Benjamin Schreiber, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 1997 and sentenced to life in prison without parole, fell seriously ill in 2015 and had to be resuscitated in hospital five times.

In a petition to the appeals court in his US state of Iowa, Mr Schreiber said he had briefly died and therefore “fulfilled” his life sentence, CNN reports.

However, Judge Amanda Potterfield ruled: “Schreiber is either alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is dead, in which case this appeal is moot.”