By Doug McVay, editor of NewsLanc and Drug War Facts and radio commentator
I transcribed my interview with Kirk Bloodsworth, and am submitting it to you for possible use on NewsLanc.
Kirk was the first man in the US to have been convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death, only to be exonerated due to DNA evidence – evidence which eventually led to the capture and conviction of the real killer.
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “In 1984, I was an honorably discharged Marine. Never been arrested for anything in my life. I found myself, at 23 years old, facing a death sentence, and double life. I was accused of one of the most brutal crimes in state — in our state’s history, which was the state of Maryland, where I grew up as a crab fisherman. I was a fisherman, my father was a fisherman, there was fishermen in my family for many, many years. Norman Rockwell life, and it turned into a nightmare very quickly.
“This whole thing started — Dawn Hamilton was a 9 year old girl, brutally murdered, found in a wooded area near her home. And it was — a search ensued for who was last seen with her, and he was described as follows: six foot five, curly blond hair, bushy mustache, tan skin, and skinny. Well, Doug, you can look at me from that distance, and I certainly was not this robust as I am today, but I was, you know, I’m six foot tall, and my hair was as red as the ketchup that’s in front of us. So, you know, I don’t tan, because I’m a redhead, and so, you know, it was — this whole thing started by a next door neighbor, after seeing a composite sketch, called the Baltimore County Police Department in Maryland, and said, my neighbor looks like the composite sketch, and his name is Kirk. That’s how it all started.
“I was having issues with my first wife, wasn’t getting along. I was only there a month, and, everybody heard about the Dawn Hamilton murder case, it was all over the news, in the papers, there was posters and flyers on the wall, and all that stuff. It was everywhere. And, by the time I was arrested, eight months later, I was sitting on death row, in March of 1985. I was arrested on August Ninth, 1984, and by March of 1985 I was — be sitting on death row in a Maryland prison. Trial lasted about two weeks. There were several suspects that were, you know, police reports came in about this, these people, and there was one suspect that was — police report came in about him eight days before I was arrested. His name was Kimberly Shay Ruffner, who was let go two weeks before Dawn’s murder for two attempted rapes of two other little girls a year prior, the police never went back to check.
“My trial happened in February of 1985, lasted about two weeks. People pointing me out, and the prosecutor calling me a monster. Five identification witnesses against five alibi witnesses, the paper would say. Burly Marine, you know, all of a sudden he’s not skinny or blond anymore. Burly Marine with red hair, and it’s like it — everything changed. I was arrested on a Thursday, had a line-up on that coming Monday. Now, two of the five identification witnesses, who — there was five identification witnesses positively said it was me. And two of them were eight and ten years old, two little boys, and they were fishing in a pond area near where Dawn lived. And she was out playing hide and go seek, according to her sister — not her sister, her aunt that was watching her that day. And she never came back, and it was in the morning, sometime around 11 o’clock she left, 11:30 or so her friends came back and she did not.
“These two little boys said they had seen a man on the rise of a hill area, elevated position from where the pond was, with the sun behind his head. And the sun was behind, and reflecting down at the children. They didn’t see him for very long, and Dawn leading the way, this fellow walked off into the woods with her. And she was found that afternoon about 2:30, lying in a pile of leaves. That is what this honorably discharged Marine was charged with, and they sentenced me to death. There was no physical evidence in the case whatsoever, just some crazy so-called admissions they said I said, that were taken out of context. Hence the words, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
“When the trial was over, the gavel came down on my life, and the sentence was death. And the courtroom erupted in applause, give him the gas and kill him. It was a long time. I fought, from the time I was arrested til the moment I was released, I told any person, anywhere, that I was an innocent man. I used to sign my correspondence that way. Respectfully submitted, Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, A.I.M. An Innocent Man.
“I wound up going to one of the most notorious prisons in the United States back then, this is in 1985. The Maryland Penitentiary. It’s a gothic looking building, with dark granite stones, you know. Silver spires. Really, you know, so Dracula-like. They put me in this cell that I could take three steps from the back wall to the front door, touch either wall by putting my hands out like a cross and move an inch either way and I could touch the walls. Place smelled bad, you know. That three hundred pound door slammed shut, my life was over, at 24 years old, now. And, I spent a total of 8 years, 10 months, and 19 days in this place.
“Well, my case was overturned, I was retried again. Based on evidence of, exculpatory evidence that they withheld. This is the state, now, withheld this evidence of another guy. And he wasn’t the real killer, but I was entitled to that information, and so the jury, I mean, the court of appeals in Maryland said, well, he’s, he should have that. So I was retried, convicted again. They still sought the death penalty, a second time. Didn’t get it. I got double life in the end. But I went back to prison an innocent man.
