Fight over Ill. victims' bodies a legal rarity

CHESTER, Ill. — The emotional fight over the final resting place of a murdered southwestern Illinois woman and her children is a legal rarity, experts say, and one lawyer in the dispute says the absence of case law has him relying on the Bible to make arguments.

Sheri Coleman and her two sons were strangled in their Columbia home in May 2009. Coleman's husband, Christopher, is serving a life sentence after being convicted of murder in their deaths.

The three were buried in Christopher Coleman's hometown of Chester before he was charged. His family wants to leave them there, but Sheri Coleman's family wants the bodies moved to a cemetery closer to her Chicago-area hometown.

The dispute is set for a hearing in January.

Jack Carey, attorney for Sheri Coleman's family, said he's drawing on divine rather than legal inspiration.

“It's a phenomenon in which I have no case law to draw upon,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I'm relying on the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Prosecutors argued Christopher Coleman killed his family so that he could be with his mistress and avoid a divorce that could have cost him his job as security chief for televangelist Joyce Meyer.

Christopher Coleman's father has said he believes his son in innocent and that the bodies shouldn't be disturbed until after his criminal case is exhausted in the courts.

“If the appeal doesn't work, then we'd step aside,” Ronald Coleman said. “But right now, we think it's best to let this process play out.”

He said his son already has an adjacent plot in the cemetery and plans to also be buried there.

William Schroeder, a law professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, called the dispute “very unusual situation.”