Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA (Shannon Ravenel Books) (Hardcover)

by Tim Junkin (Author) "IN THE LATE AFTERNOON of April 27, 1993, Bob Morin sat in his law office located near the city courthouse in Washington, D.C., and stared..." (more)
Key Phrases: Kirk Bloodsworth, Dawn Hamilton, Judge Hinkel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Attorney and novelist Junkin (The Waterman) makes his nonfiction debut with the little-known story of Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, who in 1984 was falsely accused of the brutal sex murder of a nine-year-old girl in Maryland. The local authorities narrowed in quickly on Bloodsworth based on questionable eyewitness identifications, while neglecting a slew of clearly worthwhile leads. Bloodsworth was convicted and sentenced to death, before an appellate court found that the state had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense concerning the suspicious figure who had helped direct police to the child's corpse. Yet the retrial again ended with a guilty verdict, although the judge's reservations about the circumstantial evidence led him to impose two life sentences. As Junkin tells it, Bloodsworth's inner strength and determination enabled him to survive in prison and to learn of advances in DNA fingerprinting that led to his 1993 exoneration and Maryland's belated identification of the killer. While this book isn't as gripping as Randall Dale Adams's account of his escape from death row or the writings of lawyer Barry Scheck, Bloodsworth, who became an advocate for abolishing the death penalty, deserves to be better known, and the battery of mistakes that led to his lethal jeopardy should disturb any fair-minded reader on either side of the capital punishment debate.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Franz Kafka's classic novel of paranoia and persecution, The Trial (1925), conjures up visions of an unreasoning society in which "innocent persons are accused of guilt, and senseless proceedings are put in motion against them." Its protagonist is Josef K., a helpless everyman arrested and ultimately executed for an unknown crime. His last words -- "Like a dog!" -- remind us that humanity is the first victim of a totalitarian state.

The Trial is fiction; the story of Kirk Bloodsworth is not.

Tried and convicted for a sadistic murder he did not commit and then sentenced to death, Bloodsworth is an American Josef K., an icon of a system that failed him -- and justice -- at every turn. Imprisoned for nine years, he found solace and, in time, salvation through uniquely human skills: writing and reading. When he chanced upon Joseph Wambaugh's The Blooding (1989), a nonfiction account of the first use of genetic fingerprinting to solve a homicide, Bloodsworth realized that DNA analysis could also be used to clear his name. With the determined assistance of attorney Robert Morin (who is now a D.C. Superior Court judge), he ended his nightmare and opened a new chapter in the debate on capital punishment.

Tim Junkin presents this sobering and at times surreal story in Bloodsworth. Its subtitle -- The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA -- is arguable, since Bloodsworth was not on death row at the time of his release. (His death sentence had been overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals -- a cavil, perhaps, because he then received two consecutive life sentences.) Written with its namesake's participation, this brisk narrative forcefully expresses Bloodsworth's confusion, anger, frustration, despair and, ultimately, forgiveness. Junkin also strives for objectivity and factuality, particularly when revealing how right-minded people -- whether police officers or prosecutors, judges or jurors -- can make spectacularly wrong decisions that lead to the imprisonment and even the death of innocents.

On July 25, 1984, 9-year-old Dawn Venice Hamilton was violated and killed in a wooded suburb of Baltimore, not long after two boys had seen a strange man accost her. Days later, young ex-Marine Kirk Bloodsworth abandoned his alcoholic wife and troubled life in Baltimore for his hometown of Cambridge, Md. He told several people he'd done something bad. That unfortunate choice of words helped convince detectives and prosecutors that their flawed homicide investigation was righteous -- and almost sent Bloodsworth to the gas chamber. Yet his experience is not unique and should give pause to those who equate arrest with guilt and question the rights we provide those accused of crimes.

Baltimore County police were eager to take a vicious predator off the streets, but their zeal targeted one unlikely suspect -- and let a monster go free. As Junkin reveals, there was no malice, no mischief, simply a frighteningly banal collision of good intentions, lousy legwork and bureaucratic complacency.

Good police work is everything television says it is not. Cops "let the cow train the horse": following the facts rather than shaping them to fit hunches and theories. When facts prove difficult or elusive, the solution is to pursue more facts -- not to twist or ignore them, however alarming the crime.

No physical evidence tied Bloodsworth to Dawn Hamilton. His conviction was based on what police academy cadets and first-year law students know is the least reliable of all evidence: eyewitness testimony. And here that testimony was voiced by impressionable children, transformed into a dubious composite sketch and channeled through a suggestive lineup -- morphing with dire inevitability to match the man whose picture the witnesses were repeatedly shown.

Junkin also shows how Bloodsworth was victimized by a staple of today's popular entertainment: psychological profiling. Pioneered by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit and romanticized in the novels of Thomas Harris, this investigative technique proposes that crimes, particularly those involving extreme or serial violence, tell a story about their perpetrator -- one that is biographical and predictive. But detectives and even prosecutors read a premature profile of Dawn Hamilton's murderer as an indictment of Bloodsworth instead of using it as intended, to narrow the field of suspects.

