5 ms·
Cops used dead man’s finger in attempt to access his phone
- LeoPanthera 9y agoImportant detail from the article: It didn't work.
- Herald_MJ 9y agoI found this interesting too. Does anyone know a reason why it didn't work?
- mabbo 9y agoI feel the funeral home ought to have said "no" pretty quickly and plainly here. There was no warrant, the funeral home is private property and the cops were there explicitly to try to get evidence from a corpse. I'm sure it is quite important for the police to do their job, but the funeral home is hired by the family and should, within reason, do only what the family says should be done with the body. Let the police get a warrant if it's so important.
- craftyguy 9y agoThey stated early in the article that a warrant is not needed because "there's no expectation of privacy for the dead." I strongly disagree with this, since it's not just the privacy of the owner locked away on a phone, but also the privacy of the people they have interacted with. It takes at least two to make a conversation, and suddenly if one dies then the other's messages are available for collection without a warrant?
- gtirloni 9y agoCourts have ordered evidence to be collected from the personal devices of the living (with no concern about information pertaining 3rd-parties that may or may not be stored on those -- how would they know?). I don't see how the dead have extra rights in this situation. The police should have gotten a warrant, just like in any other situation.
- craftyguy 9y agoThey argue that the dead have less rights... hence the reason they did not obtain a warrant.
- thanksgiving 9y agoI think the officers involved should be fired. This is clearly an attempt to justify the killing. > While Chaney said detectives didn’t think they’d need a warrant because there is no expectation of privacy after death — an opinion several legal experts affirmed — the actions didn’t sit right with Phillip’s family. I disagree with these legal experts. I hope Facebook and Grindr publish all the private information of these officers and legal "experts" when they die and refuse to take them down because they have a perpetual license anyway. We have onerous life + xx years of copyright but the dead have no right of privacy?
- tbyehl 9y agoThe State's right to do whatever they want to a corpse certainly ends once they no longer have possession of the corpse. More importantly, what the police did here was execute a search upon the funeral home. That their purpose was to temporarily seize a corpse shouldn't be any different than if they were looking for documents.
- jessriedel 9y agoSociety has long treated human bodies very differently than mere documents.
- lsh 9y agoConcerning the dead man's privacy, it doesn't matter, he's dead. What matters is the appearance of decency and respect in death because it matters to the family. The article makes me wonder if the police walked up during the funeral and messed with the corpse, but I really doubt that was the case. There is no dignified death. Death ceremonies are performed for the living.
- falcolas 9y agoAnd yet desecrating the dead is almost universally panned, because of its effect on the living. Is using a dead person's finger to unlock their phone desecration? The deceased's family seems to think so.
- lsh 9y agoThe corpse was hardly desecrated. It's finger was used in an attempt to figure out why drug dealing killed it. I would posit replacing it's fluids with embalming solution to be more intrusive.
- jessriedel 9y agoWhy do people jump so eagerly to this assumption about the wishes of the dead being unimportant? We honor wishes of the living concerning the exterior world beyond the mere facts about their brain state (e.g., someone can justly want to climb Mount Everest or set a world record, and not just believe they have). Continuing to respest their reasonable wishes after they die is not fundamentally different, e.g., not desecrating their bodies, even if they don't have family who would be upset.
- mc32 9y agoHow would this be different from using someone’s fingerprints to identify them, if they had no ID on them or any other ID method? Is that desecration too?
- larkeith 9y agoMy understanding is that, generally, the purpose of identification is to find living relatives. It's a matter of respect - identification allows for appropriate rites to be provided, while this is taking advantage of the fact that the dead have no rights to use the prints for their own purposes.
- tmwed 9y agoof course they did. why is this news?