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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2344 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 29, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I post cases that are interesting and cases that are funny. This case is interesting for the following reasons.

(1) It is highly likely that a person will deal with a funeral home at least once in his life. It's worth knowing how a funeral home—even one led by the president of the <del>state</del><ins>county</ins> funeral directors' association—can be derelict in its duty.

(2) The legal issue of whether a person can be guilty of abuse of a corpse by simply leaving it alone (rather than a more typical situation of fucking a corpse or dumping a corpse out of the back of a van) is unintuitive. I would not have expected it to come out this way after reading the statute.

Over the past week I saw only three cases worth posting (two interesting and one funny), and this is the best one.

(2) The legal issue of whether a person can be guilty of abuse of a corpse by simply leaving it alone (rather than a more typical situation of fucking a corpse or dumping a corpse out of the back of a van) is unintuitive. I would not have expected it to come out this way after reading the statute.

Without knowing anything about the relevant law, it makes sense to me that you can abuse a corpse by leaving it alone in the same way you can abuse a child by leaving it alone.

Partly this is because a corpse is treated sort of like a living thing from a spiritual point of view. We treat them as having certain feelings, or at the very least as having the relatives and dead person's feelings attached to them - it is tragic if they are mutilated or forgotten, we want to lay them to rest in a nice place, etc. Like books or an abandoned teddy bear, a corpse is not just a corpse.

Partly this is because a corpse is, in a much more awful sense, a living thing. An ecosystem. Which is going to go very badly if you don't care for it appropriately.

Without knowing anything about the relevant law

The text of the law is what makes the difference. The text of Pennsylvania's abuse-of-corpse law criminalizes only "treatment" of a corpse, which a layman would interpret as applying only to acts, not to omissions of acts.

Except as authorized by law, a person who treats a corpse in a way that he knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities commits a misdemeanor of the second degree.

This stands in stark contrast to the definition of child abuse, which specifically criminalizes omissions of acts.

Child abuse.—The term "child abuse" shall mean intentionally, knowingly or recklessly doing any of the following:

(1) Causing bodily injury to a child through any recent act or failure to act.

(7) Causing serious physical neglect of a child.

"Serious physical neglect." Any of the following when committed by a perpetrator that endangers a child's life or health, threatens a child's well-being, causes bodily injury or impairs a child's health, development or functioning:

(1) A repeated, prolonged or egregious failure to supervise a child in a manner that is appropriate considering the child's developmental age and abilities.

(2) The failure to provide a child with adequate essentials of life, including food, shelter or medical care.

Thank you for the detailed breakdown. I see that the letter of the law regarding child abuse is much more detailed - as it should be, given the greater importance of children and the sad ratio of corpse abuse : child abuse.

In the spirit of contrarianism, I will point out that if, say, my friend moved abroad and didn't speak to his elderly mother for years, I would consider him to have 'treated her badly' in standard parlance despite and precisely because of the lack of any positive acts. 'Treatment' may be a term of art in law and have a slightly different meaning there though.

(2) The legal issue of whether a person can be guilty of abuse of a corpse by simply leaving it alone (rather than a more typical situation of fucking a corpse or dumping a corpse out of the back of a van) is unintuitive. I would not have expected it to come out this way after reading the statute.

In my state, people charged with murder who then abandon/hide the body somewhere (or just leave it at the remote site of the murder) are often charged with abuse of a corpse as well. It's a bit absurd and reminds of me the "murder, arson, and... jaywalking!" joke. Someone charged with first or second degree murder is probably not too worried about the abuse of a corpse charge (which is a felony, but the lowest level).

I was specifically thinking of this New Jersey case, which actually doesn't fit your pattern.

  • A man lets his friend do drugs in the passenger seat of his work van while he delivers mattresses.

  • The friend overdoses on fentanyl-laced heroin and dies. Rather than calling 911, the man finishes his workday with the corpse in the passenger seat, and then dumps the corpse on the side of "a dark, rural road", where it is found a few hours later.

  • The man is convicted of desecration of human remains and is sentenced to eight years in prison. The appeals panel affirms.

FWIW, I appreciate the broad variety of cases you post. I don't think something needs to count as "fun" in a traditional family friendly sense to qualify for the Friday Fun thread.

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