Junkin's only misstep is to start this compelling account at its climax: the DNA testing that freed Bloodsworth. Without first knowing the deeply human stories of Dawn Hamilton and Kirk Bloodsworth, readers can't feel, or even begin to comprehend, the extraordinary drama of that moment.

Not surprisingly, Bloodsworth argues (as Kirk Bloodsworth has done since his release in 1993) against capital punishment -- and for the Innocence Protection Act, which would provide federal funds for DNA testing of inmates. But Bloodsworth's ordeal, however chilling, didn't implicate other discomforting facts about the death penalty: that many death-row inmates lacked effective trial counsel and that a disproportionate number of them are African-American. And it doesn't speak to whether certain crimes, like the cruel slaughter of Dawn Hamilton, deserve or even demand retribution.

Death, the civilized world's penalty for murder until the 1950s, remains on the books in 38 states and in federal and military courts. Capital punishment has divided the Supreme Court, legal scholars, philosophers, religious leaders and politicians -- and in recent years has become entangled with issues of abortion, euthanasia and bioethics.

Kirk Bloodsworth's story brings much-needed clarity to the debate. Although Americans may differ on the legality and morality of the death penalty, we can't accept a criminal justice system that makes Franz Kafka's visions real.

Reviewed by Douglas E. Winter
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book; First Edition ~1st Printing edition (October 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565124197
• ISBN-13: 978-1565124196
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #128,534 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars But for a drop of blood..., February 23, 2005

By	Alan Mills (Chicago, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is not a feel good story of how the justice system ultimately worked to save an innocent man.

This is a terrifying story of how an innocent man was found guilty of a horrendous crime, not once, but twice, with full appellate review and decent lawyering at every level. A dozen people swore over and over that they saw him near the crime scene. Several testified that he made incriminating statements. All were dead wrong. He was no where near the crime scene. He never admitted to anything. Someone else killed that little girl--and remained free for a decade (and in fact raped others while Bloodsworth sat in prison).

But for the fact that DNA analysis was perfected, Kurt Bloodsworth would still be in prison, serving a life sentence, never to see freedom again, all for a crime he had absolutely no connection with.

But for the fact that an attorney filed a routine motion to preserve evidence, evidence which everyone agreed was useless, it would have been destroyed.

But for a stubborn defense attorney who decided to retest evidence which everyone had claimed contained no useful fluids--there would have been nothing for to test for DNA.

Sure Kurt Bloodsworth is special. All of these facts happened at the same time, at the right time, to enable him to prove he was innocent. But how many others are sitting in prison proclaiming their innocence do not have this "luck"--it is hard to use the word "luck" in connection with someone who spent over a decade in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and then another decade trying to prove he was innocent (not just "not guilty.").

Anyone who reads this book will come away with an entirely different view of the criminal justice system, the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the infallibility of the police.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The real world criminal justice system, September 13, 2004

By	Steve Hall (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In spite of all he has been through, Kirk Bloodsworth is a lucky man. Wrongly convicted of a brutal crime, Bloodsworth spent nine years in prison. He is a member of a growing club of men and women, 115 at the time of this book's publication, who were sentenced to death before eventually being exonerated and cleared. The growing rolls of innocent people, exonerated and freed, is now causing reassement of how our criminal justice system works.

During an attack in the prison, his name - Kirk Noble Bloodsworth - played a role in saving him. Today, his name is known because he was the first person to spend time on death row whose exoneration came about because of DNA evidence.

This book is a roller coaster ride, and the drama doesn't let up until the very last page. In spite of his exoneration, Bloodsworth's prosecutor continued to state her belief that he was guilty. Ten years after his exoneration and release, another sample of evidence was finally tested and matched to the real murderer. Only then did Kirk Bloodsworth receive an apology from the prosecutor.

Bloodsworth now speaks on behalf of The Justice Project, and advocates passage of federal legislation, the Innocence Protection Act. Author Tim Junkin and Bloodsworth are currently involved in a wide-ranging book tour and you may get the opportunity to hear Kirk Bloodsworth in person.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A STORY FOR RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT, December 1, 2004

By	Brady Buchanan (Henderson, NV United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book has enough emotion in it to supply a host of other books. This true crime story will show you what the human being is capable of (both bad and good) in the name of Kirk Bloodsworth. He was convicted twice for the same crime and in the end it was proved without any doubt that he was innocent. He was on death row for many years and you learn all about a convict's life in prison. There were only two people responsible for him being released and that was himself with incredible persistance over years and an attorney later on who finally believed him. Hundreds of death row inmates have been released due to DNA proof, but Kirk was the first. A gripping story that makes you turn the pages.