As with alot of engineering items its sometimes not a sure thing that an item will work, ive read that with the jumper cables there are three possibilitys of its outcome, Working, Failing or Exploding. Ive never heard of it failing 4 times but it does fail.
With the release issue, from what i know of being ressurected myself (not with cables though) if you release your spirit and start running to your corpse and then a spell is used on you to res, you should get a message on the lines of 'Person wishes to ressurect you' and you click accept.
However i think if you leave the 6 mins to res box on im not sure the res by other person box will appear, so i think the person will have to be in ghost form for res spells to work.