Tri-State Crematory scandal: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia
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The '''Tri-State Crematory scandal''' was a scandal at a [[crematorium]] in the Noble community in northwest [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] that came to national attention in 2002. It Nearlywas discovered that nearly three hundred and fiftyforty bodies that had been consigned to the crematory for proper disposition were discovered to havehad nevernot been [[cremation|cremated]], but instead dumped at several locations in and around the crematorium's site. This led to civil litigation and criminal prosecutions.
==Background==
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Marsh was a respected businessman. He once ran for Coroner of [[Walker County, Georgia|Walker County]], losing by fewer than 100 votes. Marsh also ran other businesses offering tent rentals and vault construction.
Marsh's health deteriorated infrom the mid-1990s, having suffered several strokes and dementia. In mid-to-late 1996 his son, Ray Brent Marsh, took over operation of the business. DuringOn May 20, 2003, during the pendency of the litigation filed against the Marsh family, Tommy Marsh died.<ref>{{cite news|title=Father of crematory case suspect dies|date=May 21, 2003|first1=Norman|last1=Arey|work=Atlanta Journal-Constitution}}</ref>
Between 1996 and the date of the discovery, more than 2,000 bodies had been sent to Tri-State. At some point after Ray Brent Marsh took over the business, he apparently had issues in performing cremations. It was not clear why this was the case. During his operation of the business, a total of 339 bodies went uncremated. Families of the deceased were given concrete dust instead of cremated remains.
==Discovery and identification of the remains==
In early 2002, the United States [[Environmental Protection Agency]] office in [[Atlanta]] received an anonymous tip that something was amiss at Tri-State Crematory. The EPA officers sent to investigate the property discovered a skull and some bones that were human in origin. The original human skull and bones went missing later in the litigation and were never offered into evidence.{{Citation needed|date=September 2013}}
Previously, a propane delivery truck driver had complained on at least two occasions to the Walker County Sheriff's Department about seeing bodies on the Marsh property. The driver made a fuel delivery and notified the sheriff's office. This call resulted in a deputy sheriff being called to the property, who reportedly discovered nothing unusual.
On February 15, 2002, investigators returned to the property, finding piles of decomposing human bodies in a storage shed, in vaults and scattered inside and outside throughout the property. Atlanta television station [[WAGA-TV|WAGA/Fox 5]] and reporter [[Dan Ronan]] were the first to break the news story after a nearby funeral home director called the station and informed Ronan that law enforcement officers were at the Marsh residence. In his first interview that afternoon with Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson, Ronan recalls the Sheriff told him within a few hours the story would be "on the front page of the ''New York Times'' and the lead story on the evening newscasts." Ronan and WAGA's other reporters would spend nearly a month in Walker County before finally going home.
A federal disaster team was brought into the area along with a portable morgue shipped from [[Maryland]]. The team began trying to identify the remains, a process made difficult because many of the corpses were in advanced stages of decomposition. Some were little more than skeletons. Experts hired by the Marsh attorneys, Stuart James and Frank Jenkins, were prepared to testify that the methods of recovery were questionable and that the methods were made more difficult because of the lack of trained experts undertaking the investigation on the Marsh property. The experts, however, never testified because the civil cases against Tri-State and the funeral homes that had used Tri-State to perform cremation settled after a second trial had begun in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
The search ultimately recovered 339 uncremated bodies. Of the 339 bodies that were discovered, 226113 wereremain identifiedunidentified. DNA testing was possible in thosethe cases where a living relative was available, but in other cases, it was considered unlikely officials would ever be able to identify the remains.
==Investigation==
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In response to Marsh's claim that the cremation oven, or "retort," was broken, the oven was tested and found to be in working order, although subsequent examinations by experts did find faults. Several crematory operators at the time commented that even if the machine had broken down, proper maintenance would have kept the incinerator working, noting that most oven manufacturers have regular maintenance programs available.
