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Kirk Bloodsworth
Wrongly convicted man
speaks of legal system ills
By Nicole Trobaugh, Indiana
Statesman, April 15, 2005
The moral of the story was
clear: "The sum of us is within one of us, and we all can
be powerful," said Kirk Bloodsworth, the first man to be
exonerated as a result of DNA evidence.
Bloodsworth spoke to a group
of about 150 students and faculty members in Dede II Thursday
as part of Human Rights Day.
A former Marine, Bloodsworth
was accused of raping and murdering nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton
in 1984. Hamilton, who had been playing hide-and-go-seek in the
woods near her home, was found beaten, raped and murdered.
On March 8, 1985, Bloodsworth
was found guilty of sexual assault, rape and first-degree premeditated
murder and was sentenced to death.
After the sentence was read,
people shouted, "Kill him!" as he was taken out of
the courtroom.
Life in prison at the Maryland
Penitentiary was not easy, Bloodsworth said.
"[It] was like a dream
that I was going to wake up from the next morning," Bloodsworth
said. "... The first night I crawled under the bunk and
cried myself to sleep."
He spoke of one night in particular
when the power went out in the prison, one example of the prison's
poor living conditions.
"It was so pitch black;
I couldn't see my hand in front of my face," Bloodsworth
said. "I felt things falling on me that I assumed to be
paint peeling off of the ceiling."
It wasn't until the power returned
that Bloodsworth saw the "sea of cockroaches" on the
ceiling of his cell.
"There were literally
thousands of them," he said.
He had to put wads of toilet
paper in his ears to keep the cockroaches from going in and laying
eggs.
While in prison, many inmates
threatened to harm Bloodsworth for the crime he had been accused
of.
"Every night I heard through
the vent 'We're going to get you Kirk. We're going to do you
like you did to that little girl,'" he said.
While in prison, Bloodsworth
did a lot of reading. Little did he know that reading would eventually
help him gain his freedom.
One of the many books that
Bloodsworth read while in prison was "The Blooding"
by Joseph Wambaugh. The book provided a detailed account of the
Narborough slayings and the DNA fingerprinting revolution that
led to the capture of the murderer.
"It was then that I had
an epiphany," Bloodsworth said.
In 1989, he started a campaign
to get testing in order to prove that he was not the murderer
of Dawn Hamilton. This prompted a second trial.
During the second trial, it
was found that the prosecutors were withholding two suspects
that fit the description of the murderer. As a result, the case
was overturned.
"The first suspect showed
up at a psychiatric hospital with scratches on his face about
thirty minutes after the murder had been committed saying he
had a problem with a little girl," Bloodsworth said.
After four years of making
phone calls and campaigning to have DNA tests run, Bloodsworth
stepped out of the Maryland Penitentiary June 28, 1993 a free
man.
Choking back tears, Bloodsworth
recounted his ordeal.
"My journey was not without
loss. My mother died five months before I got out. My best friend
committed suicide," he said.
"I didn't get to see my
family during any of that, I just went back to prison."
The day he was set free, he
stepped outside to a swarm of reporters, cameras and a limousine.
"People had been dedicating
songs to me on the radio, such as 'The Innocent Man' by Billy
Joel," he said.
Fighting back tears once again,
Bloodsworth spoke of the feeling of finally being free.
"They asked me if I wanted
any particular song played, and I wanted them to play 'Civil
War' by Guns and Roses," he said. "I just couldn't
believe that after all this time, people finally believed me."
Though he was happy to be free,
life was still rough for Bloodsworth. He would receive death
threats over the phone, and would walk outside to find the words
"child murderer" and "child killer" wrote
onto the hood of his truck.
A man once came to his door
and asked Bloodsworth if he was the man that had been on TV.
"Yes, that's me,"
Bloodsworth said.
The man responded, "We
don't want your kind in the neighborhood."
Bloodsworth eventually found
out who the killer was: A man named Kimberly Shay Ruffner, whom
Bloodsworth had known while in prison.
"He never would look me
in the eye," he said.
Since the real murderer has
been found, Bloodsworth has received $300,000 for "loss
of wages" and what he termed an "anti-apology"
from the prosecuting attorney.
Ruffner was sentenced to life
in prison, which will begin when he is 75 years old and his current
sentence is served.
