Lawsuit alleging Alabama officials illegally harvested inmates' organs
can proceed, judge rules
[April 12, 2025]
By SAFIYAH RIDDLE
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A lawsuit that accuses Alabama prisons of
illegally harvesting the organs of people who died while incarcerated
will be allowed to proceed, a state judge ruled on Tuesday.
The consolidated lawsuits filed by eight families alleges that the
Alabama Department of Corrections illegally allowed the University of
Alabama at Birmingham to study the organs of their deceased incarcerated
relatives without the consent of the next of kin. The families say that
the public entities intentionally hid their misconduct.
Alabama Circuit Court Judge J.R. Gaines denied the defendant's motion to
dismiss the case based on state immunity, which protects state officials
from lawsuits if they are acting within their official capacities.
Lawyers for the defense argued that the Alabama Department of
Corrections and the University of Alabama at Birmingham had a contract
authorizing the autopsies. Because the contract was between two state
entities, the defense argued, it was protected by state immunity.
Gaines wrote that immunity doesn’t apply if their actions violate the
law or when they act “willfully, maliciously, fraudulently, in bad
faith, beyond their authority or under a mistaken interpretation of the
law."
Gaines also said that the statute of limitations doesn’t apply for
inmates who died more than two years ago if the defendants attempted to
fraudulently conceal the alleged crimes.
Attorneys for the defendants did not respond to an emailed request for
comment.
Lawyers for the families argued that the contract itself was illegal.
They cited a state law that prohibits medical examiners from keeping
organs without the consent of the next of kin.
“We are encouraged to see our legal system affirm that no one is above
accountability,” said Lauren Faraino, an attorney representing all eight
families. “What our clients seek is recognition that harm occurred and a
path forward rooted in responsibility and truth.”
After a February hearing, Faraino said the allegedly illegal practice
represented a “pattern.” Two more families have also filed separate
lawsuits with similar allegations in Jefferson and Barbour counties.
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Family members of Kelvin Moore attended a hearing in February about
the state's immunity motion. Moore died in 2023 in Limestone
Correctional Facility in northern Alabama.
After Moore's body was returned without his organs, Moore's family
drove four hours to the University of Alabama at Birmingham and
picked up a sealed red bag containing what they were told was their
brother’s remains. They buried the bag along with the rest of his
body.
“You’re robbing the deceased. We’re responsible for laying them to
rest. We probably can never lay Kelvin to rest now,” said Kelvin
Moore's brother Simone Moore.
Between 2006 and 2015, the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s
Division of Autopsy got 23% of their yearly income from the
Department of Corrections autopsies and 29% from the state’s
department of forensic sciences, according to a study presented to
the Ethics Oversight Committee in 2018 by former medical students.
The study was entered as evidence by the lawyers suing the state.
The medical students wrote that the organs of formerly incarcerated
people were considered especially useful to study because the
diseases were often more severe because of the lack of medical
attention in prisons.
In other words, lawyers for the families wrote in a complaint, “it
is easier to study a 3 cm tumor than a 3 mm one.”
One of the reports authored by the former students said that a third
of the samples in the lab that studied lungs were from dead
incarcerated people, the court filing said.
“If this was occurring at a local hospital, if this was occurring at
a local funeral home, the AG’s office would be investigating it, not
using their lawyers to defend it,” Michael Strickland, an attorney
for the families, said in February.
The next hearing is on May 6.
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