Speaker 1: My Interview with Kirk Bludsworth originally aired on March twenty,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. Kirk, of course, was a guy who was
Speaker 1: sentenced to death and was the first DNA death row
Speaker 1: ex honery in America. His story has to be heard
Speaker 1: to believe. You may not even be able to believe
Speaker 1: it after you hear it, but it's a phenomenal story.
Speaker 1: He's a phenomenal guy. I'm happy to say that he
Speaker 1: had become very close ever since this episode aired, and
Speaker 1: even I guess before. But today Kirk is an accomplished
Speaker 1: jewelry artisan. He's an activist, a writer, and a public
Speaker 1: speaker on issues of wrongful conviction and the death penalty.
Speaker 1: He makes these incredible rings. He has ex hoonnery rings
Speaker 1: and also death row ex honery rings that so many
Speaker 1: of the ex honeries wear, And I think you'd have
Speaker 1: to ask them, but you know, I know how much
Speaker 1: it means to them to have these beautiful pieces of
Speaker 1: jewelry made by one of their own. I mean, nobody
Speaker 1: should ever have to wear that ring, but if you've
Speaker 1: been through that, I think it's a powerful statement that
Speaker 1: you can wear in your finger. In twenty nineteen, Kirk
Speaker 1: was named the interim executive director of Witness to Innocence,
Speaker 1: a group of death row exanneriees who advocate to end
Speaker 1: the death penalty and have been successful in a number
Speaker 1: of states already, so their work is phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Kirk, you're one of my heroes. Keep up the great work.
Speaker 3: With the police banging on the door, open up.
Speaker 1: The choice to be in that lineup was the last
Speaker 1: choice I made as a free man.
Speaker 2: A year later, I ended up writing the system, I'm
Speaker 2: going to be one of those people who everyone in
Speaker 2: the world is going to think as.
Speaker 4: A monster or suspect as a monster for the rest
Speaker 4: of my life, and I'm just going to have to
Speaker 4: come to peace with that.
Speaker 2: Somebody was able to look get my picture in the
Speaker 2: database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't.
Speaker 2: I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they
Speaker 2: might have to play in my hanging. They had been
Speaker 2: told that two prison officers would have to participate in
Speaker 2: my execution. Now I walked back inside that prison for
Speaker 2: the last time. Man, all hell broke loose.
Speaker 1: But welcome back to Rafel Conviction with Jason Flamm, our
Speaker 1: guest today is an extraordinary man.
Speaker 2: Kirk Bloodsworth twice.
Speaker 4: He was convicted of the nineteen eighty four murder and
Speaker 4: sexual assault of nine year old Don Hamilton.
Speaker 5: Convicted of murder, he spent nearly nine years in prison,
Speaker 5: including two on death row.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety three, DNA testing exonerated him. It was
Speaker 4: not available at the time of the nineteen eighty four crime.
Speaker 5: One advocate for abolishing the death penalty is Kirk Noble Bloodsworth,
Speaker 5: the first person whose capital conviction was ever overturned because NA.
Speaker 2: Kirk. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Glad to be here, Jason, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: When I say Kirk is an extraordinary man that takes
Speaker 1: on a number of meetings, Kirk has the distinction I
Speaker 1: guess you would call it of being the first DNA
Speaker 1: X hognery from death row in the United States. Chew
Speaker 1: on that for a second, right, first DNA exonnery from
Speaker 1: death row. Now, by way of background, Kirk was a
Speaker 1: US Marine honorably discharged, had no issues with the law
Speaker 1: or anything else at the time that he was arrested
Speaker 1: and ultimately convicted in a gruesome crime sexual assault and
Speaker 1: murder of a nine year old girl and in his case.
Speaker 1: The police overlooked is a nice way to say it.
Speaker 1: A guy who would have been the obvious suspect and
Speaker 1: who turned out to be the actual killer. So Kirk,
Speaker 1: let's go back. This story takes place quite a while ago,
Speaker 1: because your life took a horrible turn in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: But let's go back even before that. Give a little context.
Speaker 1: How you grew up. How'd you end up in the Marines.
Speaker 3: Well, my dad was a marine, so you know, you
Speaker 3: regaled all those stories about Marines and being in a
Speaker 3: marine corps in Paris, Island.
Speaker 2: So you served for how many years?
Speaker 3: Four years and two years reserve?
Speaker 1: Right, So you're in the Marines, you come out, and
Speaker 1: you're back home in Maryland.
Speaker 2: Right right.
