This got me thinking

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I saw this story in the news -

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... _cops.html

An Ohio man charged with necrophilia swears he had no idea the woman was dead when they were having sex, police said.
Authorities arrested Richard Sanden earlier this week after finding that the 55-year-old had sexual relations with the corpse of Rebecca Whitehead, the Washington Times-Herald reports.

Sanden called the cops to alert them of the 48-year-old's death, according to police documents, and had performed CPR on her until emergency personnel arrived.

The Geneva, Ohio, man said he had met Whitehead through a telephone dateline and had been seeing her for nearly four months, police said. That night, before engaging in sexual intercourse, Sanden said he and the woman had been drinking and smoking marijuana.

When asked by detectives if he'd known that the woman had died during their sexual encounter, Sanden insisted he was unaware. During a search of the apartment, however, police discovered a video camera that the man had allegedly tried to hide, according to the Washington Times-Herald.

Initially charged with possession of marijuana and abuse of a corpse, after watching the video, authorities added charges of necrophilia. His bond was also raised from just $4,500 to $500,000.

This tragic case got me thinking. Since we already have laws against murder, perhaps it is now time to scrap our outmoded laws against necrophilia, since necrophilia in itself does not involve harming any living person.

Any thoughts?

Yes, I think the family might be upset if people went around having sex with the corpses of their loved ones. Therefore, it might well hurt living people.

If it is the case that he didn't know then I think this case is rather silly.

As much as I have no problem with necrophilia...nah, no legalising it.

I mean not only are there the points already given of harming the persons family and messing with evidence, you also have the fact that depending on how dead the person is there is a potential for harm to the person having sex with a dead body, there may be lesser charges on weird kids going out gumping (urban myth, but you just know some sicko's will do horrible things like this to dead bodies eventually) and leaving the remains all over the cemetery, plus no consent....

...yeah, so you're dead, would you still want to know that someone could have sex with you when you're dead? It's a little different to giving consent to your partner when you're awake for them to have at you when you're asleep, when you're dead you can't very well wake-up and tell them to get the hell off you.

I'd say that problems with necrophilia really end up being more issues of property. It is generally assumed that a dead body is to be dealt with by family members so, taking that dead body as their property, necrophiliac actions are a humongous violation of this piece of property. (This isn't to say that necrophilia is wrong, but if we can understand it as being like a situation where the line would make sense, then the rule can be perceived as making sense)

It is well established in Canadian law that mistake does not excuse criminal behaviour if the mistaken belief would make out a different offence.

A similar fact pattern was tried in Canada on a charge of "offering an indignity to a dead human body." The accused averred that he could not form an intent to commit the offence because he did not know that she was dead. The court determined, however, that in the event he was unaware, he had then failed to secure her consent, thus committing rape (which had not been replaced with sexual assault at that time). This intent was sufficient to impute intent sufficient to establish mens rea for the offence of which he was accused.

See, R. v. Ladue [1965] 4 C.C.C. 265 (Y.T.C.A.)

I have no problem with necrophilia, so long as it doesn't upset any of the family, which it always does. The sentencing shouldn't be as harsh as for rape though