“Fought, fought. Read a book. I was the prison librarian for seven and a half years, so, I read a ton of stuff. Everything from gestalt psychology to Stephen King. And Doug, don’t ask me about the gestalt book, because I have no idea what that’s about. But anyway, so, I read this book. It was called The Blooding, it was written by Joseph Wambaugh, and — you, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Wambaugh, but –”
DOUG MCVAY: “Of course. Police Story.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Right.”
DOUG MCVAY: “He’s brilliant. Choir Boys, a lot of different –”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Choir Boys, Onion Field.”
DOUG MCVAY: “Yeah, that’s — yeah.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “All of them were made into films, and, The Choir Boys, I still remember that. It was a zany film. And so, he wrote this book about the first time DNA was ever used in a criminal case. And it was about the Narborough killings over in England, and to make a long story short, they DNA tested the male population of the town to try to find this killer. This was in the early beginning. Not only did they find the real killer in the case by DNA, they also exonerated one that confessed to the murders of the Narborough children. So, within one case, they exonerated a man and convicted the real person.
“Now, that’s when my epiphany came. If it can convict you, DNA can free you too. Because they did it, right, it was right in front of me. It was apparent. So, I asked the prosecutor, I wrote her a letter, actually, her name was Ambrose. God bless her soul, she passed away a couple of years ago, but, I wrote her a letter and I said, I want to take this new thing called DNA testing and genetic fingerprinting, so I can prove my innocence once and for all. She wrote back, this is what she told me, she said, well I’m sorry, Mister Bloodsworth, but we regret to inform you that the DNA has been inadvertently destroyed.
“But, Doug, it wasn’t true. She didn’t know where it was. And it turned out to be, the evidence was in the judge’s closet in a paper bag, in a cardboard box, sitting on the floor. And there was the evidence I needed so well. So, and tragically, and this still gets me so upset, my mother passed away five months before I got out of prison. And, I was allowed to go to her funeral home, in handcuffs and shackles, for five minutes. And then, went back to prison an innocent man.
“Wrongful convictions tear people up, and it ruins everybody, from, everyone it touches, from the victims, to the defendants, and to the exonerees themselves, to the people — to the community, and it branches out like a stone in a pond. And reverberates through this thing. Anyway, my mother gave me a lot of chutzpah. And I’m using that Yiddish term because, I just — because, she was, she epitomized that, I think. She was about five foot tall, in reality she was — she was the reason I could read, you know.
“So. I was sitting in my cell, one day, and the DNA test had already been done. We found it, it was, wound up being in the judge’s closet. So we sent all that stuff to California, to Richland, California, to Doctor Edward Blake, who’s like the leading geneticist in this country for DNA testing, and asked him to test it. Half of one cell, Doug. Half of one cell saved my life. And actually, half of one cell not only saved my life, but they found DNA of this other guy’s all over the other stuff. The same DNA that didn’t, you know — that they had found, that exonerated me, was the real killer. So I kept pushing to get the DNA in the case, because I wanted to find the real killer. I don’t want this to go back.
“You would think that that would happen pretty quickly. You had a type DNA in the case, and it took ten years later. In 2003, I was sitting in my office and the phone rang, and it was the prosecutor in the Dawn Hamilton murder case, the woman who called me a monster. And said that you — we have an update on the Hamilton murder case, and we want to talk to you. And, it — and the real killer, they said we got a cold hit, and we, the real killer’s name is Kimberly Shay Ruffner. The guy that the police report came in eight days before I was arrested. And he was not six foot five, Doug, he was five foot six, and a hundred and sixty pounds. Witness identification, 78 percent of all the reasons for wrongful convictions.
“And, I finally had my freedom, and finally had justice for Dawn. And he pled guilty to her murder, was convicted on all counts of her death, and said he did it alone while he was high. The tragic thing, too, was, he was right in prison with me in a tier below me for five years and never said a word. Never said a word. And he was shorter than me by a long stretch, almost a good six inches shorter than me, I mean, he was a little guy, you know. But, remember what I was telling you about the elevated position and the kids looking up at him, at the sun?
DOUG MCVAY: “Yeah.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “It’s obvious that, you know, somebody should have looked at that. These are children, you know, they’re four feet tall, if that, and so they’re looking up at this guy and they can’t see, the sun’s behind him, it’s a brief moment. Albert Einstein said, memory is deceptive, because it’s colored by today’s events. So, whatever happened yesterday’s going to be superimposed by what happens today, versus, versus, versus, keeps going down the line, like double images in a mirror. You know? Finally, at the distance, you don’t know what you’re seeing. And, so, that’s what happened.