On February 7, 2007, a week before the five-yearfifth anniversary of the discoveries at the former crematory, the criminal defense attorneys for Marsh revealed that physiological testing had indicated that Brent Marsh was a victim of [[mercury toxicity]] from the cremation of bodies with [[mercury (element)|mercury]] [[Amalgam (dentistry)|dental amalgam]]. They stated that a faulty ventilation system exposed both Marsh and his father to toxic levels of mercury.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.wdef.com/node/2478 |title=Could Mercury Poisoning Be To Blame For Crematory Scandal? |work=[[WDEF-TV]] |location=Chattanooga, Tennessee |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718010013/http://www.wdef.com/node/2478 |archive-date=2011-07-18 |date=February 7, 2007}}</ref>
===Failures of inspection, regulation and enforcement===
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Ray Brent Marsh was arrested on over 300 criminal violations and was ultimately charged by the State of Georgia with 787 counts, including [[theft by deception]], abusing a corpse, burial service related fraud and [[making false statements|giving false statements]]. Marsh was facing a possible prison sentence of thousands of years.<ref>{{cite news|last=Hart|first=Ariel|title=Georgia Crematory manager Pleads Guilty and Gives Apology|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/national/20cremate.html?ref=raybrentmarsh&_r=0|access-date=19 September 2012|work=The New York Times|date=20 November 2004}}</ref>
Marsh was represented by [[McCracken Poston]] (who a few years before had been the lawyer for [[Alvin Ridley|Alvin "The Zenith Man" Ridley]]) from nearby [[Ringgold, Georgia]], and [[Ronald Cordova|Ron Cordova]] of [[Newport Beach, California]]. Cordova was a former [[Orange County, California]], prosecutor and, like Poston, had served in the state legislature. Both Poston and Cordova are experienced criminal lawyers who first teamed up two years earlier in the trial of [[Byron Looper]] for the murder of [[Tennessee Senate|Tennessee state senator]] [[Tommy Burks]].
The criminal cases against Marsh were settled after the [[Supreme Court of Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia Supreme Court]] had certified for review the defense question of whether a human corpse had any pecuniary value, an issue vital to the case in order to determine if the thefts could even be criminally prosecuted. The traditional common law holding was that a corpse does not have pecuniary value.
Marsh eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to twelve12 years in prison, with credit for the time he had spent in custody before obtaining pretrial release on bond. He was sentenced to concurrent sentences in Georgia and Tennessee for all the criminal charges related to the incident. He received a sentence of twelve12 years in prison as well as seventy-five75 years of probation in Georgia. The sentence was the product of a plea bargain which was reached contemporaneously with the settlement of the civil litigation. McCracken Poston and Ron Cordova crafted the plea agreement while Stuart James, Frank Jenkins and Robert Smalley concluded a settlement of the federal civil action after a series of meetings in [[Rome, Georgia]], which also included Poston and the District Attorney prosecuting the Georgia state criminal case against Marsh. The global settlement ended the federal class lawsuit as well as the criminal cases in Georgia and Tennessee.
On June 29, 2016, Ray Brent Marsh was released from [[Central State Prison]] in [[Bibb County, Georgia]], after serving his full 12-year sentence.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/ray-brent-marsh-released-from-prison-after-tri-state-crematory-sentence/372030430|title=Ray Brent Marsh released from prison after Tri State Crematory sentence|first=Ross|last=Cavitt|date=29 June 2016|work=[[WSB-TV]]|location=Atlanta|access-date=27 February 2018}}</ref>
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The class certification hearings resulted in certification of a class action after hearings were held in Chattanooga in front of Judge Neal Thomas. Judge Thomas, and the Oden class action, certified the numerous cases pending in the State of Tennessee as a class action. The Tennessee class action proceeded with various hearings and motions being filed before the plaintiff class ultimately decided to proceed with the class-action filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The class-action in the state of Tennessee was ultimately decertified by Judge Thomas after it was made clear that the class representative, Oden, chose to participate in the class action pending in the State of Georgia. There were numerous reasons why the class was decertified, one of them apparently being that Oden, as a class representative, made an election to participate in the national class action pending in Rome Georgia. Most of the cases filed in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama chose to participate in the class-action in Rome. Two trials occurred, with witnesses testifying in both trials. The trials were open to the public, and were widely reported by the news media with numerous people testifying including Dr. Kris Sperry of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The transcripts are public record; neither trial proceeded very far before settlements were reached.
