BATON ROUGE- A Denham Springs man sentenced to life in prison in the alleged heroin overdose death of his girlfriend in 2013 is asking a state judge to rethink the punishment.
    
Jarret McCasland's attorney, Rodney Messina, contends in a motion for reconsideration of sentence that the life term without parole is cruel and unusual punishment. He also argues that 19-year-old Flavia Cardenas died of a "self-induced drug overdose" and that the case was a "misuse of prosecutorial discretion."
    
Messina wrote that a negligent homicide charge would have been more appropriate. Instead of life in prison, McCasland would have faced a five-year sentence and $5,000 fine if he had been convicted of negligence instead of second-degree murder.
    
Messina argues it was Cardenas, who bought the heroin that she later injected.