Mom wants son’s body exhumed almost a year after he died in jail

HENRY COUNTY, Ala. (WTVY) - The mother of an inmate who died while in custody wants her son’s body exhumed, claiming to have received new information on his cause of death.

Blythe Alexander Poston died on September 18, 2024, after emergency workers rushed him from the Henry County Jail in Abbeville, Alabama, to a hospital, where he died from what authorities claimed were natural causes.

Court records show deputies arrested Poston earlier that day for methamphetamine possession.

In the suit, Cindy Watford alleges that deputies and corrections officers denied Poston, who was 30, adequate medical care and refused to take him to the hospital until it was too late, despite EMS workers discovering he suffered from a “cervical crush injury.”

The lawsuit filed in Henry County Circuit Court also claims that first responder documentation and photographs taken by the family postmortem reveal signs of trauma to Mr. Poston’s face and head, alleging that a state autopsy, which she described as “hurried and incomplete”, did not reveal those injuries.

The suit claims that his face was covered in heavy makeup for a viewing before his funeral.

Watford wants a private autopsy performed on her son’s remains, buried at Judson Baptist Church, and said she would pay all exhuming costs.

She and her family are represented by a trio of affluent South Alabama lawyers: Shaun McGhee, Derek Yarbrough, and David J. Harrison.

Henry County will respond to the lawsuit after reviewing the allegations.

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