Speaker 3: I want to become a crab fisherman, what we call
Speaker 3: a woodman on the eastern shore of Maryland where I
Speaker 3: grew up in a small town called Cambridge. My father
Speaker 3: was a fisherman, his father, his father and so on,
Speaker 3: and it goes back a couple hundred years. From what
Speaker 3: I understand. Everybody in Cambridge pretty much works in and
Speaker 3: around the water business, whether it's processing, whether it's catching
Speaker 3: the fish or delivering it. So my father crabbed and
Speaker 3: fished all his life. And there's even an island in
Speaker 3: the Chesapea Bay named after my family called Bloodsworth Island.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you had some deep roots and really truly
Speaker 1: following in your father's footsteps, Like straight down the line.
Speaker 1: There you are back in Maryland, having served your country honorably, discharge, arched,
Speaker 1: and your life took the most terrible turn that is
Speaker 1: really imaginable.
Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't get worse.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that draws me to
Speaker 1: this work that I do with the Innocence Project is
Speaker 1: that I never could and I still can't, and I
Speaker 1: never will be able to imagine anything worse than being
Speaker 1: wrongly convicted and sent to prison, much less death row
Speaker 1: for something you didn't do. And that's exactly what happened
Speaker 1: to you, exactly, And let's talk about that because it
Speaker 1: seems so insane that you would become a suspect in
Speaker 1: a terrible, gruesome crime. I mean, I would think they
Speaker 1: would be looking for somebody who's got a history. This
Speaker 1: is not the type of crime that somebody just one
Speaker 1: day who's living a normal life. It's like I'm going
Speaker 1: to go out in sexual assault and murder. I'm really
Speaker 1: a young child, I mean a nine year old. This
Speaker 1: is this is bad stuff.
Speaker 3: You're just a little girl out playing a game of
Speaker 3: hide and go seek. On July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 3: and two thirty that afternoon, her friends they were all
Speaker 3: playing this game, and she was that she couldn't find them,
Speaker 3: and she came back up to the house.
Speaker 2: According to her aunt that was watching.
Speaker 3: Her that day, and said, well, go back to the woods.
Speaker 3: This is in Baltimore County, Maryland. There was a wooded
Speaker 3: area and there's a pond there called Bethkee's Bond, And
Speaker 3: she said, you go to the fence line, you holler
Speaker 3: in the woods and tell them to get out of there,
Speaker 3: because it's not supposed to be in. Theres a lot
Speaker 3: of less savory fellas and people in that area. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of things happening in that wood and she
Speaker 3: didn't want her back there. So about half an hour later,
Speaker 3: this was some time around eleven or so in the morning,
Speaker 3: her friends came back and she did not, and at
Speaker 3: two thirty that afternoon they found her lying face down
Speaker 3: in a pile of leaves. Her head was crushed. She
Speaker 3: was nude from the waist down. Her clothes had been
Speaker 3: discarded in a tree not far from her body, and
Speaker 3: she was assaulted with a stick. That is what this
Speaker 3: honorably just chars Marine was charged with and never seeking
Speaker 3: a death pellty in my case.
Speaker 2: So how did this come about? Why?
Speaker 3: You my first wife, she was from Baltimore County and
Speaker 3: she lived in and around the area of where this happened.
Speaker 3: I had just hitchhiked up there four for July weekend
Speaker 3: and wanted to be with my wife. You know, she
Speaker 3: had left Cambridge. She didn't like the waterman's life. It
Speaker 3: was sixteen hour days all summer. I was hardly home.
Speaker 3: I was crabbing, you know, and working. And she couldn't
Speaker 3: stand that she was from the city and it's a
Speaker 3: little different where she was from, and she wanted to
Speaker 3: go back home, and so I put her on her
Speaker 3: bus and sent her back home. I just got pining
Speaker 3: over her, and I wanted to go back. So I
Speaker 3: hitchhiked with the shoes on my feet, and that was
Speaker 3: it that I had an old pair of discus shoes
Speaker 3: and I got dropped off. I got a ride and
Speaker 3: dropped off, and that was the fourth of July.
Speaker 2: Weekend.
Speaker 3: I had just got paid from this crab herd. I
Speaker 3: was working for just a couple hundred bucks because of
Speaker 3: the season just started and it wasn't really much going
Speaker 3: on yet. She wasn't really happy to see me, as
Speaker 3: it turned out, and I was there for less than
Speaker 3: a month now. When Dawn was found that afternoon on
Speaker 3: July twenty fifth, a search ensued for this person that
Speaker 3: was seen by two little boys. Now there was a
Speaker 3: total of five eyewitnesses in this case who positively identified
Speaker 3: me as the last person seen with Thawn. I'd never
Speaker 3: seen her in my life, and I'm going to kind
Speaker 3: of like bringing us together. So they were searching for
Speaker 3: a man. The little boys who had seen her. They
Speaker 3: were fishing in that pond I told you about, and
Speaker 3: Dawn had come along asked them to help her find
Speaker 3: her friends. They declined. They had just caught this turtle,
Speaker 3: they said, and they were more interested in that now.
