Six families whose loved ones died in Alabama prisons have filed lawsuits against the commissioner of the state's department of corrections, saying their family members' bodies were returned to them missing internal organs after undergoing state-ordered autopsies.

Agolia Moore was shocked to get a call telling her that her son was found dead in an Alabama prison of a suspected drug overdose. She had spoken to him to earlier that evening and he was doing fine, talking about his hope to move into the prison’s honor dorm, Moore said.

When his body arrived at the funeral home, after undergoing a state autopsy, the undertaker told the family that the 43-year-old’s internal organs were missing. The family said they had not given permission for his organs to be retained or destroyed.

Moore said her daughter and other son drove four hours to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where the autopsy had been performed, and picked up a sealed red bag containing what they were told was their brother’s organs. They buried the bag along with him.

Six families, who had loved ones die in the state prison system, have filed lawsuits against the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections and others, saying their family members’ bodies were returned to them missing internal organs after undergoing state-ordered autopsies. The families crowded into a Montgomery courtroom Tuesday for a brief status conference in the consolidated litigation.

  • Flying Squid
    64•1 month ago

    This is worse. It’s not even for transplantation. It’s so medical students can dissect them.

    The lawsuits also state that a group of UAB medical students in 2018 became concerned that a disproportionate number of the specimens they encountered during their medical training originated from people who had died in prison. They questioned if families of incarcerated people had the same ability as other patients’ families to request that organs be returned with the body.

    I am all for medical students being able to study real human organs. That’s what voluntary donors are for.

    • @jaybone
      10•1 month ago

      It’s weird to me they are suing the department of corrections. (Which I’m sure is guilty of plenty of other crimes…) But if the autopsies are state ordered, and performed at UAB, seems like they should sue them instead.

    • @ReluctantMuskrat
      10•1 month ago

      If it’s for medical student use, I’m not sure I’d say it was worse. I’m more apt to believe the deaths aren’t suspect if this is the case, versus the organs being used in transplants. There’s a lot of money and motive for corruption with transplants. But it’s also probably an easy jump from harvesting organs without consent to give to med schools to them doing it for money and transplants. It’s all bad.

      • Flying Squid
        0•1 month ago

        I guess it’s worse to me because if it’s giving a dying person an organ, at least their life is prolonged. I realize training doctors saves lives too though.

    • @[email protected]
      9•1 month ago

      Remember that we have no idea what’s actually happening here. The prison officials would and do lie about everything. We can assume that all the missing organs were for medical research. We can assume the returned organs were actually that person’s organs. But we just don’t know. This is par for the course with the “justice” system.