Deceased Alabama Inmates Returned Home Without Organs, Heart, And Their Families Demand Answers
The State Department of Corrections and the University of Alabama at Birmingham are being accused of removing deceased inmate's organs and keeping them without consent.
Last week, the families of five inmates whose organs were removed filed a lawsuit, according to CNN, in Montgomery County Circuit Court. A lawyer for the families claims their loved one's organs were retained for teaching purposes.
"It's the wild, wild west. There's no governance," Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, an expert on prison standards, said about the state's current standards. "The wild, wild west. There's no governance."
"It's like, the provision of health care. No standards. What that health care should look like, who has bodily autonomy and who doesn't, and who, when someone dies, acts as next of kin to people who are incarcerated - all those things are just undefined," she said. "There's no standard and there's no oversight."
The family of Brandon Clay Dotson, who died in a state prison in November 2023, filed a federal lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Corrections. His estate alleges his heart was missing and his body was already decomposing when his remains were returned to his family.
The lawsuit alleges the "Defendants' outrageous and inexcusable mishandling of the deceased's body amounts to a reprehensible violation of human dignity and common decency." They added how "their appalling misconduct is nothing short of grave robbery and mutilation."
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Alabama's overcrowded and understaffed prisons are also the defendants of a US Justice Department lawsuit that claims the state fails to prevent violence and abuse behind bars. The lawsuit alleges the prisons do not protect inmates from excessive force by prison staff or provide safe conditions.
Alabama's men's prisons are also the country's deadliest, with a homicide rate in 2019 more than seven times higher than the national average, according to a report by the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative.
