Families and their attorneys host a news conference outside of the Montgomery County Courthouse Tuesday, February 25, 2025 after a hearing about several cases alleging the organs of people who died in prison were illegally harvested. (Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)
Families of people who died in prison fought to keep their case alive to hold both the state and the University of Alabama Birmingham accountable for retaining the organs of their loved ones without their permission.
Their attorneys sparred with litigators from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office and counsel for the university at a hearing Tuesday, arguing the case should continue toward discovery to gather more evidence.
Simone Moore is the brother of Kelvin Lamar Moore, whose organs were harvested after he died at Limestone Correctional Facility in July 2023.
“Those organs are a part of my brother’s body and a part of loved ones,” Moore said in an interview with the media after the hearing. “They do not belong to the state. Their constitutional rights have been abridged.”
At the heart of the case is an agreement made between the Alabama Department of Corrections and the university, which was contracted to perform autopsies on those who died while they were held in state prison.
Lawyers from the university and the Attorney General’s Office sought to have the case dismissed based mostly on the grounds that state agencies, including universities, have immunity from wrongdoing while performing their duties, such as autopsies in this case.
“First of all, there is absolute immunity,” said Jay Ezelle, an attorney representing the University of Alabama system at the hearing.
This immunity protection not only applies to state agencies but also to the employees acting on their behalf, they argued.
Lauren Faraino, one of the attorneys representing the families who filed suit, said that doesn’t hold water.
“They are trying to say that ‘We entered into a contract that is contrary to the law, an illegal contract, and because we did that, we protect everyone who acted illegally after that point.’ It is insanity,” she said in an interview with the media after the hearing. “We do not live in a country that protects government employees in that way.”
For roughly 60 minutes, lawyers presented aspects of Alabama statute that could pertain to the case, naming other cases that contain even a hint of the legal concepts that could apply to these lawsuits, which have been consolidated.
The families allege that ADOC and UAB illegally took custody of their loved ones’ body parts, that the two agencies conspired to confiscate the organs during the autopsies, that they committed fraud while harvesting the organs, and that they gained financially as a result, among other claims.
In several instances, the pathologist performing the autopsies harvested the organs of those who died while in prison and retained them for future use as specimens for medical students to study, according to the lawsuit. But no one informed or sought permission from the families of those who’d died, the complaints state.
Attorneys for the families say that’s illegal and so was the contract allowing UAB to perform the autopsies.
The university had been performing autopsies on those who died while in ADOC custody for a couple of decades, since 2005, according to one complaint.
A group of medical students at the UAB noticed in 2018 that a significant number of specimens they had seen during the course of their medical training came from people who died while in ADOC custody, and they investigated the matter further.
The students learned of the contract agreement between ADOC and the university and that “23% of their yearly income comes from Department of Corrections autopsies, and 29% comes from Alabama Dept of Forensic Science,” the lawsuit states.
The students also learned, according to the lawsuit, that the warden has the authority to request autopsies and can set a limit on the scope.
According to a UAB doctor, “wardens always sign ‘no limitations’ on the form which initiates the request for autopsy. Neither the patient, nor their family, has consented to the retention of tissues for teaching, education, or research,” the lawsuit states.
The medical students then presented their findings to the UAB School of Medicine Ethics Oversight Committee.
“During this meeting, the majority of the Ethics Committee members took the position that organs removed from a cadaver’s body during autopsy are used for the secondary purposes of teaching future physicians and thereby benefit future patients,” the lawsuit states.
The committee ruled that performing autopsies on those who died in prison was ethically permissible.
But none of this, Faraino said, was happening in a vacuum.
“It is happening in a state where the Department of Corrections is facing a federal lawsuit for constitutional violations,” she said. “It is happening in a state with the highest death rate in its prison across the country. It is happening in a state with the highest overdose rates within the prison system. We are talking about the Department of Corrections, which is doing no correcting, which is doing whatever it wants, which is violating the law left and right, according to the federal government.”