BATON ROUGE - A judge ordered Thursday that a Denham Springs man found guilty in the 2013 heroin overdose death of his girlfriend will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Judge Don Johnson kept in line the decison made by a jury in 2013 who convicted 26-year-old Jarret McCasland for the death of his 19-year-old girlfriend Flavia Cardenas.

McCasland stood up in court and maintained his innocence, turned around and told his family that he would see them again one day, outside of prison.

Under a rarely used provision of Louisiana's second-degree murder statute, prosecutors had to prove that the heroin McCasland is accused of giving Cardenas was the direct cause of her death.

McCasland's attorneys argued the law under which he was prosecuted was never intended to apply to cases such as his, and that the life sentence without parole amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.