentence be considered fulfilled?
6b. What of eternal or lifelong benefits or obligations -- government pensions, wills, property ownership, etc., in the case of immortal or resurrected individuals.
7. Is a resurrected individual the same or a different person? Clinically? Legally? (Ship of Theseus, as @nprateem notes.)
8. Is a person who dies naturally but is resurrected against medical directives (as in the Iowa case) considered discharged? If so, or if no, on what legal basis?
It's worth noting that the law is not a system that's consistent either externally (as with science or public opinion/sentiment), or internally. It is based somewhat on legislation, precedent, and gloss. But also on argument, persuasion, judicial temperment, and political and power relations. It kinda works, but is awfully creaky in parts.
if he was serving only one life sentence and had DNR order, then it's fair to say he served his sentence if they resuscitated him against his will
if he would be serving multiple life sentences than he would just fulfill first one, otherwise what's the purpose of multiple life sentences in US? we don't have this nonsense in Europe
This story reminds me of an old movie called Flatliners (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/) where medical students experimented with near death by intentionally inducing cardiac arrest. If you get a life sentence you could hire the Flatliners to come and kill you for a few minutes and then bring you back. hehehe
It 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.
re: your note 2, one might argue that secular laws have no particular business considering whether something was an act of god or not, and that a person who is alive at any given time is therefore, for legal purposes, considered to have never died in the first place.
tl;dr: the term "act of God" has been around for thousands of years. Translated several times. It wasn't until only a couple hundred years ago that the term "God" was ever introduced into the phrase. And even then, it was decreed by Judges of the time that there is no religious backing to the phrase.
Long detailed version for anyone who is interested in the etymology of the phrase.
"Act of God" is a traditional term used in contract law that has existed for millennia, dating back to Roman law. Romans originally used the term 'vim maiorem' in Latin which meant "Superior Force". Contracts using this term exist as far back as 509BC. 'Vim maiorem' became standard contract terms in most Roman contracts found from this period. It released a person from liability based on actions that were unpreventable or unforseeable.
As ancient Rome fell, Italy began to disperse and adopted the same term 'vim maiorem' into the Italian language. This well-understood concept and term enabled contracts to be made among dispersed Italian villages. The tradition of this latin phrase stayed alive in italy for another thousand years until the renaissance.
During the renaissance, the French were looking to rebuild a great society like the Romans and determined that law was a critical part of the culture. Contracts became commonplace again, and the French were inspired by the contracts written between these Italian cities. They found the 'vim maiorem' term helpful is absolving liability for unforeseeable circumstances. They translated the term to "force majeure". This literally translates into 'the greatest force'.
Again... no spiritual component.
The tradition later expanded into England in the 16th century. While the English didn't like the French, they did like the concept of "Force Majeure". But they didn't want to use a French term. So they originally adopted the term 'vis maior' in contractual law, which was an alternate latin term used along with 'vim maiorem' which translated closer to "major acts'.
Thomas Wilson is the English man who translated "vis maior" into the English term "Act of God". He felt that "the Italianated [words] counterfeited the great Kinges Englishe" [sic]. As a respected judge, he sought to find an appropriate English translation that gave respect to the King instead of giving credit to the French or Italians. As Thomas Wilson was a Christian who was heavily engaged in the Christianity revolution in medieval England at the time, he coined the term "Act of God" to replace "vis maior".
This is the first time that this traditional phrase carried any religious weight. But that relgious weight was quickly dispelled by future court rulings.
> "Judges continued [throughout the 17th century] to rule that in law, an act of God did not depend on divine influence, including violent storms at sea, unprecedented rainfall, extraordinary floods, earthquakes, and death. In 1609, a British court ruled that a fire caused by lightning was an act of God. In 1785 a court ruled that a fire NOT caused by lightning was NOT an act of God. In 1886, England's Lord Esher ruled, 'In the older, simpler days I have myself never had any doubt but that the phrase does not mean act of God in the ecclesiastical and biblical sense... but that in a mercantile sense'. By the 1800s, the courts routinely rejected claims that God was responsible for human negligence.[1]"
At this same time, contracts were being passed from England to the newly formed USA. Most of the founding fathers were lawyers by trade and "Act of God" quickly spread as a legal term in the US.
"Act of God" is defined as "any accident, due directly and exclusively to natural causes without human intervention, which could not be prevented."
Yeah, I feel like "clinically dead" is a technical term with a limited scope that got used casually because it sounds dramatic, and people started taking it seriously.
"Dead" is a word that's pretty well-defined for most of human history. If you're dead, you can't come back. If you do come back, barring supernatural intervention, you weren't dead. It's pretty simple.
It's my understanding that with the creation of resuscitation methods and life-support systems that clinical death was already redefined to include cessation of brain activity. If they were not put on life support for example they would meet the definition of death through cessation of respiratory system and heartbeat. Pretty sure this guy doesn't have a leg to stand on.
I prefer information theoretic death, in which the information content of the brain cannot be recovered with any medical intervention we have available, but that may run into the cloning problem...
