Two owners of a Jacksonville funeral home will not face criminal charges of abusing corpses after a plea agreement was announced Thursday. Punishments will be placed on the business the pair was in charge of instead.
Leroy and Rodney Wood had charges against them dropped by a prosecutor in Pulaski County Circuit Court on Thursday. Court records show that the pair's business, Arkansas Funeral Care LLC, was added as a defendant to their case Wednesday with 13 counts of abusing a corpse, court records show.
Arkansas Funeral Care pleaded guilty to five of those cases Thursday, and the remaining eight cases against the business were dropped. As owners of the business, the Woods could face up to a $100,000 fine, prosecutor Tonia Acker said.
A manager at the business, Ed Snow, still faces criminal charges after Circuit Court Judge Chris Piazza agreed to have his case removed from the Woods' case.
A complaint filed by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge states that 31 bodies were removed from the funeral home in January 2015, after an inspector discovered corpses in various states of decomposition outside of the facility's coolers.
LeRoy Wood's attorney, Dustin McDaniel, released a statement from his client, in which Wood said that he was sick last January and not aware of the conditions at his business, which were the result of "a record level of volume that week."
"In hindsight, I now see that we failed to take additional steps that would have been helpful," Wood's statement said. "My family and I are deeply sorry that this negligence on the part of our company occurred."
Acker said the families whose kin were at the funeral home have filed numerous lawsuits in the case, and some of the criminal cases were dropped at the request of those filing civil suits.
A sentencing hearing against the business was set for May 19.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more details.