§ 23-4-7 - Reporting of certain deaths required – Violations – Penalties.
SECTION 23-4-7
§ 23-4-7 Reporting of certain deathsrequired – Violations – Penalties. – (a) Where any person shall die in any manner to suggest the possibility of acriminal act or as the result of violence or apparent suicide, or from acriminal abortion or in any suspicious or unusual manner, it shall be the dutyof any person having knowledge of those deaths to immediately notify the policeof the city or town where the body of the deceased person lies or to notify theoffice of state medical examiners. The same procedure shall be followed upondiscovery of anatomical material suspected of being or determined to be a partof a human body.
(2) Any person who willfully neglects or refuses to reportthat death or who without an order from an agent of the office of medicalexaminers willfully touches, removes, or disturbs the body of that dead person,or willfully touches, removes, or disturbs the clothing or any article upon ornear that body, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
(b) If any person buries or causes to be buried the dead bodyof a person supposed to have come to a violent death before giving notice asstated in subsection (a) and before inquiry is made into the manner andcircumstances of the death, that person shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
(c) When any person may appear to have met death whenunattended by a physician, or in any unnatural manner, or as the apparentresult of the negligence of another person, or as the consequence of anyphysical or toxic injury incurred while employed, or from the use of anyaddictive or unidentifiable chemical agent, or from accidental hypothermia, orfrom an infectious agent capable of spreading an epidemic within the state, itshall be the duty of any physician, law enforcement officer, funeral director,hospital official having knowledge of the death, or of any other person havingresponsibility for burial or cremation of the deceased person to notify theoffice of the state medical examiners. In the case of any prisoner committed bylaw to the custody of the department of corrections or in the department ofmental health, retardation, and hospitals who dies or in the case of a personwho dies while in the custody of the state police or local police departments,the person charged with the responsibility for that custody shall have the dutyto immediately notify the office of the state medical examiners. Any personcharged with the responsibility of notifying the office of state medicalexaminers of any of the deaths stated in the first sentence of this subsectionwho neglects to give that notice shall upon conviction be guilty of amisdemeanor.
(d) If an agent of the office of state medical examiners isof the opinion that a death was caused by the act of neglect of some personother than the deceased, he or she shall at once notify the attorney general,and the police of the city or town where the body was found or in which itlies. If any person shall be arrested and charged with causing any death by theact of neglect, the person so arrested shall be entitled to receive a copy ofthe record of the autopsy, upon written request delivered to the attorneygeneral.
(e) Where any person age sixty-five (65) years or older mayappear to have died from accidental hypothermia, the death shall be reported tothe department of elderly affairs by the state medical examiner or when anyperson, under the age of eighteen (18) shall die, the physician signing thedeath certificate shall report the death to the state medical examiner's officewithin twenty-four (24) hours of the death.
(f) Any person who violates any of the provisions ofsubsection (a) or (b) of this section and does so with the intention ofconcealing a crime shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, shall beimprisoned for a term of not more than five (5) years or fined ten thousanddollars ($10,000), or both.