Inmate Organ Harvesting Scandal Unveiled: Shocking Revelations from Alabama Prisons

TFD – Uncover the unsettling reality behind inmate organ harvesting in Alabama’s prisons. Our investigation delves into the controversy surrounding organ theft during prison autopsies and raises crucial questions about medical ethics at UAB. Stay informed and join the conversation.

Following Jim Kennedy Jr.’s death in December of last year at Harvest, Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility, his sister-in-law received an odd call from the funeral parlor in charge of getting the body ready for burial.

“Were you aware that he returned without his organs?” Sara Kennedy remembered that it was spoken. “Heart, liver. every key organ in your body. They had vanished.

Marvin Kennedy, Kennedy’s brother, stated, “He had nothing.”

A second prisoner experienced the same outcome. in the age of 85, Arthur Stapler passed away in Birmingham’s Brookwood Baptist Medical Center five months after Kennedy Jr. The Alabama Department of Corrections also manages Hamilton Aged and Infirmed Center, where he was staying.

Billy, Stapler’s son, said, “It’s like a horror movie that I can’t wake up from.” Billy found out about the missing organs after paying a private pathologist to conduct the body’s autopsy.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is one of the institutions that does autopsy for the criminal justice system. Stapler’s family didn’t learn that his brain and heart were placed in plastic viscera bags until they got in touch with them. Not all of the internal organs recovered, but the lungs and a few others did.

A US Justice Department lawsuit targets Alabama’s severely overcrowded and understaffed prisons, which house more than 26,000 inmates. The lawsuit claims the state fails to prevent violence and sexual abuse in prisons, as well as fails to provide safe conditions and protect inmates from excessive force by prison staff.

Based on a survey by the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, Alabama has the deadliest men’s jails in the nation, with a homicide rate more than seven times higher in 2019 than the national average.

Furthermore, it doesn’t seem that the state’s nightmare of mass incarceration will end with death.

According to complaints filed last week in Montgomery County Circuit Court, the relatives of five prisoners whose organs were allegedly harvested and held without their consent have made troubling charges against the state Department of Corrections and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The families’ attorney claimed the organs were kept for educational purposes.

It’s the wild west, baby. of the claims of the handling of prisoner organs inside the system, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, an associate professor at the Duke University School of Medicine and authority on prison regulations, stated that “there is no governance.”

“It’s like, the provision of health care. No benchmarks. What that health care should look like, who has bodily autonomy and who doesn’t, and who, when someone dies, acts as next of kin to people who are incarcerated – all those things are just undefined. There’s no standard and there’s no oversight.”

Lawsuits claim a prison warden has the authority to provide consent.

With 28 institutions and close to 2,000 officers, the Alabama Department of Corrections is the biggest law enforcement organization in the state.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine bills itself as one of the nation’s top academic medical centers for research, education and clinical care. One of the biggest academic hospitals in America is located there.

UAB stated it performs autopsies for the prisons department, which is “responsible for obtaining proper authorizations from the appropriate legal representative of the deceased,” in accordance with an agreement between two state entities with different missions.

In a statement, UAB stated that privacy laws prohibited it from commenting on individual autopsies. “The authorization forms not only provide permission for the autopsy, but also specifically include consent for the removal of organs or tissues for diagnostic or other testing including final disposition,” the statement said.

Regarding who eventually approves autopsies, there has been finger-pointing between the university and the prisons department.

In addition, UAB stated that while it abides by autopsy laws and responds to “incorrect and misleading assertions” regarding the operations it does for the prisons department, it does not comment “on pending or threatened litigation.

According to the statement, “UAB only performs autopsies after obtaining consent or authorization from the appropriate state official.”

While stating that it neither performs nor authorizes autopsies, the Alabama Department of Corrections declined to comment on ongoing legal matters. UAB has insisted that autopsies on prisoners are permitted by corrections.

According to a statement from the department of corrections, “The body of a deceased inmate is either transported to the University of Alabama at Birmingham or the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for autopsy, depending on several factors, including but not limited to region and whether the death is unlawful, suspicious, or unnatural.”

Lauren Faraino, an attorney based in Birmingham, stated that the families she represents in the five lawsuits have argued that none of the prisoners donated their organs, nor were their relatives contacted to obtain permission to keep the organs. She said that at least two other lawsuits were being prepared.

Rather, the lawyer claimed, a prison warden can provide consent “without limitations” for both the autopsy and the eventual disposition of an inmate’s organs thanks to UAB’s own autopsy authorization form, which CNN was able to obtain. According to her, unless instructed differently, UAB is free to preserve and discard the organs as it deems suitable.

