Senate Judiciary Committee reviews amendment to ‘abuse of a dead body’ bill, seeks clarity on fetal remains

The Senate Judiciary Committee discussed an amendment to legislation that would create a new Title 13 offense for abuse of a dead body and examined whether the bill’s language could be interpreted to apply to fetal remains, Office of Legislative Council attorney Michelle Childs told the committee.

Childs told the committee that the draft creates a new offense in Title 13 with subsection (a) prohibiting anyone from knowingly, “without legal authorization…intentionally burn, mutilate, disfigure, dismember, or destroy the dead body of a person.” She said subsection (b) raises the penalty when the act is done to conceal a crime, and that subsection (d) sets penalties: a five-year felony for violations of subsection (a) and a 15-year felony for violations of subsections (b) and (c).

The central issue, Childs said, is how the new language interacts with existing law in Title 18 and chapter 107, which include a separate subchapter on fetal deaths and require permits for disposition of fetal remains. “There’s a distinction in the chapter between a fetal death and the fetal remains and the body of a dead person,” Childs said, and she read the statutory definition of fetal death that appears in the existing disposal statute.

Childs said the current organization of chapter 107 and the cross-references in the fetal-death subchapter mean that unauthorized disposition of fetal remains can already be prosecuted under the existing statute referenced in the transcript as section 52 11. The amendment before the committee uses the phrase “dead body of a person,” Childs said, and that wording was chosen to align with existing statutory terminology; nonetheless, she recommended committee clarification to ensure fetal remains are not unintentionally covered by the new Title 13 offense.

Committee members raised concerns and questions about whether the bill as drafted would allow prosecution of someone who miscarries; one speaker said that under current law such a person could be subject to the existing felony and expressed a preference for making any unauthorized disposition of fetal remains a civil rather than a criminal matter. Other members said more work was needed to reconcile chapter 107’s structure with the proposed Title 13 offense.

No formal committee vote was recorded in the transcript. Committee members asked staff to continue refining language and to return with amendments that make the bill’s scope explicit and that address concerns about potential criminalization of people who experience pregnancy loss.

Next steps: staff and the Office of Legislative Council will prepare clarified language and proposals before the committee takes further action.