The funeral homes sued Tri-State and Marsh, eventually settling first for $36 million with the plaintiff's class in the [[United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia]]. Ultimately, the Marsh defendants also settled for $3.5 million after their insurer, Georgia Farm Bureau, agreed to pay the settlement. After heated negotiations among the attorneys regarding the exact terms and conditions of the settlement, the settlement failed. The parties could not effectuate a settlement that would globally resolve all cases in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The plaintiff class filed a Motion to Enforce the Settlement Agreement alleging a settlement agreement had been reached between the parties, and that the court should enforce the settlement agreement. Stuart James and Frank Jenkins responded to the motion asserting that the settlement could not be effectuated and that the parties never could complete the settlement due to the inability to reach an agreement to put together a settlement class globally resolving the cases. Judge [[Harold Lloyd Murphy]] of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia thereafter ordered a second trial. The second trial began in August 2004.
Bill Brown, an attorney in [[Bradley County, Tennessee]], chose not to participate in the class actions. In his cases, Akers, Burns & Hall, Brown alleged various causes of action against Marsh, Tri-State Crematory, and the funeral homes.
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Brown, on behalf of certain plaintiffs living in Bradley County, also fought to require Brent Marsh to testify in court on the claims that remain in the Bradley County Circuit Court in [[Cleveland, Tennessee]]. Brown asserted that it was time for Marsh to tell family members what happened to their loved ones' bodies, offering an explanation of what he did and what happened to those bodies.
Judge Neil Thomas, to whom the Tennessee civil cases were specially assigned, held that Marsh had waived his [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]] privilegeright upon pleading guilty to more than 700 felony counts in the State of Georgia. After consulting with his client's criminal law lawyers, Ken Poston and Ron Cordova, Stuart James argued that the circumstances of the claim permitted Marsh to continue to assert his Fifth Amendment privilegeright. Judge Thomas' ruling that Marsh had waived his privilegeright was appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals with the Court of Appeals reversing and remanding the issue of the Fifth Amendment to Judge Thomas for further consideration. The Court of Appeals held that Marsh could assert his Fifth Amendment privilegeright in any testimony subject to review by Judge Thomas. No further testimony has been solicited by Brown.
Walker County, Georgia also sued the Marsh family to recover the cost of its investigation into the incidents on the Marsh property. Walker County claimed that it was entitled to recover almost $2 million resulting from its investigation. Frank Jenkins and Stuart James represented the Marsh defendants in this litigation which resulted in the Walker County Superior Court, Judge Smith sitting specially, dismissing the claims. The [[Georgia Court of Appeals]] heard oral argument and issued an opinion upholding the dismissal of the claims. Walker County, through its attorneys Coppedge & Evans, amended its complaint to allege that Walker County was cleaning up an environmental hazard and is therefore entitled to recover damages. The environmental claim was also dismissed by Judge Smith, and the issues regarding the environmental claim are currently pending in the Georgia Court of Appeals.
The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that Walker County Georgia does not have a claim under Georgia's Hazardous Site Response Act. The court ruled that the county had no standing to bring any legal claim for environmental cleanup. The attorneys for Walker County applied asking the Georgia Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals decision. The Petition for Certiorari was denied by the Georgia Supreme Court. Walker County filed a motion for reconsideration with the Georgia spring court after they denied the County permission to appeal to the spring court. The motion was denied by the Court. All lawsuits filed by Walker County were dismissed in the claims are now at a conclusion.
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The Tennessee Supreme Court also dismissed all claims maintained by people who are classified as non-next of kin, stating that non-next of kin have no standing to bring a claim under Tennessee law. One of the non-next of kin claims was maintained by Terri Crawford. Crawford was outspoken regarding these cases, and at one point during the investigation was employed by the state of Georgia and the federal government as part of the investigative team. She later brought a claim to recover money for the loss of her brother's body. After consideration by the Tennessee Court of Appeals and review by the Tennessee Supreme Court, Crawford's claim was ultimately dismissed by Judge Neil Thomas pursuant to the order of the Tennessee Court of Appeals and the order of the Tennessee Supreme Court denying any further appeal on behalf of Crawford. Under Tennessee law, non-next of kin may not bring a claim under the circumstances as alleged by plaintiffs across the state of Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama; only next of kin may maintain a claim. The Tennessee Court of Appeals outlined a succession of who may be a next of kin depending on which next of kin survives the deceased. The ruling of the Court of Appeals resulted in a dismissal of numerous non-next of kin cases.