“I’ve been out now 23 years, and have been fighting against the death penalty and against — for criminal justice reform, which I think to repeal the death penalty is probably the first criminal justice reform we should have in your life, but, and, helping organizations like, you know, the Oregon Innocence Project, which is why I’m here today, and to support the organization and its, you know, continuation, so, I’m going to be telling my story tonight, and then I’m doing that. I’m a lucky man. I have a movie out that details this account, it’s called, it’s a documentary film, it’s called Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man. We just, people here in Oregon, a small group had screened it last night for the first time, and from all intents and purposes it was a hit, I think. At least that’s the feeling I got, and I hope it’s a hit, so go see it. It’s on iTunes, and go get it and watch An Innocent Man. And it’s Bloodsworth.”
DOUG MCVAY: “I’ve got to ask, at what point did you lose faith in the system — did you ever lose faith in the system, when you were going through this? And when?”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Well, I certainly didn’t believe in it. It wasn’t the system that got me free, it was me. I was the one that pursued the DNA testing, I was the one that asked people and the prosecutors for help. Nobody else helped me, there was no Innocence Projects in those days. It — So, I did a lot of the work. I went on a letter writing campaign, that I can honestly tell you it caused me carpal tunnel. And I was doing it all in pencil and pen, with onion skin and carbon paper, that I could get and scrounge up, so I could make copies. And I wrote everybody, from Ronald Reagan to Willie Nelson. Neither one of those guys wrote me back. But, an appellate lawyer did, and got me one of the best lawyers I ever knew. And he’s a judge now, in Washington, DC. He paid for the DNA out of his own pocket, and never asked for a dime back, and here I sit. It’s because of that effort.
“And we were, as he puts it, cosmically connected in life. He worked on death penalty cases in the south, and we really — it was just, without him, I would never be here today.”
DOUG MCVAY: “It’s so — I told you, I’m a data guy, I do numbers, so, one thing I know is that according to the FBI, we can, at best we clear just under fifty percent of all the violent crimes that are reported to police, and clear means finding someone to indict, it doesn’t mean we found anybody guilty, let alone found the guilty party, but we found somebody to indict, or pressured someone into saying sure, I did it. And, you know, property crimes is less than twenty percent, this last year was one of the best we’ve ever had, just 19 percent of property and just 50 percent — we do a little bit better with murder cases, because, you know, you’d expect, that’s a serious thing. And you’d expect them to do a better job, to try harder. And yet, you were the first exoneree, with DNA evidence. Right? Now, there’s been how many?”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “I was the first one with a capital conviction in the United States to be freed by DNA, yes. We have exonerated 156 people from death row in the United States, I think it’s even higher than that now, I think it’s 158 now. I might have misspoke, I don’t know. But let me tell you, there’s an exoneration every three days in the United States now. Every three days. And everybody says, ah, that’s all well and good, but for every exoneration every three days, there’s probably three more behind it, somewhere. And if we have death rows, I mean, man, these guys and gals are going to get executed, and, you know, so, obviously I’m against the death penalty.
“You know, you can’t tell everybody that, because they don’t think it. You know, I have people ask me all the time, are you against the death penalty, and I was like, really? You know, it’s like, but, sure. It’s, you know, if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody in America. Even Oregon.”
DOUG MCVAY: “A hundred and fifty some death row exonerees. How many people — what, how many people do you think are inside now that really shouldn’t be?”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Well, we have a prison population of 2.3 million. So, you figure it, it’s probably — if it’s one percent, that’s a jag of people. And, I don’t — somebody do the math for me real quick.”
DOUG MCVAY: “That would be twenty thousand.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “See, there you go. So — and we think it’s even higher than that, so, you know. We need to support the Oregon Innocence Project, and their programs. That is the best way. It’s a nonprofit organization, they don’t get money from the government, they need some help. And, you know, I found out today that I also helped pass what is called the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program. That’s, I just found out today, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont tweeted that it was reauthorized by the Judiciary Committee today.”
DOUG MCVAY: “Fantastic.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Yeah, that’s great. And so, he, and so I tweeted him back. You know, I don’t tweet much, but he’s one of the guys I do. And, so — and we work with people across the aisle, we work with both sides. This issue, people really want to help people, you know, kind of legislation, and this is a big thing. And so, I know some of the men, and people, that have gotten out because of the Bloodsworth grant. Thomas Haynesworth from Virginia, he was one of the, Michael Von Allmen from Kentucky, several others. And it gives grant moneys to organizations like the Innocence Project so they can hire staff attorneys, and people like Alice over here, to help them do their job, and find out those innocent people behind bars.”
DOUG MCVAY: “And, people need to realize too, that it’s not just a question of, it’s not just a question of doing justice by getting someone out. Someone’s going in for a crime they didn’t commit, that means the person who committed that crime is still out there, probably.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Absolutely, absolutely. And I am a firm believer, and a supporter of doing that. I think it’s, you know, we have a tendency to neglect that thing. And also, in the same token, victims’ family members. I think we cannot neglect them in any kind of way. And I wouldn’t want to marginalize anybody in this effort, because they need help too. The money — if we got rid of the death penalty, we could use the money and the savings to help victims’ families. So, you know, it’s a win-win, if you ask me. And it’s tragic enough, for these things to happen, but we need to put the right man in bars and convict the right people.”
