In Ohio, if you witness a felony and fail to report it, you can be charged with a misdemeanor:
ORC 2921.22: Failure to report a crime or knowledge of a death or burn injury.
The correct legal terminology you seek is accessory “after the fact”. Merely failing to report a murder is not chargeable as accessory after the fact, no constitutional way.
NOW, other acts “after the fact” may or may not constitute such. One such case I found online, to wit:
The N.C. Supreme Court addressed this issue in State v. Williams, 229 N.C. 348 (1948). In that case, the defendants were indicted for being accessories after the fact to the murder of Thompson Hooker by Bud Hicks. After Hicks shot Hooker, the defendants aided Hicks by driving him from the crime scene. Thompson died the next day. Reversing the defendants’ convictions, the court noted that “one cannot be convicted as an accessory after the fact unless the felony be completed, and, until such felony has been consummated, any aid or assistance rendered to a party in order to enable him to escape the consequences of his crime will not make the person affording the assistance an accessory after the fact.” Id. at 349 (quotation omitted). The court went on to conclude: “a person cannot be convicted as an accessory after the fact to a murder because he aided the murderer to escape, when the aid was rendered after the mortal wound was given, but before death ensued, as a murder is not complete until the death results.” Id.
Now some jurisdictions may have ruled contrary on such facts of similar import as above?
If you coverup the murder, give money to a person to flee after the murder, these may be considered after the fact elements, each state’s CASE law is controlling.
Inchoate offenses such as accessory, complicity, conspiracy aiding and abetting, etc., the person so arrested needs to serve a constructive/semi part in it, simply failing to report a murder you witness is not an after the fact crime.
I am not a lwyer, so take it for what’s it’s worth.
IANAL - but…
Unless (like Ohio) there is a law that requires you to report (why burns???), you are not guilty for doing nothing. Even then, the question is - what is the burden of proof of knowledge; if Joe says “I shot that bastard last night” is that (hearsay) sufficient? Or is it seeing the body? A funny shape, all wrapped up?
When you take action to help someone in some way with the crime they are doing, before or after the crime, you are a participant. Accessory charges are possible, as are any additional charges about laws you break. You can even be hanged for fixing the guy’s broken leg without knowing what he did, if he just finished shooting Abe Lincoln. Definitely for helping someone escape, or providing money so they can, or helping them hide evidence like bodies, or providing the tools knowing why they are needed.
If he’s already wanted, you can be charged for harboring a fugitive. When you lie to the police, you are obstructing justice. Charges will likely follow. This is why the common advice is to shut up. Never lie. Also, there are assorted charges that can follow, depending on what else you do. I suspect crossing state lines with the body is not a good idea.
1B abd 1C are only perjury if you repeat them under oath. By the time it gets to that, either you will kno if they have the evidence to contradict your lies, or your buddy will turn you in to get a lesser sentence (what are friends for, after all?).
Adressing just the “why burns???” …
Reading the statute, it appears the legislative goal is forcing medics & first responders to report evidence of explosions, big fires, and use of (presumably illegal) fireworks. Any explosion or big fire which hasn’t already come to the fire service’s attention is likely to be the result of illegal activity (e.g. my meth lab blew up & I’m sure not calling the fire dept.)
In the next breath they go on to require reporting of otherwise ordinary injuries which appear to be the result of domestic violence.
Seriously?? Meth lab explosions that go unreported by the first responders AND unoticed by the police are such a big problem that it required hours or days of attention by the full staff of the legislature?? How many hundreds of thousands did that cost? For how many cases?
Paul McCartney got in trouble because when Linda died (in America) he had her body transported back to England without notifying anybody of her death.
Being Paul McCartney, he was probably able to get things worked out pretty quick. I never heard anything else about it.
There are lots of different ways to get in trouble, tho.
How does this interact with spousal privilege?
This is entirely academic.
Any decent plan for “hiding the body” will work.
There are 3,600,000 square miles of land in America.
You will be in very lightly inhabited country within 50 miles of any city, driving entirely on paved roads.
Problem is generally that people of a mind to kill another generally aren’t of a mind to control themselves reasonably enough afterwards to manage a “decent plan”.
You know, emotions overtaking them and all. Now pre-meditated murderers - they have a better chance.
All else being equal luck plays a large role in escaping consequences of crime. So if questioned by police about a crime (yours or another’s) the best bet is to just shutup and quietly pray to the gods of luck that they have nothing on you.
I don’t know if it would stop you being found guilty of any of the aforementioned crimes but being in fear of the murderer would be a powerful mitigation. ISTR a UK case where the accessory put a convincing case for being terrified of what the murderer would do to them or their family if they didn’t help and didn’t recieve a custodial sentence.
In this horrific caseonly the family members deemed to be instigators were convicted, others were deemed to be too firghtened and under the thrall of abuse themselves.