County Not Liable for Former Coroner's Actions in Keeping Skull
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of a county in a civil rights lawsuit involving the former county coroner's keeping of a family member's skull as a trophy. Betts v. Boone County.
In 1977, a high school student was kidnapped, raped, and murdered and then dumped in a field within the county. As part of the investigation, the county coroner examined the body, and returned the remains to the family, except for the skull, which the coroner kept.
In 2022, the current county coroner contacted the family to inform them that the former coroner had kept at least three skulls, one of which was their family member's. After the family exhumed the casket to place the skull with her remains, they filed a civil rights lawsuit against the county, arguing that the coroner's actions unconstitutionally retained their property in violation of their due process rights. The district court dismissed the case, determining that the family did not show that the former coroner's actions established an official county policy, as required to hold the county liable for its employee's actions.
On appeal, the Seventh Circuit analyzed the legal standard for holding a government liable for civil rights claims for its employees' actions, which requires a person to show that the deprivation of a constitutional right was caused by a municipal policy or custom. Here, the Seventh Circuit held that because state law requires coroners to return all remains to the next of kin, the former coroner did not implement an “official policy” of the county when he kept the skull. Instead, he violated the law. Since the family members could not establish that the county was liable for its former employee's actions, the district court properly dismissed their case.
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