§ 23-4-7. Reporting of certain deaths required — Violations — Penalties.
(a)(1) Where any person shall die in any manner to suggest the possibility of a criminal
act or as the result of violence or apparent suicide, or from a criminal abortion
or in any suspicious or unusual manner, it shall be the duty of any person having
knowledge of those deaths to immediately notify the police of the city or town where
the body of the deceased person lies or to notify the office of state medical examiners.
The same procedure shall be followed upon discovery of anatomical material suspected
of being or determined to be a part of a human body.
(2) Any person who willfully neglects or refuses to report that death or who without an
order from an agent of the office of medical examiners willfully touches, removes,
or disturbs the body of that dead person, or willfully touches, removes, or disturbs
the clothing or any article upon or near that body, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
(b) If any person buries or causes to be buried the dead body of a person supposed to
have come to a violent death before giving notice as stated in subsection (a) and
before inquiry is made into the manner and circumstances of the death, that person
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
(c) When any person may appear to have met death when unattended by a physician, or in
any unnatural manner, or as the apparent result of the negligence of another person,
or as the consequence of any physical or toxic injury incurred while employed, or
from the use of any addictive or unidentifiable chemical agent, or from accidental
hypothermia, or from an infectious agent capable of spreading an epidemic within the
state, it shall be the duty of any physician, law enforcement officer, funeral director,
hospital official having knowledge of the death, or of any other person having responsibility
for burial or cremation of the deceased person to notify the office of the state medical
examiners. In the case of any prisoner committed by law to the custody of the department
of corrections or in the department of behavioral healthcare, developmental disabilities
and hospitals who dies or in the case of a person who 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 duty to immediately notify the office of the state
medical examiners. Any person charged with the responsibility of notifying the office
of state medical examiners of any of the deaths stated in the first sentence of this
subsection who neglects to give that notice shall upon conviction be guilty of a misdemeanor.
(d) If an agent of the office of state medical examiners is of the opinion that a death
was caused by the act of neglect of some person other 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 it lies. If any person shall be arrested and charged
with causing any death by the act of neglect, the person so arrested shall be entitled
to receive a copy of the record of the autopsy, upon written request delivered to
the attorney general.
(e) Where any person age sixty-five (65) years or older may appear to have died from accidental
hypothermia, the death shall be reported to the department of elderly affairs by the
state medical examiner or when any person, under the age of eighteen (18) shall die,
the physician signing the death certificate shall report the death to the state medical
examiner's office within twenty-four (24) hours of the death.
(f) Any person who violates any of the provisions of subsection (a) or (b) of this section
and does so with the intention of concealing a crime shall be guilty of a felony and,
upon conviction, shall be imprisoned for a term of not more than five (5) years or
fined ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or both.