November 16, 2023 was the day Brandon Clay Dotson was considered for parole. Instead, the 43-year-old was found dead in an Alabama prison on Thursday, his cause of death undetermined because his heart had been removed while in state custody, according to a civil lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. . next month.
Dotson’s family “suspected foul play” led to his death at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, Alabama, according to a federal complaint obtained by PEOPLE, so they requested a second autopsy by a private pathologist. (The first autopsy has not yet been provided to the family, their attorney tells PEOPLE.)
That’s when Dr. Boris Datnow “discovered that the heart was missing from the chest cavity of Mr. Dotson’s body,” according to the complaint.
The lawsuit names dozens of defendants — including the Alabama Department of Corrections, the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences and the University of Alabama at Birmingham — alleging that they “engaged in the illegal, reprehensible and outrageous practice of withholding organs and tissue from incarcerated individuals who die in state detention without the consent of his family, next of kin or representative as required by law.” The state Department of Corrections contracts with the university for some of its autopsies.
Lauren Faraino, who represents Dotson’s mother and sister as plaintiffs, is the author of the civil suit.
“The prison system in Alabama is characterized by cruelty,” Faraino tells PEOPLE in an interview. “From the moment a person enters the Alabama Department of Corrections, they are thrown into a lawless world of beatings, rape, drugs and extortion. No other prison in the United States comes close to Alabama in terms of violence, suicides and overdoses. Now we learn that horrors do not end with death.”
In the complaint, Faraino wrote that Dotson’s incarceration “is tantamount to a death sentence.”
Brandon Clay Dotson.
Brandon Dotson’s family
In 2022, more than 260 incarcerated people died in custody in Alabama — up from just seven in a nine-month period in 2015, according to the complaint. It was the deadliest year in the history of state prisons, and the death rate was on pace until the end of the year in 2023, when Dotson died. The complaint attributed the rise in deaths to “the violent consequences of prison overcrowding and understaffing.”
Faraino tells People that the state of Alabama has entered into a pattern of “abuse of the corpses of those who die in prison,” saying the practice of unauthorized organ harvesting dates back years.
Last week, Charlene Drake filed a letter with the court, obtained by PEOPLE, alleging that the body of her father, Charles Edward Singleton — who died in custody in November 2021 — was similarly treated.
“He still had his eyes,” Drake wrote, recalling the state of her father’s body when it arrived at the funeral home. “But all the other organs are gone.”
Drake said in a letter to the court dated Jan. 3 that the warden never contacted her to approve the harvesting of her father’s organs.
PEOPLE has reached out to the attorneys listed for all the named defendants in the federal lawsuit. (Only a representative from the University of Alabama at Birmingham had responded by the end of the day Thursday. In court filings, the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences denied any wrongdoing. The Alabama Department of Corrections has not yet responded to the court.)
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In an email, university spokesman Tyler Greer told PEOPLE that the school did not perform the initial autopsy on Mr. Dotson “and was not involved in this matter.”
Asked if the school had performed Singleton’s autopsy, as his daughter claimed in a signed letter to the court, Greer said, “We do not comment on pending litigation.”
Greer said the university is among providers in the state that “conduct autopsies on incarcerated individuals as directed by the state of Alabama” and that after an autopsy, “unless specifically requested, organs are not returned to the body.”
Greer further noted that “a board of medical ethics has reviewed and approved our protocols regarding autopsies performed on incarcerated individuals.”
In 2018, an ethics oversight committee met to discuss the university’s practices after medical students there raised concerns about the “disproportionate number” of organs they were examining from the bodies of incarcerated individuals compared to the civilian population, according to the complaint.
In a PowerPoint the students presented to school officials — reviewed by PEOPLE and an exhibit attached to the case — the students noted that the “benefits” of medical research conducted on the bodies of incarcerated people “are not evenly distributed among individual inmates.”
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Brandon Clay Dotson.
Brandon Dotson’s family
The students submitted a series of proposals to school officials, among which they noted that: “organs obtained without the consent of the patient or his family should be returned to family members” and that the school “should set a higher internal standard that organs are not withheld unless given with informed consent the patient or his family.”
The commission responded in September 2018 that the school’s “current method” of conducting autopsies remained “ethically permissible,” according to the commission’s documented response, which was also included in the court record and reviewed by PEOPLE.
Although the University of Alabama at Birmingham says they did not perform Dotson’s autopsy — a claim Faraino says “could be the case,” other state-authorized institutions to perform autopsies would likely follow the same accredited protocols described by Greer, which do not require them to return organs removed from prisoners during autopsy.
When Dotson’s family saw him lying in the casket, according to the complaint, they noticed “bruising on the back of Mr. Dotson’s neck and excessive swelling on his head.”
“The stench of his body” that had not been properly stored in the nearly week between his death and the family receiving his body “was overwhelming,” according to the complaint.
“To this day, no one has explained to the family why Mr. Dotson’s heart was missing when his body was turned over to them,” the complaint states, adding that the family still “does not know where Mr. Dotson’s heart is currently, or in whose possession.”
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Source: HIS Education