A horrid legal conundrum

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A convicted murderer being held in Atlanta is refusing to sign a waiver the district attorney says it needs to release the remains of an 8-year-old East Texas boy.

Without the waiver, the family of Chad Choice cannot hold a funeral, although the boy was killed more than a decade ago.

Patrick Horn’s attorney has made repeated efforts over the past month to get the man now serving a life federal prison sentence in Georgia for unrelated crimes to sign the waiver.

But those efforts have been ignored …

Chad was shot in 1991, and buried in a shallow grave behind a house where Horn’s family lived. Horn then tormented the Choice family for years, sending ransom notes and placing Chad’s skull on the doorstep of the Choices’ home on the fourth anniversary of the boy’s disappearance.

The boy’s fate wasn’t revealed until 1996 while Horn was in Smith County Jail serving time for other crimes.

The waiver is necessary because the body parts were found five years after the boy’s death, and those remains were crucial evidence used to convict Horn.