First American death row inmate exonerated by DNA testing shares his harrowing tale

Kirk Bloodsworth could hear what they were saying. From the defense table, charged with the sexual assault and murder of a 9-year-old girl, Bloodsworth listened to the vitriol emanating from the back of the courtroom. There’s the killer, he remembers them saying. Give him the gas.

But no one would listen to Bloodsworth, an honorably discharged Marine who repeated the same four words over and over again: I’m an innocent man.

Bloodsworth, who ultimately became the first American death row inmate exonerated by DNA testing, shared his story Thursday, Oct. 29, in a standing-room only auditorium in the Worrell Professional Center at Wake Forest University School of Law.

Following Bloodsworth’s account, a panel discussion titled “244 Wrongfully Convicted and Counting: Deconstructing Actual Innocence Cases to Identify Causes, Reforms and Remedies,” explored the causes and risk factors that contribute to wrongful convictions in the U.S. and the role that DNA testing plays in exonerating the innocent. Taking part in the discussion was Darryl Hunt, a Winston-Salem native who spent 19 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. The Wake Forest University Provost’s Office, Wake Forest School of Law, the Law School’s Innocence and Justice Clinic and Innocence Project and the Forsyth County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association sponsored the event.

Bloodsworth works as a program officer for The Justice Project in Washington, D.C., and has been an ardent supporter of the Innocence Protection Act since its introduction in Congress in February 2000. The IPA established the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program, which helps states defray the costs of post-conviction DNA testing. He has spoken about his story on numerous television shows, including “Oprah,” and “Larry King Live,” and has been featured in national publications such as the New York Times Magazine. Bloodsworth’s 20-year odyssey is chronicled by Tim Junkin in the book, “Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA.”

On July 25, 1984, the body of Dawn Hamilton was found in Baltimore County, Md. She was lying face down in a pile of rocks, her head had been crushed in with a rock and someone had stepped on her throat with so much force that the imprint of a shoe remained.

About two weeks later, sheriff’s deputies woke Bloodsworth at 2:45 a.m.

“That was the last time I saw my little small town of Cambridge, Maryland, for eight years, 11 months and 19 days … I kept telling them I was not the man they sought.

“Her life was snuffed out by a brutal killer, but it wasn’t me."

Eight months after his arrest, a jury convicted and sentenced Bloodsworth to death. Authorities -- relying partly on the description of a man seen by two boys (8 and 10) -- used a composite sketch to identify the killer, which five people identified as Bloodsworth. The boys, he said, were fishing when they saw the man, who was standing on the rise of a hill with the sun behind him. At trial, one of the boys testified that the man he saw was not in the courtroom that day. Baltimore County authorities, with assistance by the FBI, developed a profile of the killer.

In the picture they painted, said Bloodsworth, “The brushstrokes are too broad.”

From a small cell in the Maryland Penitentiary, Bloodsworth began a letter-writing campaign as he tried to regain his freedom. He penned letters to people “from Willie Nelson to President Reagan.” Neither man wrote back, Bloodsworth said.

A year after he was convicted and sentenced to death, an appeal on the grounds that evidence was withheld at the first trial resulted in a new one, though Bloodsworth was again found guilty and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

Bloodsworth got a new lawyer, public defender Robert E. Morin, and never gave up seeking his freedom. “I read and read and read,” he said, attributing his love of the written word to his mother, who died while Bloodsworth was in prison. He was allowed to view her body for five minutes but was not allowed to attend her funeral.

“I kissed her goodbye, then I went back to prison.”

One day, a guard passed a stack of books through a slot used to distribute food to the prisoners. On the bottom of the stack, under books about origami, drawing and sex – which he immediately discarded -- was Joseph Wambaugh’s “The Blooding,” which explored the relative new science of genetic fingerprinting, or DNA testing.

“I had an epiphany beyond the scope of this campus … if it can convict you, it can free you,” said Bloodsworth, who began calling Morin.

Morin told his client the DNA evidence was “inadvertently” destroyed, but Bloodsworth persuaded Morin to return to courthouse, where he was told it was in judge’s chambers, tucked away in a paper bag and placed in a closet. In 1992, the evidence was sent to a DNA lab in California.

In 1993, final reports from state and federal labs concluded that Bloodsworth’s DNA did not match any of the evidence received for testing.

He remembers an excited Morin saying, “Kirk, you’re innocent, man. You’re innocent.”

“I know that,” Bloodsworth told him.

By the time of his release, Bloodsworth had spent nearly nine years in prison, including two on death row. In September 2003, Bloodsworth got call from Baltimore County authorities, and they arranged to meet at a Burger King. They found a match in the DNA database linking the Hamilton killing to a man released from prison two weeks before the girl’s murder on charges of attempted rape. Shortly after Bloodsworth’s arrest, the man, Kimberly Shay Ruffner, was charged with another attempted rape and placed in the Maryland Penitentiary, where Bloodsworth was wrongfully imprisoned for so many years. In May 2004, Ruffner pleaded guilty to killing and sexually assaulting the girl.

“I gave this man library books and lifted weights with him, but he never said a word to me,” Bloodsworth said.

Bloodsworth likes to tell the story of his first meeting with a lawyer following his arrest. The lawyer entered the room to talk with Bloodsworth, who was separated from the attorney by a glass partition. The lawyer picked up the phone and said, “‘Kirk you’re in a lot of trouble.’ He was right about that,” Bloodsworth said.

But the lawyer assured him that he knew his way around the courtroom, and that he would do his best to help Bloodsworth. “We’re going to find our way out of here together,” Bloodsworth remembers the lawyer saying before he grabbed his briefcase, turned around and “ran right into the wall.”

“By all means,” Bloodsworth told the law students, “when you stand up, turn around and don’t run into that wall.”

-- By John Trump