Speaker 3: They described this man as being six foot five, curly,
Speaker 3: blonde hair, bushy mustache, tan skin, and skinny. Well, that
Speaker 3: last description wouldn't never fit me in no kind of way.
Speaker 3: Or the blonde hair. My hair was as red as
Speaker 3: the walls in this room. I have to tell you
Speaker 3: cyburns down to here. I had a red mustache. I
Speaker 3: looked like the brawnie man if I put on a
Speaker 3: flannel shirt and you sure ain't six five now I'm
Speaker 3: six foot tall at best, and I weighed something like
Speaker 3: two hundred and thirty pounds. Back then, I was a
Speaker 3: big kid, you know, twenty three years old. So they
Speaker 3: arrest me on a Thursday. I was in Cambridge. My
Speaker 3: wife and I had broke up. I came back home.
Speaker 3: This was the week of August eighth. I would be
Speaker 3: arrested the next day, on August ninth, and at two
Speaker 3: forty five in the morning, waking up on the couch
Speaker 3: with the police banging on the door.
Speaker 2: Open up.
Speaker 3: It's the Baltimore County Police Department. They said, we have
Speaker 3: a warrant for arrest of Kirk Bludsworth. And I go
Speaker 3: to the door myself, lights are shining in my face.
Speaker 3: Step outside, mister Blusboroth. Somebody called me a son of
Speaker 3: a bitch. And then that was the last time I
Speaker 3: seen Cambridge, Maryland for about eight years ten months. In
Speaker 3: nineteen days now they had showed the picture of a polari.
Speaker 3: He took a polard shot of me when they questioned
Speaker 3: me the day prior, and they showed it to the
Speaker 3: two little boys and they said, well, he looks like
Speaker 3: the guy, but his hair is too red. They still
Speaker 3: would not They claimed that it was the picture. There
Speaker 3: ain't no way you could look at me in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four and not say that I had red hair.
Speaker 3: So they called each and every witness in the case.
Speaker 3: They told them not to watch television. We arrested his suspect.
Speaker 3: By the way, his name is Kirk Bludsworth. And this
Speaker 3: was a very high profile case. We're talking a small community.
Speaker 3: Nothing like this ever happens.
Speaker 2: Oh, they were coke units.
Speaker 3: Everybody was search of her and understandably though, there was
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff going on at that time and
Speaker 3: they didn't have any idea, but they did. They just
Speaker 3: never went back to check on anybody. There were so
Speaker 3: many suspects. So they called the witnesses and tell him
Speaker 3: not to watch TV because we rested suspect and he's
Speaker 3: going to be on a lineup on Monday. I was
Speaker 3: arrested on a Thursday. The lineup comes, nobody identify some
Speaker 3: pick out police officers. They had four cops in my
Speaker 3: line up so the two main witnesses were the two
Speaker 3: little boys. They never identified me in the lineup. Two
Speaker 3: weeks later, their parents called the Balmer County Police that
Speaker 3: our children have made a mistake. It's really number six
Speaker 3: and that's the position I stood in. So the parents
Speaker 3: were in the lineup with the kids. Yeah, they wouldn't
Speaker 3: let the little kids in the well, and they also
Speaker 3: drove home together and drove to the place together. It
Speaker 3: was a lot of different things. What I know of
Speaker 3: law enforcement, you never put witnesses in the same room
Speaker 3: or to try to identify anybody. This whole thing really
Speaker 3: started from the older child making a composite sketch that's
Speaker 3: circulated in the area, and there was five hundred tips
Speaker 3: that came on a tip line. What directed this whole
Speaker 3: thing toward me was a next door neighbor calling the
Speaker 3: police and saying that that composite sketch looks like my
Speaker 3: neighbor Kirk. That's how it all began, by somebody pointing
Speaker 3: a finger at me.
Speaker 1: Right, That's exactly how it all began, and that's where
Speaker 1: it all started. To put everybody on notice that they
Speaker 1: wanted to get you. Once they had that, they were
Speaker 1: like all right. We got a lot of pressure. We
Speaker 1: got to get somebody right because this is going to
Speaker 1: be pandemonium in the community. Nobody wants their kid to
Speaker 1: be next. Right, This is a real, real bad guy
Speaker 1: out there. But it's hard to imagine how someone in
Speaker 1: law enforcement, anyone in law enforcement in a community like that,
Speaker 1: like Cambridge, MARYLD, which is probably like a lot of
Speaker 1: other communities around the country, if you know that you've
Speaker 1: got a guy in your midst who is capable of
Speaker 1: the most terrible crime imaginable, which is exactly what happened here,
Speaker 1: I would think that you would be laser focused on
Speaker 1: making sure you got the right guy. If for no
Speaker 1: other reason, then your family might be next if you
Speaker 1: just because by definition, if you work in law enforcement
Speaker 1: in a particular community, you live in that community. And
Speaker 1: everybody's got some kind of family, even if you're not
Speaker 1: married or don't have kids, you may have a sister
Speaker 1: or a niece or a nephew or whatever the hell
Speaker 1: it is, and you don't want that person to fall victim.
