Brandon Clay Dotson.Photo:family of Brandon Dotson
family of Brandon Dotson
November 16, 2023 was the day Brandon Clay Dotson was being considered for parole release. Instead, that Thursday the 43-year-old was found dead inside an Alabama prison, his cause of death undeterminable because his heart was removed while in the state’s custody, according to a civil complaint filed in the Northern District of Alabama’s United States District Court the following month.
That’s when Dr. Boris Datnow “discovered that the heart was missing from the chest cavity of Mr. Dotson’s body,” per the complaint.
Lauren Faraino, who represents Dotson’s mother and sister as the plaintiffs, authored the civil complaint.
In the complaint, Faraino wrote Dotson’s incarceration was “tantamount to a death sentence.”
Brandon Clay Dotson.family of Brandon Dotson
Faraino tells People that the state of Alabama has fallen into a pattern of “abusing the corpses of those who die in prison custody,” saying the practice of unauthorized organ removal dates back years.
“He still had his eyes,” Drake wrote, recalling the state of her father’s body when it arrived at the funeral home. “But all other organs were gone.”
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In an email, university spokesperson Tyler Greer told PEOPLE the school had not performed Mr. Dotson’s initial autopsy “and has not been involved with this matter.”
When asked if the school had conducted Singleton’s autopsy, as his daughter had claimed in a signed letter to the court, Greer responded: “We do not comment on pending litigation.”
Greer said that the university is among providers in the state that “conduct autopsies of incarcerated persons at the direction of the State of Alabama” and that following the autopsy “unless specifically requested, organs are not returned to the body.”
Greer additionally noted that “a panel of medical ethicists reviewed and endorsed our protocols regarding autopsies conducted for incarcerated persons.”
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 civilian populations, per the complaint.
The students submitted a series of suggestions to school officials, among them noting that: “organs obtained without consent from the patient or their family should be returned to family members” and that the school “should set a higher internal standard that organs are not retained unless given with informed consent from the patient or their families.”
When Dotson’s family saw him lying in his casket, per the complaint, they noticed “bruising on the back of Mr. Dotson’s neck and excessive swelling across his head."
“The stench of his body” which had not been properly stored in the nearly a week between his death and the family receiving his body “was overwhelming,” per the complaint.
“To date, 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 “do not know where Mr. Dotson’s heart currently is, or in whose possession.”
source: people.com