"Death isn't really the
ultimate punishment," Bloodsworth said. "He will have
to live the way I lived during those eight years for the rest
of his life. That punishment is far greater."
When the real murderer was
caught, Bloodsworth said he felt as though the world had been
lifted off his shoulders.
His wife, Brenda Bloodsworth,
said they are trying to make a change.
"It can happen to anyone,"
she said. "All they have to do is point that finger."
Brenda Bloodsworth identified
the goal as changing the justice system.
"It's not only wrong,
it's broken and it needs to be fixed," she said. "Hopefully
the kids in here can help change that."
From the Innocence Project website
Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted
in March of 1985 for the brutal killing and sexual assault of
a nine year old girl. The victim was found dead in July of 1984.
She had been strangled, raped, and beaten with a rock. Bloodsworth
was arrested based on an anonymous call telling police that he
was seen with the victim that day and an identification made
by a witness from a police sketch that was based on the recollections
of five eyewitnesses. At trial, all five witnesses testified
that they had seen Bloodsworth with the victim. Also presented
at trial was testimony that Bloodsworth had said that he had
done something terrible that day that would affect his relationship
with his wife. Additionally, he mentioned a bloody rock during
the investigation. A shoe impression found near the victim matched
his size.
This evidence was challenged
in Bloodsworth's appeals, which asserted that the bloody rock
was mentioned because the police showed him a rock during the
interrogation. The incident he mentioned regarding his wife amounted
to his failure to buy the food she had requested. Moreover, the
police failed to inform the defense that there may have been
another suspect. Bloodsworth's conviction was overturned by the
appellate court and he was retried. This time, he was convicted
and sentenced to two life terms, to run consecutively.
In 1992, the prosecution agreed
to DNA testing to be performed by Forensic Science Associates.
The victim's shorts and underwear, a stick found at the scene,
and an autopsy slide were compared against the blood standards
of the victim and Bloodsworth. Using PCR based DNA testing, FSA
determined that the amount of spermatozoa on the slide was insufficient
for testing. Testing on the panties excluded Bloodsworth. Replicate
testing performed by the FBI yielded the same results.
Bloodsworth was released from
prison in June 1993 and pardoned in December 1993. He had spent
over eight years in prison, two of those years facing execution.
Bloodsworth also became the
first person to be exonerated from death row through postconviction
DNA testing. The recent introduction of the Innocence Protection
Act of 2003 establishes the Kirk Bloodsworth Postconviction DNA
Testing Program, which will provide funding for testing under
the act. To learn more about the IPA and to read Bloodsworth's
remarks on the bill, please visit our Legislation section.
Death Penalty Controversy
(from Oprah)
Kirk "I was in total shock.
I couldn't believe that all these people were saying I was a
brutal murderer."
Kirk Bloodsworth is one of
a small but disturbing number of innocent people who were released
from death row after being wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted
and wrongfully sentenced to die. Had he not been his own best
advocate...had DNA testing not been available, he might be dead
today.
In 1984, Kirk, an ex-Marine
with no criminal history, was arrested for the brutal rape and
murder of a 9 year-old girl. The nightmare began after one of
his neighbors thought Kirk looked like the man in the composite
sketch he had seen on TV. The man described was over 6 feet tall,
thin and blond. Kirk didn't come close to that description. He
believes prosecutors were so determined to solve the case that
they refused to listen to the truth. In 1985, Kirk listened in
horror as he was sentenced to death.
Kirk spent the next 2 years
on death row in a prison cell below the gas chamber. Somehow
he found the inner strength to move past anger. He focused on
fighting to prove his innocence. He wrote letters, called people-anything
to get people to listen. He would not give up. Eventually he
won a new trial and was sentenced to life without parole.
Reading became Kirk's only
comfort-it proved to be the key to his release. Reading a crime
story, he learned about DNA testing and demanded to be tested.
The DNA test proved he could
not have committed the murder. He was finally freed after nearly
9 years in prison. Kirk's mother, his biggest supporter, was
not there for his release-she died only 5 months before. Since
his release, Kirk has dedicated his life to ending the death
penalty. He says the fact that he was innocent kept his spirit
alive. The real tragedy, Kirk says, is that a little girl lost
her life, and, after 17 years, her killer is still roaming free.
Find out more about Kirk's
case and other wrongful conviction issues at www.thejusticeproject.org.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
