Kirk Bloodsworth: The First Death Row Inmate to Be Exonerated by DNA

On this day in 1984, the body of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton was found in a wooded area of Rosedale, Maryland, not far from her home. She had been raped and beaten to death with a rock. Police received witness reports of a suspicious man in the area of the crime scene and soon after released a sketch on the local news and in the local newspapers. Two weeks later, an anonymous caller identified the man in the sketches as 23-year-old ex-marine Kirk Bloodsworth. Police discovered that Bloodsworth had been in Baltimore (not too far from Rosedale) and also learned that he had told his friends that he had done something that would destroy his marriage.

With very little evidence but the phone call and his friends' anecdote, Bloodsworth was convicted of Dawn Hamilton's murder. During his 1985 trial, the prosecution presented five witnesses who claimed to have seen Bloodsworth with Hamilton. Two of these witnesses, however, could not identify Bloodsworth in a lineup and had only identified him from tv. There was also no physical evidence connecting him to the murder, but a jury disregarded this along with his alibi and sentenced Bloodsworth to death.

For the next seven years, Kirk Bloodsworth continued to proclaim his innocence. An appellate court overturned his conviction in 1987 based on the fact that the defense was never informed that the police had considered another suspect in Dawn Hamilton's death. Also, the incident that Bloodsworth told his friends would hurt his marriage turned out to be nothing more than him forgetting to buy some food that she had requested. He was subsequently retried and again convicted, this time receiving two life sentences.

In 1992, Bloodsworth read about an English case in which a murderer had been convicted by DNA evidence and another suspect had been exonerated by the same DNA evidence and knew that DNA evidence could be the key to his own freedom. As it turned out, police still had Dawn Hamilton's underwear in evidence. The DNA obtained from a semen stain proved that the perpetrator was not Kirk Bloodsworth. After the FBI confirmed the results of the DNA test, Baltimore County prosecutors, pointedly refusing to apologize, released Bloodsworth from prison on June 28, 1993 and he was later pardoned.

Even though Kirk Bloodsworth was pardoned, he would not be fully exonerated of Dawn Hamilton's murder until 2003, when additional DNA testing showed that the real perpetrator was Kimberly Shay Ruffner. Bloodsworth and Ruffner had actually served time in the same prison. Ruffner had been sent to prison just a month after Dawn Hamilton's murder, for an unrelated burglary, attempted rape and assault with intent to murder. While Bloodsworth had served as the prison librarian, he would stop and talk with Ruffner as he dropped off books to his fellow inmate's cell. In 2004, Ruffner pleaded guilty to the murder of Dawn Hamilton and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Since his exoneration, Kirk Bloodsworth has served as a program officer of the The Justice Project and has helped gain support for funding iniatives of programs aimed to help the wrongfully convicted. He also serves as a consultant on death penalty issues and helped gain repeal of Maryland's Death penalty statute.

Related Reading:

Ultimate Prison Irony

Harold Wilson, Kirk Bloodsworth and Ray Krone: We are proof that mistakes happen in death penalty cases

I was an innocent man awaiting execution: End the death penalty

Kirk Bloodworth's case has lasting impact 25 years after exoneration