Circuit Judge Marvin Wiggins has been accused of forcing indigent defendants to choose between jail time and donating blood.

The Southern Poverty Law Center alleges Wiggins violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of people after he allegedly gave defendants in his courtroom the choice of either giving blood, paying court fees and fines or going to jail.

SPLC filed a judicial ethics complaint Monday against Wiggins, whose fourth circuit includes Dallas, Bibb, Hale, Perry and Wilcox counties.

“People who couldn’t pay their court debt with cash literally paid with their blood,” said SPLC staff attorney Sara Zampierin in a press release about the complaint. “This is a shocking disregard for not only judicial ethics but for the constitutional rights of defendants.”

Defendants who came before Wiggins’ on Sept. 17 faced various charges from murder to hunting after dark.

According to the complaint, more than 500 cases were on the Restitution Recovery Initiative for Victims in Alabama (RRIVA) docket.

The SPLC’s complaint states Wiggins threatened everyone in the courtroom with jail time if they didn’t have money to pay fines and fees or declined to donate blood.

“There’s a blood drive outside and if you don’t have any money and you don’t want to go to jail, as an option to pay for it, you can give blood today,” Wiggins was quoted as saying in court.

“If you don’t have any money, go out there and give blood and bring in a receipt indicating you gave blood. Consider that as a discount rather than putting you in jail.”

Wiggins allegedly told them, “the sheriff has enough handcuffs for those who do not have money.”

“This threat was made to every defendant who appeared in court without any process to determine their ability to pay beforehand, forcing many indigent defendants to give blood because they feared going to jail,” the complaint read.

According to the SPLC, it is not legal to put someone in jail because they don’t have the means to pay their court costs. It is only legal if it is found the defendant is willfully violating an order to pay. The complaint also stated a blood donation is not a “remedy for nonpayment.”

“Alabama does not provide for it as a punishment for any offense or for nonpayment, and it is a violation of bodily integrity to force individuals to submit to such an intrusion of their bodies,” the complaint read.

Phone calls to Judge Wiggins’ office Wednesday afternoon were not returned.

According to Sharon Carpenter, the district director for LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, 54 people registered to donate blood, but blood was only taken from 47 people.

“After receiving a complaint from one of the donors after the blood drive, we immediately initiated an investigation and the blood collected was quarantined,” Carpenter said in a statement.

“As part of our investigation, we attempted to contact each donor because the safety of the blood supply is our highest priority. In the end, we discarded 41 of 47 units collected because we couldn’t verify those donors gave voluntarily.”

Carpenter said LifeSouth believes Wiggins had good intentions to help the county’s citizens and community’s blood needs.