Request By:
Mr. Charles M. Daniels
Greenup County Attorney
Courthouse
Greenup, Kentucky 41144
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your question was written as follows:
"The Coroner of Greenup County, Kentucky, would like for me to get your opinion on whether or not he or a Coroner from the State of Ohio would have jurisdiction of a dead body found in the Ohio River adjacent to Greenup County, Kentucky."
The Kentucky coroner's jurisdiction extends to a case in which the coroner has reasonable cause for believing that the "death of a human being within his county" was caused by homicide, crime, violence, accident, suicide, poison, drowning, illegal abortion, or unusual circumstances. (Emphasis added).
Thus if the coroner of Greenup County, Kentucky, has reason to believe that the person died in his county under unusual circumstances or that the death was caused by any of the categories outlined in KRS 72.405(2), he may assume jurisdiction of the body as a coroner's case.
Now, he must determine whether the death took place "in his county", since the Ohio River, where the body was found, is a boundary of Greenup County, Kentucky. Under KRS 67.010 each county whose boundary is described in part by the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers shall be considered as bounded in that particular by the state line.
The Kentucky state line generally extends to and over the waters of the Ohio River to the "low water mark" on the northerly side. Shannon v. Streckfus Steamers, 279 Ky. 649, 131 S.W.2d 833 (1939) 835. See KRS Ch. 1, "Boundary with Ohio, Indiana and Illinois". See also Ohio v. Kentucky, 410 US 641, 35 L. Ed. 2d 560, 93 S. Ct. 1178 (1973).
The issue presently between Ohio and Kentucky in the Supreme Court of the United States is whether the boundary line between the two states is the low water mark on the northerly side of the Ohio River in the year 1792, which Ohio contends for, or whether it is the northerly low water mark of the Ohio River as it may be from time to time, as Kentucky contends for.