BATON ROUGE — A state lawmaker aims to compel the Department of Corrections and other prison facilities to be more transparent about inmate deaths. 

It comes amid last year's 18 'unexpected deaths' at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center. De'Troit Draper, 30, was one of them.

"The Department of Corrections, Elayn Hunt — those people may not be responsible for why my brother was there, they may not be the people who are accountable for why he's there, but they're definitely responsible for why he hasn't come home because my brother was supposed to come home," Draper's sister, Shonasea, said. 

Draper died unexpectedly in November while serving a 20-year sentence for attempted manslaughter. 

"I have not received any clarity on what happened to De'Troit other than he had a fight or an altercation, and he collapsed in his cell," his mother, Jehane, said. 

Jehane said she got the call that he was dead hours after he was found unresponsive in his cell and brought to the hospital. 

"Why wasn't I allowed to go and see him while he was at the hospital? Because I feel like I could have been there for him, and he didn't have to be at the hospital alone."

Four months later, she still has not received the answers she needs. 

"My motherly instincts tell me something more happened...and I do not believe he passed away from natural causes due to a seizure."

According to the Drapers, the autopsy report they received simply states he died of natural causes, despite having been in a fight beforehand. 

It's something State Representative Candice Newell has seen many times from the Department of Corrections.

"Because some of the reports are stated as 'unknown causes' or some vague type of description as to the cause of death," Newell said.

Newell is bringing legislation this session to increase transparency in the death notification and reporting process. "What I hope to accomplish with this bill is that there is a uniform way of reporting injuries and deaths in prisons."

House Bill 323 will require timely notifications of a death or serious injury to an inmate's loved ones, as well as require the agencies running the prisons to make information about the cause of death publicly available. 

"I met with a mother whose son died Christmas Eve, but she did not find out about his death until, I want to say, New Year's Eve," Newell said. 

Newell said there's often a delay in reporting a death and, as with the Drapers, getting additional information is nearly impossible.

"What some coroners have done, from listening to the conversations with families, is they put the onus of providing that information on the prisons, and then of course, the prisons say no, it's the coroner's responsibility, so you have this back and forth where families are still in the limbo of knowing what happened to their relative."

According to Louisiana law, a coroner's report is public record. The Iberville coroner has repeatedly refused to provide that document related to inmate deaths at Hunt to the Investigative Unit, in case of "pending litigation." However, that exemption is only allowed for certain agencies, not a coroner's office.