Focus 580; Bloodsworth: the True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by Dna

Good morning and welcome back to the second hour of focus 580 This is our morning talk program My name's David Inge. Glad to have you with us producing the program Harriet Williamson Travice Stansell Martha deal. And at the controls this morning Henry Frayne this morning will be talking in this first part of the show with Tim Junkin and we'll be talking about what is kind of a milestone in the history of criminal law here in the United States and it concerns the case of a man who was sentenced to death back in 1984 for the rape and murder of a young girl. His name is Kirk Bloodsworth at the time. He said that he was not guilty of this crime and continued to maintain that after he found himself on death row. He did everything he could to try to enforce his claim that he was not guilty. Did a lot of reading in the prison library and then came across a book in which he found something that he hoped would help him. It was a book about a new kind of scientific evidence that had been used in Britain and. Thought

that perhaps that might help clear him. He found an attorney who was willing to get this test done and in fact it did show that he was not guilty. And so with that Kirk Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate in the United States to be exonerated by DNA. If you're interested in reading more on this story you can look for the book that will be talking about here this morning it's entitled Bloodsworth and it's published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill by our guest Tim Johnson. He is a novelist. He's written essays and reviews that have been published in a number of places including the Baltimore Sun Washingtonian magazine and Chesapeake Life magazine he grew up in Washington D.C. went to school at Georgetown University Law School began his legal career as a District of Columbia Public Defender and then also went on to be a lawyer in private practice he's taught at the writers Center at Georgetown University. Also Harvard Law School and American University and he's talking with us this morning

by telephone and as we talk questions certainly are welcome the number here in Champaign Urbana where we are 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so at any point here people have questions. They're certainly welcome. Call Mr. Jenkins Hello. Hi David and thank you for having me. Well thanks very much for talking with us. How is it that you became interested in this story. Well I was a public defender I got I was interested in and worked on some death penalty cases back in the late 70s and early 80s. And then I after I started my writing career after on my second novel I was looking around and I wanted to do a nonfiction project and I had I actually heard about Kirk Bloodsworth about 20 years before I'd heard about it when it first occurred and the whole thing just didn't compute to me I had spent a year as a waterman myself and I sort of knew people in that

culture and maybe it's a little idealistic but it just didn't make sense and that a person who lived off the water and had that kind of ethic would be guilty of this was a terrible horrendous rape and murder of a 9 year old child and I remember hearing about it and then I sort of lost track of the story and then a few years ago I picked up the thread I saw a piece in The Washington Post about Kirk and some of the problems he was having once he got out of prison and I. You know I realized he was a Chesapeake Bay Water man it was something that I knew about my first book was called the waterman and is about the people who live off the bay and and I also read the article that the lawyer who saved him was a man named Robert Moore and is now a judge and he's an old friend of mine so I called Bob and asked him for an introduction it just seemed like a subject that I had a lot of elements in it and I cared about the Chesapeake being a waterman and the whole death penalty story in the issue of Criminal Justice in America. And so when I approached Kirk I brought Well I brought my books with him and he read them and was very excited and we decided to work together on the book.

Well perhaps you could tell we could start by talking a little bit about the crime and what occurred. It was incredible it's an incredible story the book said the book. I mean it reads like a thriller a mystery. It's just an incredible saga and there are sort of so many stories to tell but in one thousand eighty four a young girl who is nine years old named Dawn the niece Hamilton was playing in suburban Baltimore and disappeared on a bright summer day. She she was playing she was playing near a pond and they had like over 200 police officers out scanning the area looking for her. And sadly and tragically they after about two hours they came across her body in a brush and she'd been brutally raped and murdered and tortured. And as the police scanned the area there were two young boys 10 and 7 years old who'd seen her go into the woods with a strange man. And that was the

beginning of the police investigation. It was all over the papers there was a tremendous amount of pressure to find this killer. And what the book does is it details the police investigation of the suspects that they looked at and discarded how they focused on Kirk Bloodsworth and why and and how they came to absolutely believe and convinced that he was the killer which they did. And not only were they convinced they were able to convince a jury or the prosecutors were able to convince a jury the book then takes takes the readers through that the trial witness by witness and. I think it demonstrates what a lot of people don't really appreciate which is how easy it is for an innocent person to be arrested tried convicted and perp other of course was sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber for a crime he didn't commit. He then while he was in prison. He never gave up. You know nobody would believe it already said Kirk Bloodsworth at the time was a decorated Marine discus