This comment took a turn in your last paragraph in a way that genuinely fascinates me since it was otherwise very logical. So you would write laws around the idea of things that have never been shown to be physically possible, just because you believe them to be possible?
How far would you take this? Should we bring back laws against witchcraft? Should other religions get to define their own laws based on what they expect to be possible, or just Christianity?
And if such a law is tested in court, how should we prove that it was divine? Maybe this case of the prisoners heart starting again was really God intervening, why should it not trigger your proposed God clause?
An interesting point I heard on [2], Tim Keller if I remember right. Is isn't that God is "violating" the laws of nature, he's restoring things to the way they would have been without the fall in the garden.
I mean, he was "resurrected". But I guess what is the difference between a witch ressurecting you with a magical force, and a doctor resurrecting you with CPR.
I'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.
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.
I respectfully disagree. There are conflicting provisions under law, but the widely accepted standard is a declaration "by a qualified medical professional"[1]As another comment here helpfully points out, there are scenarios such a person going missing for a legally mandated number of years before being declared legally dead[2]
I don't think this is correct. People have been declared legally dead simply due to being missing for a long time, and there's nothing "permanent" or "irreversible" about being a missing person - sometimes they show up again.
There is a big difference between being dead and being declared dead. One is a fact about the universe, and the other is a fact about what somebody said about the universe. Seeing somebody who was dead and is now alive is cause to start a religion. Seeing somebody who was declared dead and is now alive is cause to doubt that initial declaration.
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).
I did not say anything like that. I said the judge is trying to effectively inject the judge’s notion of common sense in an extralegal way.
The impression of whether the judge’s common sense is valid or invalid has utterly nothing to do with this issue at all. The issue is that off the cuff common sense reasoning is not rigorous legal reasoning, it can have all kinds of unintended consequences.
Why on earth do you claim the judge is doing this? The law in Iowa defines death as irreversible. What reason do you have for saying the judge's common sense is what's at play rather than, you know, the law?
What if a prisoner suffers a brain trauma and it’s unknown if it’s irreversible or not? Or under some future law, the prisoner’s family can keep them on life support and their status as either having fully served the sentence or not has ramifications for life insurance payouts from a complex employment contract with a “morality” clause like some athletes have.
You could wheel the prisoner on a bed into the courtroom with machines beeping. What would this judge’s ruling say to do? You can “see” the “living” prisoner present, but it’s not medically or legally known at that moment if it’s reversible, and if it’s not, the declaration of “death” actually has urgent ramifications for other people.
It’s precisely because there can be such complicated corner cases that we absolutely should not accept a judge’s snappy line of rhetoric about seeing the prisoner present in the courtroom as legal basis.
This has direct implications because that one-off armchair wisdom of that one judge suddenly affects what the state definition of death means by “irreversible” even if that was not the common sense intention.
It has nothing at all to do with loopholes for this particular prisoner.
> You could wheel the prisoner on a bed into the courtroom with machines beeping. What would this judge’s ruling say to do? You can “see” the “living” prisoner present, but it’s not medically or legally known at that moment if it’s reversible, and if it’s not, the declaration of “death” actually has urgent ramifications for other people.
Which is why the same law also says that "In the event that artificial means of support preclude a determination that [spontaneous respiratory and circulatory] functions have ceased, a person will be considered dead if in the announced opinion of two physicians, based on ordinary standards of medical practice, that person has experienced an irreversible cessation of spontaneous brain functions."
I mean, seriously, just Google "Iowa death definition" and you can find all this. There is no loophole whereby the judge gets to just go with his gut.
> It’s precisely because there can be such complicated corner cases that we absolutely should not accept a judge’s snappy line of rhetoric about seeing the prisoner present in the courtroom as legal basis.
It's not the legal basis. It's, like you said, a snappy line of rhetoric. In the written decision/order the judge will refer to the statute and to the uncontested fact that the man's lack of respiratory and circulatory functioning was reversed.
> This has direct implications because that one-off armchair wisdom of that one judge suddenly affects what the state definition of death means by “irreversible” even if that was not the common sense intention.
No, it doesn't. A judge's snappy rhetoric doesn't make new law. You're tilting at windmills here.
but he completed his life sentence when they didn't let him die and resuscitated against his will, that's just cruel and waste of money, they should held person who resuscitated him liable for all expenses regarding him until death
There are large groups of people in the US, primarily living on the coasts, who view the people living in inland states with contempt and hatred. The same attitude is also expressed as “square states”. Any American who thinks that other Americans will find an appeal to Christianity legally convincing has a warped view of US politics. This particular attitude is like Californians who think that gay people aren’t safe in Texas, or that non-white people are at constant risk of physical violence in Alabama.
I’m not endorsing this viewpoint, it’s just the most obvious explanation for anything as stupid as what nabla9 wrote.
I think another fruitful thing to think about what "for life" means. It is not unreasonable to interpret "for life" as "while living", instead of "until dead."
Indeed, the sentence if "life in prison" is logically equivalent to "no life outside of prison." No one debates the fact that this man is alive now. If his sentence is to live only in prison, then there is no issue.
The interesting case is whether declining to honor his DNR counts as cruel and unusual punishment by extending his term in prison.