High court to decide Jackson man's case

LABEL: Abandoned corpse law

By Marc Powers ~ Southeast Missourian

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday will hear a Cape Girardeau County case believed to be the first to challenge the constitutionality of a 1995 law criminalizing abandonment of a corpse.

James E. Bratina of Jackson, Mo., was charged under statute after county prosecutors said he unlawfully delayed reporting his wife's death to authorities. Associate Circuit Judge Gary A. Kamp dismissed the count in October, agreeing with the defense that the law's wording is unconstitutionally vague.

Because the case involves the constitutionality of a state law, assistant county prosecuting attorney Lora E. Cooper appealed directly to the state high court, bypassing the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Cooper is asking the court to reverse Kamp, uphold the validity of the law and allow Bratina's trial to go forward on the class D felony, which would be punishable by as much as five years in prison.

The facts of the case as explained in court documents prepared by the prosecution -- and stipulated to by the defense for purposes of the appeal -- are as follows:

On Jan. 15, 2001, Jackson police responded to a report of a dead body at an apartment at 725 W. Independence. Bratina told authorities he had found his wife, Suyapa Bratina, unconscious on the bedroom floor at 10 a.m. and called 911. However, he later admitted he knew she was dead when he left for work at 6:30 a.m., leaving their 3-year-old daughter alone with her mother's body until he returned home and reported the death.

Bratina was also charged with endangering the welfare of child in the second degree. That count isn't an issue in the state's appeal and remains pending.

An autopsy eventually revealed that Suyapa Bratina died from mixed drug and alcohol intoxication.

In her legal brief, Cooper says Kamp erred in his ruling because the law's meaning is clear to person of average intelligence, a legal standard set through numerous earlier court rulings.

According to the statute: "A person commits the crime of abandonment of a corpse if that person abandons, disposes, deserts, or leaves a corpse without properly reporting the location of the body to the proper law enforcement officials in that county."

Cooper says Bratina's claims that he had no way of knowing what "proper notice" meant or who the "proper law enforcement officials" would have been do not hold up to scrutiny.

"The evidence will ... show that the defendant apparently had no problem contacting law enforcement and emergency medial personnel via the 911 system when he belatedly decided to call them later," Cooper wrote.

Could have been clearer

While conceding the General Assembly could have chosen clearer language when writing the law, Cooper says "the statute is sufficient to place the defendant on notice that he must report a corpse to law enforcement officials before leaving the location of the corpse."

In his response brief, defense attorney Stephen C. Wilson notes that Black's Law Dictionary defines "abandon" as "to forsake entirely; to relinquish all connection with or concern in; to desert."

"In the context of this case, based upon the facts alleged, it is obvious that (Bratina) neither abandoned, disposed of, nor deserted the corpse of his wife," Wilson wrote, noting that Bratina eventually reported the body.

Since the law doesn't adequately define the actions it prohibits, enforcement is open to interpretation and the whim of the prosecutor, Wilson says.

The same year the legislature passed the corpse abandonment law it also enacted a measure outlawing leaving the scene of a boating accident. Wilson notes that law requires that the operator of a boat involved report the accident to law enforcement "without delay."

Wilson says the statute at issue offers citizens no such guidance on how quickly a report must be made, nor does it indicate how much time may pass between discovery and reporting of a body before a delay is "unlawfully excessive."

The case is State of Missouri v. James E. Bratina.

mpowers@semissourian.com

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