Man who took memen-toes gets discharge
The strange saga of a man who took two human toes from a controversial exhibition of dead bodies has ended without him gaining a conviction.
In an odd turn of events in an odd case, Wellington District Court Judge Bill Hastings decided yesterday that Joshua Putaone Williams was overcharged by police.
He had been charged with theft and interfering with human remains after taking two toes from the Body Worlds Vital display in Auckland in May.
Williams had gone to the exhibition at the Hilton and went up to an exhibit of Acrobatic Couple with Lifted Woman. There was no barrier and he reached across and took an index toe and a middle toe.
They were valued at $5500. He put them in his pocket and left. Later he posted a picture on Instagram with the caption: ‘‘I stole a toe from an uncovered display lol.’’
The judge said the exhibit was polarising and some people went because it was ghoulish and macabre, while some did not go for the same reason.
Some went to learn.
He thought Williams had gone for that reason but had been overcome by temptation.
‘‘You could not resist the temptation to touch a dead body.’’
He said he was concerned that there was an issue with Williams facing the two charges.
He said higher courts had decided that a body had no monetary value so a charge of theft was not right, while if it was not a body any more because of the plastination process it had undergone for exhibition then the interfering charge could not stand.
‘‘The two charges cannot coexist – pardon the pun.’’
The judge invited the police and defence to submit to him which charge should go.
Police prosecutor Mike Stonyer said the theft charge seemed to be the one that should go. Hastings dismissed the theft charge and sentenced Williams only on the charge of interfering with human remains.
The judge said he was concerned with how a conviction for that would look on Williams’ record. ‘‘It conjures up a clothhatted grave robber with a shovel digging up graves in a cemetery at night.
‘‘What you did was pluck two toes from a body, intended to be the object of visitors’ attention.’’
He said the stigma that would attach to a conviction of this nature would be out of all proportion to what Williams actually did and granted the application for a discharge without conviction.
A Body Worlds Vital spokeswoman said the toes, taken from a full human model, had been returned in ‘‘fine form’’ and were reattached to the body. She could not confirm how the toes were reattached.