DOUG MCVAY: “So, when you were released in ’93, in ’94 you were given a full pardon by Governor Schaefer based on the fact that you were innocent. They gave you some compensation for the nine years that you lost.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Yeah.”
DOUG MCVAY: “How much was that?”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Three hundred grand. It was about three dollars and some cents a day. Come to about $30,000 a year.”
DOUG MCVAY: “Yeah, 34 grand a year, barely.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Yeah, and, so …”
DOUG MCVAY: “I think the words “chump change” come to mind.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Well, no change. I mean, honestly, you know, by the time I paid the debts that I had at the time, and I gave my father some money, it was gone. And, you know, I mean, that day has passed for me, and, you know, we need some really stringent and good compensation laws in the United States. You would find this, and you probably already know this, but there is no constitutional right to innocence. As, you know, god rest his soul, Scalia had told us before he passed away, factual innocence is no reason, and I quote, to stop a death sentence properly rendered. That’s what he said, that’s not my saying, you know, he said that. And so, there is a certain part of this society that believes that’s the case. I do not. And most American people would not, because the people are the ones that sit and wait to die for something they didn’t do, not the ones that make the laws. It’s quite skewed.”
DOUG MCVAY: “So, you’re here doing some events with the Oregon Innocence Project, yeah?”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “They have a fundraiser this evening, and so I’m going out there with them and hang out, tell basically that same story, albeit in a different way, probably. I get to energize the people like Alice over here and others, to keep going and for those that support Innocence Project to keep going and never stop.”
DOUG MCVAY: “What do we need — moving forward, what do we need?”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Repeal the death penalty in the United States. Period. I mean, everywhere, wherever it’s at. Oregon too. Oregon’s got to get rid of it. So, what I’m saying is, everyone. And then the federal death penalty has to go. You know, regardless of what people think about Mrs. Clinton, Secretary Clinton, I don’t think we should keep the death penalty for anybody. And so, we should get rid of it. And, certainly, she has the right to feel the way she does, but I say that’s a big plus to do. Criminal justice reform, we need to pass laws, preservation of evidence.”
DOUG MCVAY: “Your’s was found in the –”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “In the closet.”
DOUG MCVAY: “In the closet of a judge.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “In a paper bag.”
DOUG MCVAY: “That’s not exactly standard procedure.”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “You know, we shouldn’t be — evidence shouldn’t be relegated to a treasure hunt to find out whether or not, you know, you find somebody’s innocence or whether they’re going to be protected or not. And so, I — you know, I think that’s a necessity. And to have decent compensation. We need a federal compensation law in the United States, and I alluded to that a while ago. One of the things is, there needs to be a federal compensation law in the United States, and there should be one in every state in the union, but really meat and potatoes. Not — you know, really some substantial compensation, not just money at a person, but, that should be one of the first things, but, you know, housing, job placement, counseling. There’s three or four different things that need to happen, and all this is in conjunction with exonerations in the United States.
“Until that happens, you know, these people are, you know, just living day to day and don’t know where to turn, until people can’t turn anywhere. PTSD, it’s awful. So, I mean, I suffer from it, and I mean, I was diagnosed with it years ago, and I’m lucky. I worked through it, and, with counseling, but I need those kind of things, and I have to pay for that out of my pocket. So, you know, and these men and women need all the help they can get. They shouldn’t be paying for their own jewelry school. You know? [editor’s note: Kirk is studying jewelry making, and has his own business — see bloodsstones.com]
“I mean, honestly, I mean, that’s just the way I see it, it’s like, you know, when I got out, I should have been able — you know, I had to pay for my own fishing license, to go commercial fishing. I had to do all this other stuff. You know, and I’m not just trying to talk about giving a hand out, I’m talking about giving a hand up, in life, to these people. And, you know, because this could be you. You know? This could be any one of us, by god’s grace.
“And — criminal justice reform, end the death penalty first, criminal justice reform, help these exonerees. You don’t have to necessarily do it in that order, but all at the same time.
DOUG MCVAY: “Well, Kirk, I know you’ve got a lot of stuff that you need to get to. Any closing thoughts?”
KIRK BLOODSWORTH: “Support Oregon Innocence Project. Do it today. And give them a call. It will be the best money you ever spent.”
[Doug McVay note: The Oregon Innocence Project is at http://ojrc.info/oregon-innocence-project/. Information about the documentary on Kirk Bloodsworth and his experience as a death row DNA exoneree can be found at http://bloodsworthaninnocentman.com/ .]
