Hmm. My wholly personal, unqualified non medical and nonlegal opinion says yes, A life sentence ends if you briefly die.
Nothing in the original sentence defines how long you must be dead.
Right. Maybe the court should just agree with him that his life sentence is over, and then order the court officers to take his carcass into custody so he can be cremated. :-P
only if a life sentence means till your dead instead of 30 years.
Nothing in the original sentence defines how long you must be dead.
The film I just started watching again, "People Will Talk"(1951) has a very interesting twist when the venerated Doctor Praetorius is accused of harboring a fugitive from justice (his dear friend, Shunderson) among other things by a jealous rival colleague. Eventually at the board hearing Praetorius wouldn't respond to the accusation but his friend came forward to tell his story.
Shunderson explains that he served 15 years in prison for the alleged death of a man who had tried to murder him, then somehow survived being hanged after actually murdering the man, who had gone into hiding during the first trial. When he woke up, he was lying on a table in front of Praetorius, who was at that time a medical student examining what he believed was a cadaver. Praetorius kept Shunderson's survival a secret, and Shunderson became Praetorius' devoted friend.Shunderson explained that when he chanced to see the man alive, who he was supposed to have murdered, he felt that he had already done his time in prison so it would be justice served if he actually killed the man, but the judge at the second trial didn't see it that way, and gave him the death penalty. God intervened when he came alive again, just as he was about to be autopsied by Dr. Praetorius when he was still a medical student. Dr. Praetorius said to the Board please excuse Shunderson if he seems a little slow witted due to his brain being deprived of oxygen for so long.
It could be argued that the judges made law in this case....