Wisconsin Law: No Sex with Dead People

Sorry, necrophiliacs.

In a 5-2 decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that sex with the dead is NOT legal in Wisconsin.

Well, that's long overdue.

MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin law bans sex with dead bodies, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in reinstating charges against three men accused of digging up a corpse to have sex with it.

The court waded into the grisly case after lower court judges ruled nothing in state law banned necrophilia.

...Justice Patience Roggensack, writing a majority opinion with three other justices, said state law bans sexual intercourse with anyone who does not give consent whether a victim is dead or alive at the time. Dead bodies obviously can't give consent, she said.

"A reasonably well-informed person would understand the statute to prohibit sexual intercourse with a dead person," she wrote.

...The law in Wisconsin had been murky, and two dissenting justices insisted Wednesday that lawmakers did not mean to ban necrophilia but to allow assault charges when someone was raped and then killed.

The ruling reinstates attempted sexual assault charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 22. They face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Armed with shovels, a crowbar and a box of condoms, the men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin in 2006 to remove the body of a 20-year-old woman killed the week before in a motorcycle crash, police said.

One of them had seen an obituary photo of the pretty nursing assistant and asked the others for help digging up her corpse so he could have sexual intercourse with it, prosecutors said. They used the shovels to reach her grave but were unable to pry the concrete vault open and fled after a car drove into the cemetery.

The men were discovered by a police officer responding to reports of a suspicious vehicle in the cemetery and charged with attempted sexual assault and theft.

A judge dismissed the assault charges, saying Wisconsin law does not criminalize necrophilia. An appeals court upheld that decision, ruling state law was ambiguous on that point but the most reasonable explanation was that it did not.

Those decisions were wrong, Roggensack wrote, because the law clearly says assault victims can be dead or alive.

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, whose office represented prosecutors in the appeal, praised the decision.

"Words matter and the Legislature chose its words carefully to extend the sexual assault law to those heinous circumstances where a dead person is sexually assaulted, whether or not the defendant killed the victim," he said. "Necrophilia is criminal in Wisconsin."

I can't believe that two justices dissented.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said necrophilia should be banned but the law in question didn't do that.

It's mind-boggling that anyone would interpret the law as NOT including necrophilia.

Finally, Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke will be held accountable for what they allegedly attempted to do, have sex with a dead woman.

The thought that these men would not be charged with attempted sexual assault was absolutely sickening.

I don't think Laura Tennessen, the motorcycle crash victim, and her loved ones should be forgotten here.

It's horrible that the survivors have had to deal with the loss of Laura. Rather than grieving in peace, they have had to deal with what these creeps planned to do to her body.

They've also had to put up with judges that wanted the charges against the sickos dropped.

I hope they find some comfort in the Supreme Court's decision.