A bill in the Alabama Legislature seeking to prevent prisoners from being returned home without organs has moved closer to becoming law.

Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, introduced HB200 after families across the state claimed their loved ones, who died while in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections, had their organs taken out during autopsies and never returned.

England’s bill would make retaining a person’s organs without notification and consent of the person’s next of kin a Class C felony. The legislation is aimed at medical examiners.

In Alabama, a Class C felony can carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

The House Judiciary Committee passed the bill Wednesday and it will now move into the House.

Autopsies are standard for inmates who die in prison. Testimony in a January court hearing in the case of a missing heart revealed that some inmates’ bodies are sent to UAB for autopsies, while others are sent to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences.

The hearing came after one family claimed their loved one’s body was returned after an autopsy at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences missing a heart. Brandon Dotson’s family filed a lawsuit in federal court, where it’s still pending. Several witnesses from the Alabama Department of Corrections and the Department of Forensic Sciences testified at that hearing, but no one knew where the heart was.

Another woman claimed in that same lawsuit that the body of her father, who died at a different Alabama prison in a different year, was sent to a funeral home missing organs, including his brain. He had his autopsy conducted at UAB.

A spokesperson from UAB sent a lengthy statement to AL.com in response to that case, saying the university doesn’t comment on “pending or threatened litigation,” but added that UAB “only conducts autopsies after obtaining consent or authorization from the appropriate state official.”

For inmate autopsies, UAB said, the department is responsible for “obtaining proper authorizations from the appropriate legal representative of the deceased.”

“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,” said the spokesperson.

“Nevertheless, UAB can say that it does not harvest organs from bodies of inmates for research as has been reported in media reports.”

In 2018, UAB medical students worried about the process of extracting organs from people who died in custody and did not give consent. Two of those students, representing a group of 13, went before doctors that September to “seek guidance about the legal and the ethical status of this tissue procurement process and the teaching use of these specimens.”