Betts v. Boone County Brief: Coroner Trophy-Skull Case Merits Supreme Court Review
Decades ago, the Supreme Court held in a case called Monell v. Department of Social Services that you can sue a local government for violating your constitutional rights only if the violation resulted from the locale’s “official policy.” In other words, if a county employee goes rogue, you can’t hold the county itself responsible.
A new court decision stretches Monell to the point of absurdity, holding that the county’s top official does not set official county policy. Boone County, Illinois’s coroner, Wesley Hyland, committed a constitutional violation of an uncommonly disturbing sort. He “kept several skulls as trophies from the deceased he examined,” according to the Seventh Circuit. One of them belonged to a high school student who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Forty-five years later, her brothers learned that Hyland had held onto her skull. They recovered it, exhumed her other remains, and reburied them together. Then, they sued Boone County.
They lost. The Seventh Circuit noted that a plaintiff can satisfy Monell by showing that a constitutional violation was “an act by a person with final policymaking authority.” Yet, the court determined, Hyland’s actions were illegal under state law, requiring that remains be released to the deceased’s next of kin.
So in spite of his role as coroner, he “frustrated” official policy rather than deciding it. That means Boone County bears no responsibility for his acts—even though Hyland was Boone County’s decision-maker concerning the treatment of remains.
If the girl’s family lived in the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Tenth, or Eleventh Circuits, they could recover from their local government under Section 1983. But because they live in the Seventh Circuit, they cannot.
Cato, assisted by the University of Virginia School of Law Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and joined by the Due Process Institute, Public Accountability, and the Rutherford Institute, filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse the Seventh Circuit’s decision. The ability to pursue compensation—under federal statute—for violations of federal constitutional rights should not vary by state.