Will an imessage show as 'delivered' if the recipients battery is dead??

The other reply led me to believe that someone was being dishonest with me, so I called Apple to make sure. They tested it for me in their "lab" and it turns out that a iMessage sent to a dead iPhone IS labelled as "delivered". I had to apoligize to my friend for thinking that they were lying.

It should not, no. It should revert to sending it as SMS if it's unable to deliver. Keep in mind that if the recipient has more than one iDevice activated with the same ID, it may be delivered to one and not the other. In that case, it will show as delivered. (For example, I have an iPhone and an iPad. If the iPhone is off and the iPad is on and connected to a network the message would be delivered to my iPad and show a status of delivered to you, even if the iPad is at home and I'm not.)