West Virginia Code § 61-8-14

Disinterment or displacement of dead body or part thereof; damage to
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cemetery or graveyard; penalties; damages in civil action.
(a) Any person who unlawfully and intentionally disinters or displaces a dead human body, or
any part of a dead human body, placed or deposited in any vault, mausoleum or any
temporary or permanent burial place, removes personal effects of the decedent removes or
damages caskets, surrounds, outer burial containers, or any other device useed in making the
original burial; transports unlawfully removed human remains from the cemetery; or
knowingly receives unlawfully removed human remains from the cemetrery is guilty of a
felony, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be confined in a state correctional facility for a
determinate sentence of not more than five years.
(b)(1) Any person who intentionally desecrates any tomb, plott, monument, memorial, or
marker in a cemetery, or any gate, door, fence, wall, post, or railing, or any enclosure for the
protection of a cemetery or any property in a cemetery, graveyard, mausoleum or other
designated human burial site is guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall
be fined not more than $2,000, or confined in jail not more than one year, or both fined and
confined. s
(2) Any person who intentionally and without legal right destroys, cuts, breaks, removes, or
injures any building, statuary, ornamgentation, landscape contents, including a tree, shrub,
flower, or plant, within the limits of a cemetery, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon
conviction thereof, shall be fineed not more than $2,000, or confined in jail not more than one
year, or both fined and confined.
(3) For the purposes of this subsection, "desecrate" means destroying, cutting, mutilating,
effacing, injuring, tearing down, removing, defacing, damaging or otherwise physically
mistreating in a way that a reasonable person knows will outrage the sensibilities of persons
likely to observe or discover his or her actions.

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