Families seek answers after inmates' bodies returned without internal organs

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — 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.

“We should not be here. This is something out of science fiction. Any human would not believe that something so barbaric is happening,” Kelvin’s brother Simone Moore, said Tuesday.

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.

“We will be seeking more answers about what happened to these organs and where they ended up,” Lauren Faraino, an attorney representing the families said after court. Faraino said there are additional families who are affected.

In one of the lawsuits, another family said a funeral home in 2021 similarly told them that “none of the organs had been returned” with their father’s body after his death while incarcerated.

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.

UAB, in an earlier statement about the dispute, said that the Alabama Department of Corrections was “responsible for obtaining proper authorizations from the appropriate legal representative of the deceased.” “UAB does not harvest organs from bodies of inmates for research as has been reported in media reports,” the statement read.

UAB spokesperson Hannah Echols said in an emailed statement Tuesday that sometimes that organs are kept for additional testing if a pathologist believes it is needed to help determine the cause of death.

The University of Alabama System, which includes UAB, is a defendant in the lawsuits. Lawyers for the university system indicated they will file a motion to dismiss the lawsuits. UAB no longer does autopsies for the state prison system.

The Alabama Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.