"The gov’ment’s got more interest in a dead man than a live one. They’ll go hell-scrapin’ tryin’ to fin’ out who he was and how he died."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 13. Tom Joad’s makes this ironic comment about the Government being more concerned for a man after he dies, than with the people who killed him. Tom is no great respecter of the law, because it works against migrant families. Grampa Joad died because the law forced him off the land. Yet the law forbids the family burying him at the side of the road, which they do anyway.