Inmate Body Returned to Family With Heart Missing
Pure Speculation: Is Alabama Now Stealing and Selling Body Parts for Profit?
The family of an Alabama inmate, Brandon Dotson, who passed away in prison, was shocked when they received his body, described as “severely decomposed,” prompting them to opt for a closed casket funeral, according to a federal lawsuit filed last Thursday.
Despite completing necessary paperwork and spending five days attempting to claim Dotson’s body following his November 21 death, his daughter Audrey Marie Dotson and mother Audrey South were alarmed to discover “bruising on the back of [his] neck and excessive swelling across his head” upon the body’s arrival.
In an effort to seek answers, the family hired a pathologist to conduct an independent autopsy, revealing a disturbing detail – “the heart was missing from the chest cavity of Mr. Dotson’s body,” as stated in the lawsuit.
The family remains in the dark about the whereabouts of Dotson’s heart and the exact circumstances of his death.
The lawsuit alleges that the Alabama Department of Corrections performed an autopsy on Dotson, removing the heart, which impeded the family’s ability to determine the true cause of death through an independent autopsy.
Dotson’s mother and daughter are now seeking the immediate return of his heart for examination by an autopsy pathologist and subsequent proper cremation or interment.
Dotson, who served 19 years of a 99-year sentence for burglary and parole violation, faced alleged misconduct by prison staff that the family claims was “tantamount to a death sentence.”
The lawsuit includes claims of 8th and 14th Amendment violations, indifference to Dotson’s medical needs, conspiracies to cover up deliberate indifference, interference with the family’s burial rights, intentional and negligent mishandling of a corpse, intentional infliction of emotional distress, failure to notify next of kin, and wrongful death.
In the days leading to Dotson’s death, he reportedly informed prison staff about threats from another inmate. Allegedly, prison staff moved him from segregated housing to general population, exposing him to potential harm and drugs in the severely overcrowded Ventress Correctional Facility.
The family asserts that prison staff had opportunities to intervene but failed to prevent the abuse Dotson endured and his access to drugs.
Named defendants in the lawsuit include the Alabama Department of Corrections leadership, the warden of Ventress Correctional Facility, the director of the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, and unnamed prison employees. The University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine is also named, as it is considered a possible intended recipient of Dotson’s heart.
The lawsuit points to a history of the Alabama Department of Corrections providing “human organs and tissues” to medical students for “laboratory exercises.”
The family, seeking the return of Dotson’s heart, a jury trial, and an injunction, calls on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama to act against the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences Director Angelo Della Manna and Alabama DOC Commissioner John Q. Hamm.
The lawsuit contends that Hamm could have prevented constitutional violations in the prison, ensured the timely return of Dotson’s body to his family, and directed wardens to notify the family about the missing heart. Della Manna could have instructed medical examiners not to remove organs or tissues without next-of-kin permission.
“In the midst of grieving Brandon Dotson’s untimely death, his family is having to fight to get the most basic answers about how he died, and why the Alabama Department of Corrections returned his body without his heart,” said the family’s lawyer, Lauren Faraino. “It is the state’s responsibility to keep those who are in its prisons safe from harm. The ADOC failed to do that for Brandon, as they have for dozens of other individuals this year.” Faraino added that Dotson was not granted parole, and it is unclear whether he was notified before his death.
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