Protect the Dead; Screw the Living (Definitely Not the Dead)

Problem: Fearing criminal charges, people sometimes move the bodies of friends or acquaintances who die of drug overdoses, complicating official investigations. Solution: Make it a crime to move the bodies.

An Illinois bill sponsored by state Rep. Dan Beiser (D-Alton) would make "unauthorized removal of a corpse" a Class 4 felony, punishable by up to three years in prison. "In recent months," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, "Metro East prosecutors have filed charges of drug-induced homicide against several people who allegedly supplied drugs to people who died of overdoses. Police regard the sites as crime scenes." If police were not so eager to file charges in such cases, some of these people might still be alive, because bystanders would be less afraid to call for help or bring overdose victims to the hospital. Then there would not only be less incentive to move corpses without authorization; there would also be fewer corpses. 

While coming up with exactly the wrong solution to the overdose problem, Beiser noticed that Illinois had never bothered to criminalize sex with a corpse. His bill would correct that oversight, making it a Class 2 felony, punishable by up to seven years in prison, to do the deed with the dead. Madison County, Illinois, State's Attorney Tom Gibbons "said a law prohibiting sex with a corpse is needed out of respect for the dead." How many unprosecutable cases of necrophilia have Illinois police come across in the state's entire history? At least one. Gibbons "said he has been told there was one such case in the county many years ago that could not be prosecuted for lack of such a law."

In 2010 Brian Doherty noted the movement to protect Good Samaritans from criminal liabiity in drug overdose cases.

[Thanks to Richard Cowan for the tip.]