When I try to move corpse to the hand slot (doesn't matter if right or left hand is used) new copy of a corpse is created. It is not immediately obvious because new corpse occupies exactly the same spot as original one. I suspect same would happen with any other items that can't be carried in hands, though I don't know if there are any. You can see several xenonaut corpses in my saved game even though only one died.
test.sav