Republican lawmaker seeks to outlaw necrophilia in NM

New Mexico is one of only a few states that doesn’t outlaw necrophilia outright. State Rep. Stefani Lord wants to change that.

The Sandia Park Republican said she started drafting a bill after learning during a crimes against children seminar that New Mexico hasn’t criminalized the sexual desecration of human remains, which made it difficult to prosecute what she called a horrific case.

“Somebody in law enforcement brought up a case where someone was raped after they were murdered, and they could not charge [the suspect] with rape because it’s not illegal in New Mexico, and it honestly made me sick to my stomach,” she said.

“It’s just obscene that we have not done a thing to make this an illegal act in New Mexico,” Lord added.

Lord said she hopes the Legislature will consider her proposal during the 30-day session starting in January. But she needs help from the public.

Unlike 60-day sessions, in which all lawmakers can introduce bills on any topic, 30-day sessions are focused on the budget. The governor’s approval is required to place any other issues on the agenda.

“I’m taking this to the press and social media, and I’m going to ask people to please put pressure on their legislators, their senators and the governor, because this should be something that is simple and quick [and] will not take time,” Lord said.

In 2021, the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld a Clovis man’s convictions for first-degree murder and raping the victim twice after she had died.

“In a precedent-setting decision, the court unanimously concluded that a murder victim need not be alive at the time of a rape for a conviction under the law against criminal sexual penetration,” according to a news release issued at the time. “In the Clovis case, Lorenzo Martinez fatally stabbed the victim and an hour later moved her body to his bedroom, undressed her and had sexual intercourse twice.”

Martinez argued in his appeal New Mexico law required a rape victim to be alive at the time of the crime for the criminal statute to apply. The state’s high court disagreed.

“It is critical to articulate that the [criminal sexual penetration statute] extends protections to victims who are unable to express consent,” the court concluded in an opinion written by Justice David K. Thomson. “We therefore determine that it would be contrary to the spirit of the statute to exclude victims who were unable to consent or resist solely because the perpetrator ‘rendered the victim permanently unconscious’ by killing the victim.”

The Martinez case marked the first time the court had addressed the issue. In the opinion, Thomson noted the state currently “does not prohibit the act of necrophilia or abuse of a corpse.”

Lord said her bill would leave no question necrophilia is prohibited by law. It would create three new crimes: criminal sexual penetration of a dead human body, a second-degree felony; criminal sexual contact with a dead human body, a third-degree felony; and criminal desecration of a dead human body, a fourth-degree felony.

Her proposal comes nearly a year after lawmakers passed a law creating the crimes of bestiality, aggravated bestiality and promoting bestiality. At the time, New Mexico was one of two states that didn’t have a law against bestiality on the books. The other was West Virginia, which continues to be the only state without a law prohibiting the sexual assault of animals, according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

The bestiality bill sailed through the Legislature earlier this year with little comment from lawmakers who didn’t want to create a spectacle around such a dreadful topic, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed it into law.

Lord said talking about necrophilia is difficult, too.

“But it’s important,” she said. “I am going to be speaking for people who have been raped or assaulted after they have passed away, and I’m going to be their voice. As uncomfortable as this topic is, I’m going to make sure that I stand for them and get this bill passed.

“I can’t see a reason why anybody would vote no,” she said. “It should just fly right through, and it should be a very simple thing that would take very little time away from this session.”

Lord said she didn’t know whether necrophilia was an isolated or widespread problem in New Mexico.

“I have not done the research on how prolific it is, and I wouldn’t even know where to find the data because of the fact that it’s not a crime,” she said. “But even if it’s just one person, that’s a problem.”