One Size Fits All: Police Exhume Body To Determine If Funeral Home Cut Off Legs of Corpse to Fit Into Coffin

Police in Allendale, South Carolina have taken the extraordinary action of exhuming the body of Minister James Hines to see if he was buried with his legs attached. A former employee of Cave Funeral Services claimed that the funeral home cut off the legs of the 6-foot, 5-inch man to fit into a coffin despite telling his widow that they had a perfect fit.

A former employee said that the funeral home did not want to pay the added expense of a new coffin so decided to trim the corpse instead.

Allendale County Coroner Hayzen Black has told the press that it found a fair amount of “undesirable evidence” and turned the case over to the police. Of course, any exhumation produces what a normal person would call “undesirable evidence” but it is assumed that he means incriminating evidence. Appropriately, Hines was a minister at Revelations Ministries.

The widow would have a strong torts claims as well as a criminal claim in such a case. The mishandling of a corpse has long been recognized as a tort under the common law and often subject to punitive damages.

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