champion had never been arrested in his life for anything. And in prison he continued his fight to for somebody to listen to him and he got the Court of Appeals in Maryland to throw the conviction out based on prosecutorial misconduct and he was actually tried a second time second time around his parents mortgage their house put together all the money they had hired what they thought was a good criminal defense lawyer. And again he was convicted a second time. Different jury different judge same outcome. Guilty. So I mean one of the things I think one of the stories the book tells is you know how this can happen and how easy it can happen and it is so you can sort of see in retrospect the little mistakes that the that the police investigators the homicide detectives make you know one sort of building on another and how easy it was to to can to be convinced that they had this they had the killer when in fact they didn't. Well as you say what one of the first things that the police did was that they went around asking. People what they had seen on that day did they see anybody hanging around the

area of the crime and that they had this eyewitness account of these two boys saying that they had seen the little girl who was murdered go off with this man and so they sat down and as they do in police investigations they tried to develop a composite sketch based on what the boy said of who this this man was and what he looked like and then they went out and again started to canvas look at possible suspects try to find out who was around who might have done it who would fit the psychological profile and so forth. And early on they did have at least a couple of people if they thought might possibly have been the perpetrator of the crime. How is it though that they fixed on Kirk Bloodsworth as the their main suspect. Well you know I mean of course it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback and I think these these police detectives that at the time felt a tremendous amount of pressure to solve this crime because it was such a horrendous crime and of course the perpetrator could could strike again any moment in

this community. You know they had they had problems because they had first of all they had two young boys as as their best eyewitnesses. And even though there were conflicts in the two composites that they did which is pretty standard police procedure in trying to solve a crime like this they say they worked with the boys and try to create these composite drawings Well they were inconsistent. And so the police picked the one the detectives picked the one they thought was was most reliable. They had they had descriptive identifications of the perpetrator from the boys. These are inconsistent. It picked the one that they thought was the most reliable and was consistent with a composite. Then they had the FBI became involved and at that time FBI profiling was actually in its early stages and there was there happened to be a detective with the Baltimore County Police Department who had trained in put in FBI psychological profiling they they called it. And because of the sort of the horrendous nature of this crime they thought

of. It might assist the investigation to have a profile done so they did an FBI psychological profile and determined that the killer was somebody who was dominated by women by and by by a woman in his life and had some kind of innate hatred or anger or anger towards women. The profile suggested that the killer would be someone who would flee the area soon after the crime. I think sickness and I had all these different elements and it was all very speculative in those profiles are not supposed to you are not supposed to be used really to solve a crime are supposed to be used really afterwards to sort of confirm that they have the appropriate suspect. But they did that. And at the time Kirk Bloodsworth he had married a woman who was about he was in his early 20s he had married a woman who was about 10 years older than he was. He was having major marital problems his wife had left him in Cambridge and gone to Baltimore had followed her to Baltimore he was up there living in a group house it was kind of a wild scene.

They were having problems he was fed up. She had wrecked his car you nev a car he was walking. He lived about a mile away from the cot from where the crime occurred and he was walking everywhere. And finally he'd had enough and he left town and went back to Cambridge. Well as wife filed a missing persons report out of spite or for whatever reason on him and that cell his name initially came to the attention of the police. It turned out that he had a vague resemblance to the composite. It turned out that he met certain aspects of the the psychological profile because he did have this 10 year old. His wife who is 10 years older than he was he was somewhat perhaps domineering or dominating. He had left town he had feigned illness with his employer you know all these things seem to fit. And the police felt that he might be you know he might be the perpetrator. So they went to Cambridge and where he was and they located him and brought him in for questioning. And then I mean all these sort of little mistakes you could see in retrospect the FBI had told the

detectives to put a pair of little girl's panties on the desk and she had been killed by they felt like a rock that was found at the crime scene and they had not leaked that information to the press. The information about the rock So yes somebody at the FBI suggested they put a pair of little girls panties on the table and a rock that resembled the murder weapon and they said if the perpetrator if it's if you get the right guy who react so they bring Kirk Bloodsworth into the interrogation room and he sees these items on the table and he does not react. So the text is take the items down and put them down. They take some Polaroid photographs of Kirk and and they leave. Well Kirk goes back and he's all upset and wound up and he's been smoking some pot. And you know he's telling everybody about how detectives brought him in and there were these and he knew about the crime everybody in Baltimore really knew about this crime could have been all over the media in the papers in the rain and the TV stations and so

