There’s a tension between whether one ought to notify authorities should the see something “unusual,” or mind their own business. (Just this a.m. I read an article about some busybody who called DCFS when some mother let her 3 kids aged 5-11 play in a playground next door to their apartment.)
As a general matter, I fall on the side that, if someone encounters a dead body, there are any number of reasons why it is “a good thing” for that person to notify the cops. As a society we are better off if people do not simply pass by corpses. And, unless there are weird circumstances - the reporter has a history of violent crime, they are where they oughtn’t be/doing something they shouldn’t do when they see the body, etc. - there is no real chance of facing undesirable repercussions. If the cops come back at you with additional questions afterwards, THAT would be the time to consider retaining counsel.
I’m white, male, college educated, middle-aged - I acknowledge I’m in an awfully comfortable position with respect to cops and other authorities. Yet I HAVE had unpleasant interactions with cops, and have been lied to and hassled by cops. I am far from a defender of all things done by all cops. But when my kids and I found a dead body in a river, it never crossed my mind that I would be negatively impacted if I reported it.
Lawyers counsel innocent people, too. Why does everyone think seeking legal counsel on legal matters is a declaration of guilt? It’s simply a declaration of ignorance in legal matters.
Why are you assuming that a decision to report a dead body is a legal matter?
Whether to answer any questions cops have about the body might be a legal decision, but the actual act of calling the authorities shouldn’t be.
Delaying the call to seek legal advice might also put you in more legal jeopardy. For example, if you report the body on Monday at 6 and they determine the body became a body about two hours earlier, you might have a perfectly good and unimpeachable alibi for 4:00. If you wait until Thursday, after taking legal advice, their experts are only going to be able to come up with an approximation of time of death, maybe a 12- to 24-hour span. You probably don’t have an unimpeachable alibi for the entire span, AND you’ve got to explain why you felt the need to delay.
Any cops irrational enough to lean heavily on a random passer-by are going to be irrational enough to lean VERY HEAVILY on a random passer-by who delayed the investigation for hours or days, and no legal advice from an attorney is going to be able to solve that one.
Because as soon as they are dead, it is no longer a medical matter, it is a police matter. Police matters are legal matters, by definition. Remember, the OP’s hypothetical specifies a murder. Not a victim of a car accident, not an OD, not a drowning. All these victims could possibly still be alive, and an ambulance should be called.
But if you find a headless body sticking out of a shallow grave, or birds picking out the eyes of a partially rotted corpse who was hanged in a tree, the police will come, and they will be very interested in what you have to say. And when they come to take your statement, they are listening for things that could be construed as suspicious, or evidence of guilt, or a clue. And I don’t know what could be construed as evidence against me. Incriminating myself is a real possibility, considering that I knew of the crime before police did, and that I was present at the scene. My footprints and possibly DNA are at the crime scene, and there’s no way to rule out that I was there during the commission of the crime, rather than just stumbling on if afterwards. That’s where the lawyer comes in. They can stop me from making incriminating statements in ignorance.
Or for that matter, they can help the police get the most information out of me. Personally, I tend to clam up when police ask me questions, because anything I say can be used against me. What if they find out this was my first morning jog through this part of the park? “So you just happened to change your morning jogging route and then you just happen to find a body that very same day?” Or maybe I knew the victim, but I couldn’t tell at first because they were so badly decomposed. “So you just happened to run across an old friend on the day he was murdered, conveniently after he was already dead, and you didn’t think to tell us this pertinent fact when we you made the call?” I’d be scared to say anything except my name, birth date and where I saw the body. A lawyer could calm my fears and get me to provide more helpful information to the police, like the fact that I saw tire tracks in the mud, or that I came across an old shovel in a ditch half a mile before finding the shallow grave.
Ah, the key point here is “when they come to take your statement.” That usually doesn’t happen at the crime scene, and never happens when you’re on the phone to 911. You’re describing an entirely separate part of the investigation. The question in the OP is about whether to report it, not whether to have a lawyer tag along when you are interrogated.
Besides, “So you just happened to change your morning jogging route and then you just happen to find a body that very same day? And then you waited two more days to report it while you were searching for a lawyer?” is rather more likely to be used against you. “Why did you think you needed a lawyer before reporting a headless body in a shallow grave? Why do you think we would suspect you? What have you ever done in your life to make the police suspect you of murder?” Yeah, at that point you really will need a lawyer.
And suppose you do leave DNA at the crime scene, and while you are off trying to find a lawyer, somebody else reports it. Now the police have an investigation in which you can no longer claim the role of innocent reporter, and you were provably at the crime scene doing something. If you weren’t the hapless bystander who stumbled across the headless corpse, exactly what WAS your role? And when exactly did you leave your DNA there, since you’ll no longer have a documented 911 call with a timestamp?
Your fumbling attempts to avoid incriminating statements just converted you into Chief Suspect, with all the perils of that position.
One of the greatest “successes” of the legal profession has been to convince many many people that they need to pay a lawyer in an ever expanding array of situations. The “legalization” of all aspects of human existence and interaction. Feel free to call your attorney before the cops. Hopefully, he/she will say, “Are you insane, thinking you need my assistance? Just call the cops, and call me if they come back to you.” But I’m certain a great many of my brethren at the bar will be happy to bill you hourly for just about anything.
Add in a substantial assist by our expansion of police powers over the past few decades, capped off by the aura of irrational suspicion and paranoia since 9/11.
If you come upon a dead body, you should puke on both it and into a baggie while videoing a selfie. That will solidify (well, perhaps that’s not the best term to use) your tort claim against the stiffies’ estate if you happen to live in a jurisdiction such as mine that requires a physical manifestation to succeed in a suit for damages arising out of psychological harm.
When I get nutter calls, I just say “I’m sorry, I don’t practice that sort of law, but I suggest that you call So and So at xxx-xxxx.”
So and So, of course, is a lawyer whom I particularly dislike.
I suspect that the “call a lawyer” crowd are mostly young people who don’t know shit.
First of all, what do you think a lawyer is going to do for you in this situation that you can’t already do yourself? You don’t need a lawyer to just shut the fuck up and not say anything beyond
“I was walking along, found this dead guy, then I called 911.”
“How do you know he was dead?”
“Well…his head is missing.”
“Do you know him?”
“I can’t really tell without the head.”
“Ok, call us if you think of anything else.”
You would think so, but in my experience, the police don’t really find routine questioning of bystanders to be particularly interesting or helpful.
In that case the best course of action might be to ingratiate oneself with the police by laying out probable scenarios and suspects; pointing out obvious clues they might half-wittedly miss; and revealing the plots half-remembered of the last six Miss Marple mysteries one saw, or similar.