Bring out yer dead! Maryland has no law requiring proper corpse disposal

We have quite a few dumb laws on the books in the state of Maryland – and I’m not just talking about the ‘no sending a text while driving, but reading one is okay’ legislation.

We can’t take a lion to the movies in Baltimore City; can’t throw a bail of hay from a second story window; and absolutely must not eat while swimming in the ocean.
But it’s a law we don’t have that is calling attention to the state’s 2010 General Assembly session: Maryland currently lacks a state law that prohibits improper burial or disposal of a body.

When state senators and delegates convened on January 13, Delegate Theodore Sophocleus  (D-Anne Arundel County) proposed a bill that would require residents to send human remains to cemeteries, family burial plots, crematories or funeral establishments.

If House Bill 12 does indeed become law, citizens of the not-so-Free State will no longer be able to leave grandma on the sofa they place on the curb.

Gone will be the days of putting grandpa in the backyard lot next to Fluffy and Tweety.

Nevermore can we un-strap Aunt Edna from the roof of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster and prop her in a lawn chair in the yard of a long-lost cousin.

Over the past decade the state has seen at least three high-profile cases involving strangely stored human remains.

In 1999, a father buried his daughter in the family’s backyard following the child’s accidental death. The lack of a burial law left prosecutors unable to charge the man with anything more than littering.

In 2004, Ocean City police discovered a recently stillborn fetus wrapped in a towel under a woman’s bathroom sink, and later, found three more fetuses buried in various locations around her residence. Not only was she cleared of first-, second- and third-degree murder charges, but also escaped prosecution for the handling of the remains.

Last year, police responded to a call at a Maryland apartment complex and found the body of an 83-year-old grandmother in a freezer. The woman had been ailing and bedridden, and had died several weeks before police made the discovery.

The Maryland General Assembly session closes in April, and in most cases, laws take effect on either July 1 or the first of October.
At best, you’re looking at a scant nine months to ‘bring out yer dead.’



VIA: Examiner.com

Hat Tip; SR