Under an autopsy agreement between corrections and the UAB Board of Trustees dating to around 2005, the warden signs off as the “legally designated representative and therefore am legally entitled to grant permission for the completion of an autopsy and the removal of organs or tissues for further study on said inmate.”

“l do, therefore, give my permission for the performance of an autopsy including the removal of organs or tissues from said inmate for diagnostic or other testing, including final disposition thereof,” reads the autopsy authorization form.

According to a 2017 UAB Division of Autopsy publication cited in the cases, autopsies performed by the prisons department generated 23 percent of the division’s annual revenue between 2006 and 2015. According to the lawsuits, UAB is paid $2,200 for each autopsy and $100 for each toxicology test by the prisons department.

The non-profit criminal justice reform advocacy group Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice claimed that 325 deaths in Alabama jails in 2023 was a record high.

Citing data from Appleseed and the Alabama Department of Corrections, the law center recorded 1,045 deaths in state prisons between April 2019, when the DOJ released a study on prison conditions, and the end of the previous year.

The claims claimed that the defendants’ heinous misbehavior amounted to severe robbery and mutilation. Allegations against state institutions include fraud, conspiracy, negligence, unapproved body part donations, unjust enrichment, and neglecting to notify a person’s next of kin when keeping organs, among other offenses.

Medical examiners must inform the deceased person’s kin if they want to keep their organs in order to identify them or ascertain the reason or manner of death, according to a 2021 law passed in Alabama. In order to preserve organs for research or other uses, they also require the consent of the next of kin.

A bill that is presently passing the state legislature would classify a breach of the legislation as a Class C felony, carrying a maximum 10-year jail sentence.

Brendan Parent, a lawyer and the director of NYU Langone’s transplant ethics and policy research program, stated that it is “both a legal failing and a moral failing” if organs are being removed for donation for medical education, research, or any other purpose without the proper authorization.

“Just because someone was detained does not give a prison warden ownership or property rights over their body. Therefore, the laws that are in place to safeguard the family’s ability to express their preferences for donations and for burial or cremation still stand.

UAB stated that it “does not harvest organs from bodies of inmates for research” in its statement. UAB said that its pathology program is approved by the College of American Pathologists and that its faculty members are medical professionals qualified by the American Board of Pathology.

“The deceased have no voice. Consequently, there is a significant gap in telling these stories, according to Parent.

“It’s really tragic, but given these people’s vulnerability and lack of representation for their rights, it makes sense that there isn’t nearly enough oversight or attention to this.”

In 2019, the state correctional administration lacked a dependable system for monitoring in-custody deaths, according to a report from the Justice administration and the offices of the US Attorneys in Alabama. However, the study made no mention of missing organs.

At least thirty deaths were found by federal investigators but were not reported to the Justice Department. The investigation also discovered that the Alabama Department of Corrections lacked a mechanism to detect trends in the causes of death and did not keep an organized database of all autopsy results.

“We were embarrassed.”

Even in 2018, a year before the harsh federal assessment on general jail conditions, a group of UAB medical students questioned the morality of the institution’s retention of some inmate organs without consent.

In a July 2018 letter, a group of medical students expressed their concerns about the permission process for using organs from jailed prisoners in their preclinical education, to the medical school officials and the UAB hospital ethics committee.

The medical students stated in their letter, “Our concern is not with the practice of autopsy, but with the process of consent for the retention and use of tissue samples.”

“Wardens have the authority to restrict an autopsy to determining the exact cause of death, with no tissues saved for scientific or instructional purposes. However, by the Division of Autopsy director’s assessment, wardens always sign ‘no limitations’ on the form that initiates the request for autopsy. If our understanding is correct, neither the patient, nor their family, has consented to or been directly informed of the retention of tissues for teaching, education, or research.”

“Concrete evidence that the students are using some of these organs for training in medical school,” according to Faraino, who also described the letter and other meeting minutes with school authorities.

“I think we can all agree that the best medical professionals are those who are trained and have access to these organs,” stated Faraino. “We do not want pathologists and physicians to mine bodies without consent from the family.”

Speaking with CNN, two of those UAB medical students said that their pathology lab professors had recognized that many of the teaching samples used in the lab originated from prisoners, in part due to the more pronounced pathology of the inmates. The students requested anonymity because they were worried about the impact on their careers.

“It is blatantly and obviously incorrect,” remarked a pupil. “There is no interpretation of medical ethics that allows for this.”

The students reported that a disproportionate amount of the organ samples came from dead inmates. These samples had some health history and a brief biography suggesting the deceased passed away in a prison.