forth and he was telling people about it and he was stoned and somebody said something about blood on the rock and he started on the blood on the rock well somebody calls back up to the police and said you know this guy going around and he's talking about the rock being the murder weapon and blood on the rock and the tech I think you know aha how would he know that there was that this was a bloody rock it must be the guy. So they take the photographs and they show him these two boys and one of them identifies the photograph as the stranger by the pond the other one does not. And they feel they have enough for Warren the rest Kirk Bloodsworth and all of a sudden is 23 years old his world turns upside down and he's arrested and charged with the rape and murder of a 9 year old child something that he actually knew nothing about. Did the police have any physical evidence to link him to the crime. There was physical evidence at the crime scene that was retrieved and sent to the FBI the young girl's clothes. Of course there was a weapon that was used on her. There were blood samples

hair samples and things like that. These are all sent to the FBI. By the time he got to trial the FBI reported that there were no usable semen samples that they could identify a fact which turned out to be totally erroneous. It was eventually 10 years later semen samples which were discovered on her clothing would save Kirk Bloodsworth. They reported that there were no blood samples which they could test basically by the time they got to the trial. There was no there were no there's no physical evidence that the government of the state put forward as useful one way or the other and that was one of their themes at the first trial with the physical evidence was in neutral. The defense attorney tried to you know make the point that you know none of the none of the none of the physical evidence items retrieve at the crime scene link Kirk Bloodsworth to the scene and certainly something would have or should have. But the testing of the physical evidence was extremely shoddy. So what other than one of the two boys who

identified Kirk Bloodsworth as the man that he had seen that day. What else did the prosecution have to make their case. Well there were there were a number of adults who they interviewed who saw or supposedly saw this strange man around the area of the crime the morning of the crime the crime the little girl was taken was abducted at around 11:30 a.m. so there were a number of adults from this area who reported seeing a strange man on the scene now. What the police did was when they brought Kirk Bloodsworth back to Baltimore and he was arraigned they arrested him in like 2 o'clock in the morning he didn't have a shirt he had on some shorts and a me shoes. And as they were taking him in for his arraignment they said to detective said no there's going to be a lot of press and photographers do you want me to cover your head. And Kirk Bloodsworth was you know I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not a frame where you see me out here the whole world sees me no I don't want anything on my head and the detective should have insisted because of course he is shown

all over the television all weekend in handcuffs surrounded by police. Incredibly suggestive situation and what the police do is they call the potential door witnesses and say we're going to have a lineup on Monday or Tuesday. So don't watch the television over the weekend because you're the perpetrator who we want you to view in the lineup is going to be on the television. Well of course the later comes out years later that that the witnesses of course were glued to the television. You know they go into the lineup on Monday and Tuesday and no one and when it's all Kirk Bloodsworth on the television over the weekend and just of what you know happen to identify him as the perpetrator there were also adults who went to the lineup and the curveballs who were listening to the did not see the strange man who was by the pond in the lineup. But they were not very convincing to them. By the time the case went to trial. Our guest in this part of focus 580 Tim Junkin he is both a lawyer and ward winning novelist who makes his home in Maryland. He's the author of the book Bloodsworth the subtitle is The True Story of the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA it's published by Algonquin Books of

Chapel Hill. And indeed it is the story of this man Kirk Bloodsworth who was charged with murder back in 1980 for was tried found guilty convicted sent to death row and eventually based on DNA evidence was exonerated. And as I say he was the first first death row inmate in the United States exonerated by DNA. Questions welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. He right from the very beginning maintained that he was not guilty and his family tried to go out and hire him a lawyer and they found a lawyer who said that he would represent Kirk but said it would cost $100000. His family initially managed to get together some money to hire the lawyer and have him do some work. But eventually I got to the point where they said we don't have the money and the lawyer I'm sure said well I'm sorry I can't do this without being paid and they ended up he ended up being represented by a public defender.

Given the all of the questions that we've raised you wonder if he had had better representation than that first trial do you think it's possible that he might have been found guilty. Well you know I mean one of the one of the things that the book does I think is it's really charged the sort of the the horrifying Odyssey of a family thrown into the situation. And this is not a this is not a sophisticated particularly educated family I mean Kirk's father was a waterman. You know his family are just big they want him and he did not even have a high school education at the time and they don't know you know it's the they don't know what to do in the situation do you. You mortgage your house and take everything you own. Her father was was ex-military believed in authority and here all of the authorities are telling him his son did this horrendous crime his son is you know sitting there they can't even touch each other in the in in the way that the prison cells work they had to talk by telephone they're crying you know with each other and I didn't do this dad believe me an incredibly difficult you know traumatic

