Arkansas funeral home pleads guilty over stacked bodies
Ethics
The company that owns an Arkansas funeral home where bodies were found stacked on top of each other in unrefrigerated areas pleaded guilty Friday after felony charges were dropped against the father and son who own the business.
Arkansas Funeral Care pleaded guilty in Pulaski County Circuit Court to five felony counts of abuse of a corpse after 13 abuse of corpse charges were dismissed against LeRoy Wood and Rod Wood. The plea agreement finalized days before a trial scheduled for Monday also dropped eight corpse abuse charges against the Jacksonville funeral home.
The company faces up to $100,000 in fines during a sentencing hearing scheduled for May 19.
LeRoy Wood's attorney, Dustin McDaniel, said "none of it was on purpose" and his client "hopes the families of the loved ones who were involved in this know how deeply sad he is that any of this had happened."
"We are at the same time deeply gratified that the state has dropped the charges against them individually," McDaniel said.
The funeral home's license was suspended last year after the state licensing agency investigated complaints by a former employee and found a cooler "filled beyond capacity with bodies" and bodies "stacked on top of each other." Investigators removed 31 bodies and 22 cremated remains from the business.
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On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
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USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.