Former owner of Downard Funeral Home officially pleads guilty after taking plea agreement

Lance Peck walking out of the court Thursday afternoon after changing his plea as part of a plea agreement. | Daniel V. Ramirez, EastIdahoNews.com POCATELLO — The former owner of Downard Funeral Home appeared in court Thursday afternoon to change his plea after accepting an agreement from prosecutors in May. Lance Peck, who wore an oxygen tank backpack, stood before District Judge Javier Gabiola to change his original not guilty plea to guilty as per the agreement. Under the agreement, Peck pleaded guilty to felony failure to collect and pay over tax, perjury, offering false instruments for filing in a public office and fraud by computer. This included an amended charge of providing the family of (a deceased person) the purported cremains of such a person, knowing that the cremains were not those of (the deceased person.) He also pleaded guilty to multiple misdemeanors regarding the Mortician’s Code of Conduct including: misrepresentation or fraud in the conduct of mortician or funeral director services, violation of any state law, municipal or county ordinance or rule affecting the handling, custody, care, processing or transportation of dead human bodies, right to control the disposition of a body, refrigeration of a body and records regarding cremations. Peck’s remaining charges were dismissed. The agreement recommended a sentence of between three and ten years in prison. The agreement is binding, so if the court does not follow it, Peck can withdraw his plea. A report was made in July 2021 after a representative from Idaho State University reported to Pocatello Police that a number of cadavers that families had donated for scientific research hadn’t been delivered to the university by the funeral home. They also discovered that at least one body hadn’t been returned to the family afterward. During a police raid of the funeral home, police found several bodies, one of which was decaying on the floor of the garage. There were also 11 bodies attached to altered documents, and one body had no documentation at all. A significant number of other irregularities were found related to the disposal of remains. RELATED | Downard Funeral Home owner signs plea agreement, admits to sending fake remains to families RELATED | Extensive decay, thousands of flies, atrocious smell: What newly unsealed documents reveal about Downard Funeral Home During the hearing, Gabiola asked Peck for a list of mental health disorders he had been diagnosed with. Peck said he has anxiety, depression, dependent personality disorder and suicidal ideation. Gabiola had Peck give statements describing what he did on each of the charges he pleaded guilty to. As Peck began to give a statement, the prosecution objected that it was too narrative. “Things began to go bad for me when I decided to buy Downard Funeral Home,” Peck said before the objection. Lance Peck, left, in court where he has plead guilty after accepting a plea agreement. | Daniel V. Ramirez, EastIdahoNews.com When Peck spoke about the charges involving his financial records, he told the court he did not have a good understanding of how taxes work and that, as the owner of the business, he should have known better. When he spoke about the charge of providing a family with the incorrect remains, Beck admitted to never sending the remains to the family. “I was disorganized. I must have mislabeled him or lost track of him,” Peck said. “I never delivered those cremates to the family.” He told the court that after he had picked up the remains of the individual, he had taken it to a different funeral home to be cremated, as he did not have a working retort (cremation chamber). He later stated that an explosion had occurred in his retort, which required him to use other funeral homes for cremations. Peck later said that he used whiteout on transit forms instead of working with the county coroner or the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Peck is scheduled to appear before Gabiola for his sentencing at 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 11. The post Former owner of Downard Funeral Home officially pleads guilty after taking plea agreement appeared first on East Idaho News.
Source: eastidahonews.com