time for them. You know whether whether you know of a very skilled lawyer could save Kirk in the first trial I think it's very possible I mean the lawyers who represented Kirk were appointed by the Public Defender Service actually. And they did their best I don't know I don't think there are. You know I try not to find any particular villains in this story. I mean I don't think the legal representation was excellent my any means but. I think it's very difficult when you have a crime like this when you have a 9 year old child who is raped and murdered and you have a jury and the pressure on the jury the jury knows that the police think he did it. They know that the prosecutors think he did it. And if there's any chance he did it. Do they want to let him back into the community it's a very difficult kind of a crime. To defend yourself from because the there's so much sort of leverage and force in place and so much of I think any unconscious desire to get the killer and get them off the streets. So it's you know it's difficult to say I think the representation could have been a lot better for

sure. But I'm not sure what the outcome would have been. I think I think a very good lawyer might have gotten him off but it's difficult to say. Well it's it's it's it's interesting that here for the prosecution that their case was really built on eyewitness accounts that has people saying from one of the two boys to other people saying yes this this guy right here who's sitting in the courtroom Kirk Bloodsworth he was the person that I saw on that day. And one of the things that we've come to understand. It is that eyewitness accounts are notoriously reliable and that here that was really the only thing that the prosecution had you wonder well would it have been possible at that time for attorney to challenge the notion that yes this person in good faith says this man here sitting in the courtroom is the guy that I saw. But it may well be that he is not the person that they saw. Yeah well the buck there I mean the book does discuss sort of the whole issue of eyewitness

identification and and some of the problems and issues with it and tries to explain it. And you know for the reader and I and what I think is that in the fast lane helpful way because it is a very interesting subject I think and yet you get so many crimes even today where the only potential proof or evidence must come from an eyewitness. So I think it's important people understand just how potentially fallible eyewitness testimony can be in some of the factors that make it so. He was Kirk was convicted. This was in the spring of nineteen eighty five in 1986 his conviction was overturned and there was another trial the outcome was the same what what were the grounds on which the Court of Appeals in Maryland overturned the first conviction. There was another suspect and the police had. Some information about the suspect which suggested that he may have

committed committed the crime and they withheld that from the defense attorneys and the. The appeal was brought on a number of different issues. But the Court of Appeals Court of Appeals which is the highest court in Maryland like the Supreme Court in a lot of states found that process that there was prosecutorial misconduct because under a Supreme Court ruling called Brady prosecutors are required to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense and to do so in a timely way so that they have an opportunity to follow it up and potentially use it to try on the prosecutors failed to do this. And so the court of appeals Grant Kirk a new trial. And it was it was the case there that was that was put on by the prosecution in that second trial essentially this. They essentially melt the same case of the first time around. They did as I mentioned. The second time around his family did mortgage their house raise money and they hired a private attorney and he took a different tack on on the defense of the case and tried it a different way. Again it would be easy to

second guess him now. It was going to be very difficult to keep from the jury from the new the second jury to keep from there from them knowing that Kirk had been tried before that was that was going to come out and so they were aware of that and they were obviously convicted before so that made it even more difficult to to defend him the second time but the lawyer decided the second one he decided not to call Kirk as a witness. Not to put on his alibi witnesses he had five alibi witnesses who testified in the first trial that he wasn't anywhere near the area that he was home in his house at the time the crime occurred and the second one would not put the family didn't think they were effective in the first trial and. They're not calling a character witness Kirk Kirk had character witnesses in the first trial lawyer the what's the word the second time around. I pretty much tried to win the case by showing that the government's case was insufficient that there was a reasonable doubt. And from my interviews with with the judges I think he may have convinced a judge who tried the second

case that there was every reasonable doubt as to what a Kirk Bloodsworth was guilty but he was not not able to convince a jury of that. The jury came back they deliberated for a good while longer the second time but they came back again with a guilty verdict. That was in 87 and it was in 1993 that finally we had the the DNA exonerations So in this intervening period what sort of things before we get to the story and I want to ask you the story about how it is that he had even occurred to him that such a thing was possible the DNA test. What sort of things did and did he do during the time that he was on death row. Did he do anything to try to. Get his get his case reheard or get us to get attention to it. Was there anything that he could do. Well a good part of the book describes his experiences in prison and I think that's really one of the most incredible parts of the book an incredible part of the story. Kirk went to the south wing of the Maryland penitentiary which at the time was one of the most violent Tory's