One kid declared, “Medical inequality is helping us.” We can learn from the fact that these people are aging more slowly, appearing sicker, and having less care given to them as they pass away. That’s meant to be our victory, right?

The students said that their complaints were eventually disregarded by the university ethics committee.

Organs are “used for the secondary purposes of teaching future physicians and thereby benefits future patients,” according to a September 2018 ethics committee answer. These specimens would be discarded and serve no purpose if such uses were prohibited. “No evidence that deceased prisoners are treated unfairly as compared with non-prisoners in the autopsy procedure,” the committee said.

The statement stated, “It is difficult to see any lack of ethics in the retention and teaching uses of once-removed organs.”

The medical students’ worries were “informed by inaccurate data and information,” according to a statement from UAB. According to the university, a group of medical ethicists examined and approved UAB’s procedures for doing autopsies on inmates.

According to UAB, its pathologists “sometimes” preserve organs for use in additional testing to establish a precise cause of death. Medical students are not taught using the organs of inmates, according to UAB.

One medical student remarked, “We felt ashamed.” “We all carried it for a long time.”

“It has continued to follow me all these years, wondering if I should or could have done more,” said an additional person.

The relatives wonder why the majority of the prisoners’ organs were missing and what UAB did with them once the surgery was finished.

“Well, we always do that.”

Jim Kennedy Jr., a 67-year-old prisoner in Alabama serving a 300-year sentence for rape, sodomy, and kidnapping, passed away on April 13, 2023. About four days after the death, a prison chaplain informed his family, as per the lawsuit.

His internal organs were missing, the funeral director informed the family. It was just the eyes left.

According to Marvin Kennedy, who had power of attorney over his brother’s matters, the organs’ retention was not approved by the family.

Marvin Kennedy criticized UAB and jail officials, saying, “They made the decisions for you or represented you without your permission in different areas.” And that’s the true painful thing.

Sara Kennedy pressed UAB and jail authorities for clarification. “I had numerous inquiries,” she remarked.

She surreptitiously filmed the six-minute phone call she had with a UAB autopsy department to request the return of her brother-in-law’s organs.

In the call that was recorded, the supervisor informed her, “This request has never been handled before.”

“To get the organs returned?” she enquired.

Indeed, we have never.

“Who buryes someone who is organless?”

“Well, we always do that.”

“We are not inclined to do that. That is not what we want to do.

“I’ll tell you something now. UAB is a teaching institution, and educational institutions never retain their organs when they perform autopsy.

“Well, we didn’t. Junior did not want that, and neither did we. We didn’t agree with the jail that his body should be turned over for research. And we’d like those organs returned,” Sara Kennedy informed the manager.

On September 23, 2023, Stapler passed away. He was serving a ten-year sentence for child sex assault at the Hamilton Aged and Infirmed Center. Congestive heart failure was stated as the cause of death in his autopsy report.

His son had engaged a private pathologist, who found that instead of organs, he had “an empty cavity.”

“There was nothing there,” Billy Stapler said.

“Nothing was present,” stated Billy Stapler.

“May I know where the remainder of his organs are located? And he informs me that these might have been discarded,” Billy Stapler recalled. “And I wonder, how do you dispose of organs? .. How come you even removed them from him?

According to his mother Susie Duncan and sister Letesha Brackins, 36-year-old Anthony Perez Brackins passed away at Limestone on June 28, 2023, when he was serving a 21-year term for armed robbery. The cause of death was listed as an accidental drug overdose.

Duncan and Brackins said that following an autopsy at UAB, a funeral home notified the family that the body had been “emptied” of all organs. Duncan claimed that her son’s organs were not incinerated. Duncan claims that he was not an organ donor and that UAB did not get her permission to keep the organs.

A UAB staff member informed a relative that it was “too late now” when Brackin’s family contacted the university to request the return of his organs, according to the lawsuit.

Kelvin Moore was 42 when he died on July 21, 2023, at Limestone. According to his family, he was convicted of attempted murder and attempted burglary and was serving a life term without the possibility of release. Three days later, a chaplain told his mother that her son had died from a fentanyl overdose, according to the lawsuit.

The mortician found that the majority of his internal organs had disappeared when his family got his body. Later, relatives removed a red viscera bag containing what UAB claimed to be his organs. The bag was buried alongside Moore.

“I refer to it as theft. Simone Moore, one of Moore’s brothers, referred to it as barbarism.

Simone Moore recalled his mother Agolia’s remarks, who was eighty-two years old: “You can’t even die no more.” People robbing and demeaning you even in death. taking use of your organs. even when one is dead.

Ray Sanchez in New York and Isabel Rosales and Chris Youd in Alabama covered this story for CNN. Sanchez wrote it.