Tennessee Code Title 38. Prevention and Detection of Crime § 38-1-102

It is unlawful for any person to touch, disturb, move or remove the body, clothing, personal effects, or weapons of, at or near any person who has died or reasonably appears to have died from wounds or injuries inflicted by means of a knife, pistol, gun, or other deadly weapon, or by other means of violence, drowning, suffocation, poison, or hanging, until the immediate notification and arrival on the death scene or place where such body is found, of the chief of police, or the chief of police's lawful representative, if the body is found in an incorporated town or city, or of the sheriff or the sheriff's lawful representative, if the body is found in the county outside the corporate limits of any incorporated town or city or of the district attorney general or a member of the district attorney general's staff of the judicial district in which such body is found.