This story is from our partner Little Rock Public Radio.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Thursday she had signed “Lux's Law," which institutes criminal penalties for selling human remains.
The legislation is a reaction to an April 2024 indictment against an Arkansas woman. Candance Chapman Scott admitted to selling thousands of dollars in human remains over Facebook Marketplace. Scott sold the remains to Jeremy Pauley, a tattoo artist from Pennsylvania.
Last year, Scott pleaded guilty to charges such as mail fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property, crimes that could carry a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. She did not plead guilty to selling a corpse, because at that time it was not illegal in Arkansas to sell body parts over the internet.
One of the sales Scott made was of a deceased infant, named “Lux” by his mother. Scott shipped the body to Pauley for $650 in early 2022.
Lux’s family received an urn of ashes and held a funeral for him at their local church. A year later, the FBI told them the ashes belonged to someone else.
“If you can just imagine,” Lanelle Logan, Lux’s grandmother said in a House committee, “you're grieving a loss and you're finding your footing only for that to be ripped open again.”
Lux's mother Doneysha Smith described the incident to the legislature as a form of “human trafficking.”
After their conversation with the FBI, Sen. Fred Love, D-Little Rock, was contacted by Lux’s family.
“I couldn't believe it,” Love told a Senate committee. “I almost wanted to dismiss her because it seemed like what she was telling me was so out of the ordinary.”
Love said he would “check” to see if there really was no law against selling body parts, and was blown away to learn that no such law existed.
The law received bipartisan support and praise. In a Senate Public Health committee meeting, chair Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, thanked the family for coming forward.
“You spoke out and used your voice for good,” she said.
When it passed the Senate, Irvin called it “probably the best bill I’ve ever seen come through this body.”
The bill passed with a unanimous vote in both chambers, receiving a standing ovation in the Senate.