However, several claims were maintained in Bradley County. Bill Brown, the attorney for some claimants who are classified as next-of-kin or persons who have a contract right, fought to have Brent Marsh testify in deposition. Stuart James, the attorney for Brent Marsh, resisted the deposition, asserting that the Fifth Amendment Privilegeright is still available to Marsh due to the circumstances of the case. The issue involving whether Marsh still may maintain his Fifth Amendment privilegeright was appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals sent the case back for further consideration by Judge Neil Thomas on whether the Fifth Amendment is still available to Marsh, and ruled that Marsh did not have a blanket loss of his Fifth Amendment privilegeright and that the trial court should review the privilegeright on a question by question basis to see if the privilegeright is still available to Marsh. The legal issues continue in these cases, and there may be issues that will take the cases back into the appellate court system of Tennessee.
The cases in Tennessee have been on appeal on issues relating to who may bring a claim and on Fifth Amendment issues. Many of the claims are dismissed, but some remain in the issues of law surrounding the claims are still very much alive and under legal debate. All of the claims pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia are resolved. The remainder of claims pending in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama have either been dismissed or resolved. This case throughout its pendency in both civil and criminal courts presented unique legal arguments and challenges for the attorneys involved in the litigation. Attorneys examined documentation that was gathered in the criminal investigation that exceeded 100,000 pages of documents, revealing methods of identification, the methodology used in investigating the claim, videos of the investigation, and numerous photographs. At one point a skull and an arm were discovered in the criminal files, both with human tissue on them. Prosecutors stated that the skull and arm were intentionally a part of the files, but after they were discovered the skull and arm were quickly removed.
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==In popular culture==
The Tri-State Crematory incident was used as the basis for a ''[[Law & Order: Criminal Intent season 2]]'' episode "Dead" (Season 2, episode 1) starring [[Kathryn Erbe]], and [[Vincent D'Onofrio]] and guest actor [[Jim Gaffigan]]. The case was also the backdrop for the 2011 film ''[[Sahkanaga]]'', a fictionalized account of the events by American filmmaker John Henry Summerour,<ref>http{{Cite web|last=Brehm|first=Reviews|date=2013-03-19|title=Sahkanaga|url=https://wwwfullerstudio.sahkanagafuller.comedu/sahkanaga/|access-date=2021-02-17|website=Fuller Studio|language=en-US}}</ref> and provided inspiration for the ''[[CSI: Miami]]'' episode "[[CSI: Miami (season 1)|Forced Entry]]".
Brent Hendricks' memoir, ''A Long Day at the End of the World: A Story of Desecration and Revelation in the Deep South'' ([[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]], 2013), traces his quest to discover whether his father's remains were among those discovered at the crematory.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/brent-hendricks/long-day-end-world/|title=A Long Day at the End of the World by Brent Hendricks|publisher=Kirkus Reviews|year=2012|language=en}}</ref>
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==See also==
* [[Biomedical Tissue Services]]
* [[Organ harvesting]]▼
* [[Body snatching]]
▲* [[Organ harvesting]]
* [[Morning Glory Funeral Home scandal]]
==References==
{{Reflist}}
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*Dismissed cases pursuant to the legal findings of the Tennessee Court of Appeals [https://web.archive.org/web/20110713195358/http://www.legaleaseus.com/cmsAdmin/uploads/2007_11_26_AkersROPN.pdf]
*LegalEase [https://web.archive.org/web/20110713195419/http://www.legaleaseus.com/tennessee/downloadable_legal_forms.php?Tri-State-Crematory-Pleadings-14]
[[Category:Scandals in the United States]]
[[Category:History of Georgia (U.S. state)]]
[[Category:Crimes in Georgia (U.S. state)]]
[[Category:February 2002 crimes in the United States]]
[[Category:Death care companies of the United States]]
[[Category:2002 in Georgia (U.S. state)]]