prisons in America. And you can imagine being thrown in a place like that being branded as a child rapist and child murderer. I mean he was a big X on his back. And the stories of what happened to him in prison what he had to do to survive the bond he forged with the most unlikely characters who helped him survive the incredible violence that he had to endure and deal with the whole prison culture I think is amazing and. During that time Kirk. I mean he I think he eventually came across to people in the prison as that exceptional inmate You know every person who goes to prison says they're innocent. But I think people are going to realize and appreciate that there was something really different about him. You never stopped every single day of his life in prison he wrote letters to somebody or to several people protesting his innocence he signed everyone Kirk Bloodsworth a period I period am an innocent man. And he wrote thousands of letters over his years in prison

never stopped you know trying to convince people that he was innocent I mean he had they sent psychiatrist into the prison that told him if he would just acknowledge his guilt that he might do better with the parole board and get his sentence cut you know things like that and he refused to do that for a while he got into drugs in prison trying to you know trying to just forget and lose and I think bury him self you know into some of the reality he got heavily in debt in prison which was a very dangerous thing to do because people are so violent there and he witnessed and was involved in several acts of violence in the prison which was he just had to do to survive. I mean it's really an incredible story but. Eventually his appeals were exhausted and it looked like it was nothing nothing. No hope for him and he was through one of the public defenders never stop trying to help him. Kirk was put on to a lawyer who worked with death row inmates name Robert Moore and is now in D.C. Superior Court judge and met Kirk and believed him believed he was innocent

and just right away something clicked and began trying to work a miracle for Kirk and it was around that time that Kirk read this book by Joseph Wambaugh the California crime writer and won by had written about the first use of DNA in a murder which occurred in Great Britain and Kirk wrote about it and Mora knew about DNA but at the time you have to remember the FBI come and testified there was no semen there was no testable blood there was no there was no biological material to test for DNA. And yet. Kirk wouldn't let it go when he convinced him. Warrant to go search for the for the evidence and pull in there. This story is like little miracles after Little miracles the one of them was the second judge was so disturbed at the verdict that he kept the evidence the girl's clothing in a closet in his chambers because he knew it was going to be destroyed he thought one day it might be if somebody might want to take a look at it. And so nine years or so or eight years after his conviction when Bob Moore got involved he

actually tracked down the little girl's clothing in this judge's closet and they were able to find it and he was able to convince the court to allow it to be sent for a DNA test and that was the beginning of Kirk's Walk to Freedom. How would how is it that you tell the story the fact that the FBI said that there was no semen to be tested. And that in fact they found it when they said it to be tested that there were there was and that it was tested and that the DNA test ruled out. Kirk Bloodsworth as being the the perpetrator. How is it that that the authorities initially managed to miss the fact that there was this evidence there in the first place. That's oh that's that question is mind boggling and impossible to answer I mean I I spent I had many conversations with Dr. Edward Blake who was one of the leading DNA scientists at the time in the early 90s on California and he did the tests in this case. And I know he's had a lot of issues with the FBI.

But you know he told me that he's been involved in in case after case after case where the FBI testing was incredibly incompetent if not criminally just negligent. So I you know I don't have any firsthand knowledge of that but I do know in this particular case the FBI agent came into court took an oath showed the paintings to the jury and told them told the jury there was no identifiable semen on the panties. And yet he driv he had drawn himself an arrow a black arrow to a spot and a year later when Dr. Blake got all the Panny there was a huge semen spot right at the end of that arrow and plenty of semen for him to take it lifted and do under under modern protocols at the time doing a DNA test which was later verified by the FBI which totally excluded Kirk Bloodsworth. And so based on that he was released based on that he was exonerated in 1903. He walked out of prison. And yet the prosecutors even at even at at that time refused to acknowledge he was innocent.

And another 10 year battle an incredible story of what occurred went on from 93 to 0 3 as Kirk Bloodsworth fought to try to actually identify the real murderer of this little girl. He felt that he was sort of joined at the hip with her I think and by the time he got out he wasn't going to rest until he actually found the actual killer. Our guest in this part of focus 580 is Tim Junkin He's the author of two novels his essays reviews have been published in Baltimore Sun Washingtonian magazine. He's a graduate of Georgetown University Law School. He was both a public defender and an attorney in private practice and he's written a book a nonfiction book about the case of Kirk Bloodsworth and the title of the book is Bloodsworth the true story of the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA. It's published by Gauguin books Chapel Hill and should be in bookstores now we have color others welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5

