DENVER (CN) — The 10th Circuit on Tuesday found a lower court miscalculated the double-decade sentence for a Colorado woman who fraudulently sold body parts out of her funeral home.
"The district court’s legal analysis is faulty,” U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Phillips wrote in a 51-page opinion.
Over the course of eight years, Megan Hess, the director of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, and her mother, Shirley Koch, sold human remains brought in for funeral services to medical research companies that used them for plasticization and study.
In all, the women made $1.2 million off 811 bodies sold, of which federal investigators found only 42 families gave informed consent.
Together facing more than two dozen federal charges, Hess and Koch each pleaded guilty to a single charge of mail fraud in 2022.
Prosecutors recommended the court sentence Hess up to 15 years in prison and Koch to less than 7 years. But the presentencing report recommended additional enhancements that supported Senior U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello’s decision to give Hess 20 years in prison and her mother 15 years.
On appeal, Hess argued Arguello wrongly calculated the medical companies’ losses and failed to make deductions for goods and services actually provided to next of kin, including urns, flowers, food and death certificates. Koch argued in her own appeal that Arguello should have calculated losses differently for her since she played a smaller role in the scheme.
The 10th Circuit panel agreed with Hess but rejected her mother’s argument.
"We conclude (1) that the district court erred by including in the actual-loss total the amounts the body-parts purchasers paid Hess, (2) that the district court erred by categorically refusing to offset the value of goods and services the next of kin received at the time of the fraud, but (3) that the district court correctly attributed the same loss to Koch as it did to Hess,” wrote Phillips, an appointee of Barack Obama.
During the January 2023 sentencing hearing, Arguello admitted she found herself in uncharted territory, faced with a crime so disturbing and unusual. Widowed just a few years prior, Arguello shared her experience with loss and sympathized with the dozens of victims packed into her courtroom at the Wayne Aspinall Courthouse in Grand Junction.
Arguello, a George W. Bush-appointee, then applied “vulnerable” victim enhancements for both the deceased and their families, which the 10th Circuit rejected.
"Though corpses are indeed ‘unable to protect themselves,’ it does not follow that they ‘require greater societal protection’ than the living,” Phillips wrote. “Thus, victims who were deceased when the fraud was committed were not vulnerable victims for the purpose of this enhancement."
In light of Arguello’s sympathy for the victims, Hess requested a new judge. The panel denied the request finding “reassignment is not necessary to preserve the appearance of justice.”
The appeals court also found Hess defrauded people wholesale and rejected the notion that she targeted grieving people more.
Joining Phillips on the opinion were the Bill Clinton-appointed Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Murphy and Jimmy Carter-appointed Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanie Seymour.
Hess was represented by federal public defender Jacob Rasch-Chabot. The office does not comment on cases.
U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Milani represented the prosecutorial appeal. Representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice declined to speak with Courthouse News.
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