Court Rejects Equitable Relief In Inmate's Request To Prevent Autopsy

In Arthur v. Allen, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 58167 (SD AL, July 31, 2008), an Alabama federal district court refused to grant a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction to a death row inmate seeking to prevent the state from performing an autopsy on his body after his execution. Convicted murderer Thomas Arthur claimed the autopsy would violate his sincerely held religious beliefs. Arthur's execution date has been repeatedly delayed for over ten years as various challenges have been filed, and in 2007 his daughter unsuccessfully sought an order from the court to bar an autopsy on her father's body after his execution. (See prior posting.) The current lawsuit was filed by Arthur just days before his then-execution date (which was subsequently again delayed). The court denied Arthur's request on both equitable and statute of limitations grounds. It said:

Arthur suddenly invokes the equitable power of this Court, just two days before the scheduled execution, seeking to restrain the State, without a full hearing on the merits, from performing on autopsy on his body. The timing of this action bears the unmistakable taint of an ambush, an exercise in eleventh-hour gamesmanship with the intent to procure an unfair strategic advantage over defendants. Such conduct is the very antithesis of the equitable, diligent, good-faith, vigilant conduct required of a litigant seeking equitable relief.

In addition the court held that the statute of limitations for filing a claim under 42 USC 1983 had run, holding that even though Arthur seeks prospective relief, his cause of action accrued "not at the time of the autopsy, but when the facts which would support a cause of action should have been apparent to a person with a reasonably prudent regard for his rights."