5. Color here is in Terre Haute in Indiana. A line for Hello. First of all I understand that you have a DNA lab only in a laboratory. OK I have a random sample. Any improvement sir. But my question was was his crime ever stronger. Well the yeah and the but I mean it's amazing some of the things that happen in this book and I hope you'll read it because it's an incredible story but it took Kirk Bloodsworth 10 years to convince the authorities to take the DNA which of course he and his lawyer moren found and put into the national code of the national database and when they did finally agree to do that they got a cold hit. And actually an absolute match on somebody who was in prison for multiple rape charges and incredibly the man who had been a fight was in the same prison two years Kirk Bloodsworth five years

old and he did he admitted eventually pled guilty to the crime. We plead guilty. Do you have any idea what percentage of people rule or first heard the program executed were actually innocent. Well since said I don't I don't know that I mean nobody knows that I know that since Kirk Bloodsworth first paved the way for death row inmates have been over a dozen people on death row have been exonerated by DNA. And I know that Barry Scheck's Innocence Project up in New York which represents just felons not necessarily death row inmates but felons in prison who I guess have questions about their their guilt. They've they've cleared I believe over 150 felons in the last you know a half dozen years or so through DNA testing that's over 150 people were found guilty and were languishing in prison so. And keep in mind the only time you can use DNA is when there is DNA. So I'm afraid

that that might speak to a sad fact about our criminal justice system if those are the ones we know about when it is no way to know how many we don't know about. I'm looking forward to reading your book keeper good work. Well you know well thanks. Call in again other people who are listening you're welcome to call with questions comments 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. As you have explained as a result of this test first there was an independent test done and the FBI did their own test. He was exonerated and then later the governor of Maryland pardoned him. But even at that point where it was determined that he was not guilty in this particular crime so the person had been charged was the wrong guy. They did not have the right guy. As you say it took something like 10 years for there to be an attempt to match the DNA from this crime with the database to try to find out who who did do it. You

would have thought that the prosecutors in this case would be interested in. And having somebody what was the case do you think that they were there were still so convinced that Kirk Bloodsworth was guilty that they they weren't they wouldn't take that other step to see well can we possibly link anybody else to this evidence. Well I think I think one of the things that this book is about is really the arrogance of people in power that the hubris that they seem to develop the sense that they that they're infallible that their decisions are always right. When Kirk was exonerated all of the witnesses that testified at the trials for the prosecution described one man taking his little girl into the woods and remarkably after Kirk was exonerated the prosecutor's office issued a statement saying that this evidence calls into question the integrity of his conviction but we're not we're not prepared to say he's innocent. They said they said maybe there were two people involved. And for Kirk This wasn't just a slap in the face period.

Finally finally prove that he was you know not involved in this crime and he goes home to Cambridge a small town. People there didn't know what DNA was they just thought that this was another you know legal quickstep or some kind of technicality he got off on. He'd come home for he go to the grocery store and come out to his pickup truck and to be signs you know child killer on the windshield and stuff like that it was just terrible. And he never stopped so he never stopped fighting to try to prove you know try to actually prove who this was the fact that the prosecutors took 10 years to put this DNA in the code of Sweyn codices the national database for DNA and as a state database in a national database but the fact that it took him 10 years to do this to me is just is incredible and inexcusable because again the perpetrator could have been walking free the perpetrator could have been in prison getting ready to be released. You know any of these things and in fact you know amazingly when they finally did and that identified him and he was in prison he would have been released. Oh. I mean that's that's sort of a very sad commentary I think and I think it's it's a it's a message it's a

lesson that people have got to want to step back and reconsider their decision and then reconsider you know they may not be right all the time even though they have the power behind them and sometimes I need to think a little harder about what they're doing. How did the family of the little girl who was murdered react first to the to the exoneration of Kirk Bloodsworth and then this this long period that went by before there was this attempt to see if they could if their physical evidence could be linked to anybody else. Well I think it's been extremely difficult on her family. Her My understanding is their mother's passed away. Her father had some difficulty with the law. I have a very troubled life since she died. He did not come to the plea and sentencing of the actual murder which occurred last March. So I haven't been able to talk to them specifically but I do understand that the whole thing has been very difficult I didn't get the sense from some of the some of the family members who were there that they feel that you

know that they understand appreciated Kirk Bloodsworth is as much a victim of this as they are and they feel for him. We have about 10 minutes left or 15 minutes left in this part of focus 580 again. Our guest is writer Tim Junkin he's a novelist. He's also authored a book this is a nonfiction book about the first American death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA Kirk Bloodsworth and the title of the book is Bloodsworth It's published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in bookstores now. If you'd like to read it and again people want to call in here talk with our guest 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. That's for Champaign Urbana. We do also have a toll free line that was good anywhere that you can hear us. Eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5. We do have a caller here up ready to go in her banner. Line number one. Hello. Yeah I really enjoyed listening to it but it just seems that no matter how many times people talk about how

