The person charged by law with the duty of burying the body of a deceased person is entitled to the custody of such body for the purpose of burying it. However, in the cases in which an investigation or inquest is required by law to be held upon a dead body, by a coroner, such coroner is entitled to its custody until such inquest has been completed.
S.D. Codified Laws § 34-26-14
Right to custody of dead body--Coroner's custody pending inquest
Known as the Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act
The act spans §§ 34–34 (58 sections).
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case State v. Quist (2018)
Most recently applied in State v. Quist (March 2018)
Source: PenC 1877, § 357; CL 1887, § 6558; RPenC 1903, § 362; RC 1919, § 3876; SDC 1939, § 27.1302; SL 1985, ch 191, § 7.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.