Selling human remains a felony under new Minnesota law proposal

Minnesota man charged in human body parts ring

A Minnesota man is among six people charged in a human body part trafficking case, allegedly stealing parts meant for medical education.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Selling human remains for profit could become a felony in Minnesota under a new proposal being discussed by lawmakers.

Authored by Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn (DFL-Roseville), the bill proposes new coding in Minnesota law that would prohibit the sale of human remains throughout the state, while administering a felony charge as punishment for being found guilty of participating in the act.

Approved by the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee on Tuesday, the bill now heads to the general register for a House Floor vote. A companion bill is still being discussed in committee in the Senate.

"Right now, in the state of Minnesota, it is currently legal to sell human bones. You can walk into an oddities shop in Minneapolis or St. Paul and purchase a human skull for several hundred dollars," said Rep. Becker-Finn during the committee hearing on Tuesday. Currently, websites such as Skulls Unlimited allow Minnesotans to purchase them. "The sale of human bones is not currently limited anywhere in the state statute… We know it's a process openly happening in Minnesota… For most of us, it’s simply against our own internal sense of right or wrong… This would change that and make it illegal."

Under the proposed language changes, "human remains" would include, "the calcified portion of a dead human body," but not include isolated teeth, plus "the cremated remains… or the hydrolyzed remains of a dead human body deposited in a container."

Exceptions for a sale would include law enforcement search and rescue units, local organizations for emergency management to conduct search and rescue training, and any sale that is incidental to the sale of real property.

While hoping to tamper with a grotesque black market business, the bill wouldn’t limit the donation of human remains for both medical and educational purposes to a licensed health care provider or someone employed by or under contract with a licensed health care provider.

The bill wouldn’t prohibit a person from, "recovering reasonable expenses for the processing, preservation, quality control, storage, transportation or final disposition of human remains," such as during a cremation or funeral arrangements.

"There's clearly holes in the current system, and this is what this hopes to address," Rep. Becker-Finn said.

In June 2023, FOX 9 reported on a Minnesota man being among six people charged with trafficking stolen human remains intended for medical education from Harvard Medical School and an Arkansas mortuary.

According to court records, the six people are accused of being involved in a nationwide network from 2018 to 2022 for buying and selling parts of cadavers that were donated to medical schools before they were scheduled to be cremated. The stolen remains included bones, skulls, skin, internal organs, brains, whole stillborn corpses, and other body parts.