prosecutors in particular are kind of you know blind to their own shortcomings it just seems like nobody ever listens. And right now you're on a public radio interview show and I was just curious. Yeah. And by the way your book I think would make a great movie. I've even got it cast in my own mind but I didn't play with it in a play what the guy but his name is going to be. McConaughey what I forget his first name Kirk Bloodsworth. Yeah. Bloodsworth Yeah. But anyway the. I'm just curious here you are you're selling your book and I would imagine and I put money on it that most of the time you're getting interviewed by people and public radio but not in the

commercial stations. Am I right. Well the books just come out this week and our actual pub dated September 9 and we have a lot of media appearances scheduled going forward to this actually the first so we'll have to see I guess we like to get in early before either before writers or get all worn out so I guess what I what I've been saying it's in the bookstores I guess technically it's not. In the bookstores yet but I would have to wait for another week I guess. It should be a can get you can get it online in Amazon or our borders and dot com and noble dot com but I think it should be in the bookstores and hopefully some of the independent final but we accede to one Joseph who. You know plays a small role in the story and his he did. He wrote The Onion Field and directed the moving and he had a bunch of books in California he's doing a screenplay on this right now so keeping our fingers crossed about a movie but we think it's got a lot of potential for that and I think it's a story that really deserves to be told I mean I'm not here to bash prosecutors prosecutors you know you know I think we try hard and do

in most of them do a very important job but it's so easy to get caught up because the way our system works in winning I think and you know the trials are an adversarial system and I was a public defender and I've been a trial lawyer for 25 years and I know exactly how it works and how it works on the subconscious and you want to win for your client you want to win through your you know for your cause and sometimes as a prosecutor it's easy to get caught up in that and to lose sight of how important it is particularly as a prosecutor to try to always be one to step back and say you know is there a question here because the stakes are so serious as to whether this person really did this. Good luck to you sir. Thank you. All right thanks for the call let's go to someone here on our toll free line in Bethany. It's line number. For a pillow. Good morning. I just got hand on this. I just like to check the spelling. You say Kirk Bloodsworth a k i r k York. You are your care. K E R E R K K and it's Bloodsworth in there. Yes yes. OK. Interesting.

I'll have to see if I can find it. All right thank you very much. While again other questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 our guest Tim junction and the book is titled Bloodsworth not yet out but soon available in the bookstore other then obviously this case has is an important case in legal history because it is as we've said it's the first time that someone on death row in the United States was exonerated by DNA So it's always got a place there. And in legal history. Are there other besides that. Are there other reasons too that you think people will remember this case. Well it's just an incredible story. Joe Lamone I sent him the manuscript originally wrote me a letter and he said for any writer this is the story of a lifetime because it's truly a I mean it's a harrowing story it's a frightening story but eventually you know it's a true it's a story of suspense and courage and ultimately of triumph. I mean one of

the most amazing things that I think about Kirk Bloodsworth is not just what he accomplished to free himself and prove who did this but as the book details what he's become since because Kirk has turned his life he's traveled around the country and around the world speaking about criminal justice. There's a bill in Congress it's named after him. I mean here is this man who was the victim of this terrible injustice and now he's become this positive credible positive force for justice just this last March. Sir Alec Jeffreys is the Brit who discovered the DNA fingerprint the way to use DNA forensically and it's incredible. You know step ups. Positive step in science and he was honored by Great Britain he received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Great Britain and they flew Kirk Bloodsworth out to London here's a Chesapeake Bay Waterman who never had a high school education and he's appearing in front of a televised audience in Great Britain of 10 million people. The stand next to surround Jeffries as he received this award I mean Kirk has become you know something I think amazing and I think the story is a it's a very uplifting story and a story that sort of gives can give everybody

hope no matter you know how bad things seem to be crashing down on a person I think the story is very uplifting and hopeful will find a readership because I believe it's a story that deserves to take wings and be heard. It was certainly when you read the stories of his experiences in prison you have to first of all think that you you would hope that that would never be you. And then just it's amazing that he could survive all those years given what life was like in a prison like that. And in a position that he was as you say he was you know I'm probably the worst in a the worst kind of crime you could have be convicted of in prison would be some kind of child. Station you know I mean I think anybody UN who reads this book as I certainly in writing it it would have to ask themselves you know would I have made it. Could I have survived this. You know where would I be because I think it's a it's a testament to his character that he did and then he sort of not only survived it but Triumph it's really quite poignant story

