Necrophilia Dispunishable in Wisconsin

Three men who dug up the corpse of a young woman in order to have sex with will not be charged attempted sexual assault as there is no law against necrophilia in Wisconsin.

The judge was right in his decision to dismiss charges against brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke because lawmakers never thought of criminalizing sex with corpses, the District 4 Court of Appeals said.

On September 2, 2006, three men with shovels came to a cemetery in Cassville to dug up the corpse of Laura Tennessen who had died in a motocycle crash the week before. The men wanted to have sex with the corpse.

The men did not manage to fulfill their plan as people who were in a vechicle that drove into the cemetry saw them, called the police and reported suscpcious behavior, according to authorities.

It was found out that the men had seen the girl's photo in an obituary and wanted to dig up her corpse to have sex with. Having sex with a corpse is known as necrophilia and it is an official crime in many countries.

The men were charged with attempted sexual assault and attempted theft. However, Grant County Circuit Judge Ceorge Curry dismissed the sexual assault charges and prosecutors appealed his ruling. The main their argument was law on criminal responsibility for sexual assault against victim that was «dead or alive at the time of the sexual contact or sexual intercourse».

The court of appeal took the decision that in spite of ambiguousness of the law, it does not ban necrophilia. According to the court, this formulation gives the right to charge someone with sexual assault only if victim was killed after rape.