Rep. Steele is in the news for suggesting legislation in the wake of the Casey Anthony trial.
Republican Sen. Brent Steele of Bedford said current law requires people who discover a dead body to report it within three hours or face a misdemeanor charge that can land them a year in jail and a fine up to $5,000.
Steele wants lawmakers in the 2012 session to determine whether felony charges are appropriate.
When your only tool is a hammer, the whole world looks like nails. That’s why I think legislators sometimes seem to think legislation is the appropriate response to isolated incidents that may grab headlines but aren’t necessarily a problem affecting the general population in any significant way. Or, as a buddy of mine put it, “today’s headline is tomorrow’s legislation.”
I don’t understand how Steele ties that incident with discovery of a dead body. If a person murders someone they would be subject to current felony charges which are enough. How can a murderer be prosecuted under a law that involves the act of discovery? A murderer does not discover a body.
Indiana law specifies “discovers or has custody of the body”. And with all of the different ways listed under that statute of how the person dies there is not one listed that involves a murderer reporting the death. Could it be that more intelligent individuals than Steele realized that the law already covers the crime of murder and understood that most murderers would not report the incident?
Going over the “Failure to report a dead body” statute it appears that the language could be condensed more.
For the most part people are going to report a dead body for the simple fact that it is the right thing to do. Those that don’t most likely have something to hide that is connected with the incident. So in addition to not reporting the body if proved they will more than likely be prosecuted for a more serious crime not involving a dead body.
I suppose as an attorney, Brent Steele represents the best and the brightest of his profession. :sarcasm: More than likely he is allowing his religion to connect the wrong dots and dictate his response when religious beliefs don’t provide all the answers.
I am more interested in how the standard of 3 hours was determined the appropriate amount of time in the original legislation. Was this a big problem before? Why not immediately? What if you see the body but are late for a showing of a Lord of the Rings Trilogy? Can you catch the show first, then claim exigent circumstances?
Or perhaps the proliferation of crime procedural t.v. shows has them worried that all the DNA magically present at each murder is going to disappear before a CSI with lab skills that would rival Crick and Watson can get to it.
I am mostly an advocate of vigorous and open debate, but some ideas are deserving of public ridicule to prevent future proffer of other ideas by the offending party. This is one of those ideas.
That’s pretty funny coming from you. The liberal refrain is, “show me a problem, and I’ll give you a law”.
To be fair, this is hardly just an issue of legislation. Here at work, whenever we have an OSHA recordable injury, we have a “root cause analysis” that always ends up changing something or other. The answer that, “the dude was stupid and shouldn’t have done that” is never acceptable.
What if there’s a serious doubt as to whether there is any life/action in the discovery? Some of us have been watching some 535 possible situations in D.C. for much more than three hours and may have to be forced to make a firm decision lest we be prosecuted.
As I blogged this morning, “There oughtn’t be a law.”
Same maxim, different reason in this case.
I agree with you that this proposal is just beyond ridiculous.
Being a fiction writer and not a lawyer or a politician, this sort of thing fires up my already overactive imagination. I can come up with all sorts of scenarios where I might not be able to report a dead body within 3 hours that have nothing to do with wanting to catch a matinee.
What if I’m hiking in the national forest and I can’t get to a ranger station within 3 hours? What if I’m so startled when I see the dead body that I twist my ankle and can’t walk to get help? What if the killer is still around the body and I need to hide for 3+ hours? What if I’m busy running from the killer to save myself from the same fate? What if there’s another victim still alive and I need to give first aid to save their life instead of reporting the body? What if I’m so traumatized by seeing a dead body that I lose my mind for three hours and am only capable of running around in circles yelling, “Why me?” What if…..yeah, I’ll stop now.
Basically, this guy is just trying to harness the public’s overblown outrage over a sordid criminal case to increase his own popularity/career. There’s always someone.
How many more cheesy politicians must stand on graves of children
just to shout look at me and please donate to my campaign. Its just disgusting. I Think defunding planned parenthood will only cause more of these cases.
Lets draft a law Doug that makes “passing of ridiculous laws” a felony offense.
To measure a laws “ridiculousness” we will post the proposed law onto the Internet and allow the public to vote it up or down for, oh, I don’t know, three hours. If the no’s win, then mandatory jail time.
Seriously though, the sheer number of laws is getting pretty silly isn’t it? At some point I think legislators are just bored and looking for s**t to do that keeps them from solving the real problems. I mean, if they solve all the real problems, then why would we need them?
This happens with my kids. When asked to clean their room, the boys don’t choose the “hard” jobs like putting away laundry that should have already been put away. Instead they “put away” the Legos, which apparently takes all day to do!
IC 35-44-1-8: A legislator who knowingly or intentionally introduces, sponsors, votes for, or advocates for silly or clearly unconstitutional legislation commits “passing of ridiculous laws,” a Class D felony.