that we have a couple callers here we'll see if we can get him in there both on cell phones first online too. Hello good morning gentlemen how are you. Fascinating story. I guess my question is if they think I'm going to toss the whole prosecutors or court officials responsible for no narrative that they submit or evidence that they do not bring forward especially like person why can't these two guys the good things written especially during election year say that. This system but it is true. Well let's I'm going to have to put the collar back on hold their cases although a lot of noise on the line. TIM Did you hear the question. You know prosecutors and court officials enjoy immunity. Everywhere in this country are qualified immunity and you you have to I think show they're actually acting with malice or bad faith before they're subject to any kind of court action or course if they commit a

crime. So I think most most legal scholars feel that that's necessary so that they can they can do their job and operate because every time they made a decision they were subject to a civil suit would become really handcuffing the military prosecutors I think to do their job so that's just the way it is I think. Let's go to line four for another caller this is also. Yes the first question do you think that a jury have a better understanding of the accuracy of DNA testing. And my second question is do you think it's more common for an not innocent person to be convicted or for a guilty person to be set free. And in our criminal justice system the first question is I think yeah I think DNA has as well in the last 10 years. You know when when when DNA was used to exonerate Kirk was 1993 and DNA has really been around now in the criminal justice system in the United States since about 1990

or so. But I think in the last 10 years that it's accepted it's universally accepted as a very very important and accurate scientific tool so that now when DNA is is disputed in a court in courtrooms it usually you know the lab that's attacked or the whether the evidence was tampered with or things like that that was kept of the O.J. Simpson trial. But the DNA technology itself I think is is no longer really in dispute or question it's a great technology work and you know it's an amazing scientific tool both both for finding guilty people and proving people who are innocent. Second question's a lot harder to answer and I don't know the answer to that. Probably I would think of that. You know why I was raised and sort of taught in law school that it's much much worse for an innocent person to be convicted and for a guilty person to go free.

And that's why our that's what our system is based on that's why we have the standard beyond a reasonable doubt because you know we can that we can live with guilty people going free but we don't want innocent people convicted I guess that's sort of still a tenet of my belief as a as a lawyer after 25 years. But I just don't know the answer to your question. You know so many I am surprised how many guilty people are people who have been found guilty by juries have been exonerated in the last you know few years I think it's an astounding number and I think it surprised a lot of people. And I think it's very worrisome and I think that perhaps you know should should be the genesis for some changes in how we do our our jury trials and how we what kind of evidence we prove we permit and so forth. Given the fact that you you mentioned to an earlier caller the fact that you are an attorney and that you know what happens in court rooms and that some of what happened in this particular case it's not going to come to as as a surprise to you because you've had some experience in the law as a private

attorney and as a public defender But having said all that you know having spent a lot of time going over this particular case and getting to know Kirk Bloodsworth was there was there anything that you learned that you would say really was new to you that you did that in all of your legal practice you hadn't managed to understand. Well I did a lot of research for this book into the sort of history of DNA and how the DNA fingerprint developed and I think that was you know that was something that was new to me and and very interesting and I also did some history of the death and only and to use here in this country. While death row in Texas death row you know death telling around the world and that was very interesting to me. It was it wasn't particularly surprising to me to see how Kirk got convicted because I've seen you know you seen that you see this kind of scenario from time to time when you're in the in the world of criminal justice world I guess. Well one of the things I wanted to do in the book and I wasn't trying to make any commentary because the story you

know the facts are so profound and they really speak for themselves I just want to lay the facts out so that readers can understand you know how easy this is how easy this could happen and how it happened in this case and how easy it was for these people to become just convinced that Kirk Bloodsworth was a was a was a criminal and one of the reasons it was it was the perpetrator one of the reasons they became convinced was because of the dumb things he did when he was arrested. And sometimes people react and I always wince when I see these these of prosecutions where a big part of the government's case rests on you know what they think is an inappropriate reaction of somebody or something like that because when you're put in these kinds of kind of pressure cooker situations you know sometimes you do dumb things. And that's what Kirk did he did some dumb things and then they they they tried to point to those dumb things as proof he was guilty when in fact it was just proof he was scared. Well we're going to have to leave it there because we're at the end of the time again if people want to read the story the title of the book is Bloodsworth the true story of the first death row inmate

exonerated by DNA the publisher Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill officially out I think next Friday. Yeah it should be in bookstores by certainly by the end of this week by our guest. Well thanks very much Jim I appreciate you giving us some of your time. My pleasure I very much appreciate you having me.