An Alabama judge has devised a controversial new twist on the “pound of flesh” school of justice — by telling offenders that they would be sent to jail unless they gave blood.
Judge Marvin Wiggins made the offer last month to a courtroom full of offenders who had been ordered to pay fines for a variety of crimes, including assault, fraud and drug possession.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “For your consideration, there’s a blood drive outside and if you do not have any money and you don’t want to go to jail, as an option to pay it, you can give blood today.”
There was always another alternative, he explained: “The sheriff has enough handcuffs for those who do not have money.”
Dozens of offenders, many of them poor, agreed to give blood at the mobile clinic parked across the street. They were told that $100 would be taken off each of their fines and that they would be allowed to go free.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center, an activist group, has filed a complaint, alleging that Judge Wiggins committed “a violation of bodily integrity”.
Other critics say that many of the fines resulted from controversial fees charged to offenders for court proceedings and were related to cases that date from a decade or more ago.
Arthur Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at New York University, told The New York Times: “What happened is wrong in about three thousand ways.
“You’re basically sentencing someone to an invasive procedure that doesn’t benefit them and isn’t protecting the public health.”
Sara Zampierin, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that she had reviewed the records of several people who had given blood and none of them had received the promised $100 credit.
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The case became more controversial still when it emerged that the blood bank to which the offenders had donated was recently ordered to pay $4 million in compensation for an HIV-tainted blood transfusion.
Most of the collected blood was later thrown away. The company that collected it said that it would not accept donations that were made to settle a fine “because it is potentially an unacceptable incentive for a volunteer donor”.
According to the American Bar Association, blood that has been donated in exchange for compensation is labelled “paid” and hospitals usually refuse to use such blood for transfusions.