I 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.
They 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?
The 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.
Courts 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.
I 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?
"there's no expectation of privacy for the dead." presumes the corpse is a person with personal privacy. I choose to interpret it differently: the corpse is property of the family, albeit property with a few additional rights and rules, and property that has been entrusted with the funeral home.
The funeral home would have been well within their rights to say "get off my property and come back with a warrant". I would even go as far as to say they had an obligation to do so.
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.