Speaker 1: And I think that most law enforcement people are you know,
Speaker 1: they certainly get into it for the right reasons. No
Speaker 1: one gets into it to get rich and I think
Speaker 1: they want to do good. But sometimes in these cases,
Speaker 1: the pressure and the I don't want to call it excitement,
Speaker 1: but the urge to solve it gets so it overrides
Speaker 1: these common sensical type of instincts and these and then
Speaker 1: somebody like you ends up locked up and the perpetrator
Speaker 1: goes free. And when the perpetrator is free, they're free
Speaker 1: to do it again.
Speaker 3: Let's see, early on they had there's numerous suspects in
Speaker 3: this case. It was over five hundred tips that came
Speaker 3: in on the tip line, but there was a suspect,
Speaker 3: and there's this guy came in eight days before I
Speaker 3: was arrested, and he had been released from prison or
Speaker 3: from jail pending trial based on what two girls had
Speaker 3: said that he tried to accost him in Bush's next
Speaker 3: to rail yard. This was two weeks before Dawn's murder.
Speaker 3: He was let go and cut loose and they never
Speaker 3: went back to check. That was eight days before I
Speaker 3: was arrested. And I'll tell you what, I'd imagine that
Speaker 3: the Baltimore County Police Department still haunts them today for
Speaker 3: not doing that well.
Speaker 1: It would sure seem like again going back and comparing
Speaker 1: and contrasting. You have you on the one side, an
Speaker 1: honorably discharged marine, and then on the other side you
Speaker 1: got a guy who several days earlier was accused, not
Speaker 1: convicted yet, but accused.
Speaker 3: He was accused a year before as well, but they
Speaker 3: couldn't have the children wouldn't testify against him, so they
Speaker 3: had to let him go. This woman seen him that day,
Speaker 3: running and sweating profusely. He was later arrested three weeks after.
Speaker 3: I was for another tempted murdering rape of a woman
Speaker 3: in Fells Point, maryl. We busted in her door and
Speaker 3: tried to cut her throat.
Speaker 2: And was he convicted of that crime? He was.
Speaker 3: Actually the girl got the knife from him and somehow
Speaker 3: stabbed him in the foot and they followed the blood
Speaker 3: to his house.
Speaker 2: Oh she's a very brave one. She she's really a hero.
Speaker 3: She's a chance and in my opinion, oh yeah, never
Speaker 3: met her, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: But whoever she is, I hope she's listening. She has
Speaker 1: my respect and I know yours too. I see your
Speaker 1: face sitting up talking about it. So so now things
Speaker 1: get really crazy, right So here you are you have
Speaker 1: no experience with the criminal justice system. Your family has
Speaker 1: no experience with the criminal justice system, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're locked up and you're not getting out.
Speaker 1: There's no bail, there's no you're not going anywhere until
Speaker 1: they figure this out, right, and they're on a mission
Speaker 1: now to get you. So if you weren't a wealthy guy,
Speaker 1: I mean, you just.
Speaker 3: Have any money, right, you started fishing that summer and
Speaker 3: we just got married. We were broke as you can get.
Speaker 3: My wife, Wanda, didn't have any money. Her parents and
Speaker 3: my father had a house and he would eventually mortgage
Speaker 3: that house to try to help me. I had two trials,
Speaker 3: and my god, it just turned into a surrealistic nightmare.
Speaker 1: So day one, let's talk about when the story of
Speaker 1: how you first met your court appointed lawyer, right, because
Speaker 1: if everybody knows, if you can't afford a lawyer, the
Speaker 1: constitution guarantees you the right to a lawyer, doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: guarantee you the right to a genius. Although, like I said,
Speaker 1: I always want to temper that by saying, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of There are a lot of very talented
Speaker 1: public defenders out there, and they are a thankless job
Speaker 1: and a brutal job.
Speaker 2: But in your case. You ended up with a clown.
Speaker 3: I well, you know, I struck the lottery of inconfidence.
Speaker 3: I'd have to say. Now, I want your listeners to
Speaker 3: picture a prison visiting room. This is my first visit
Speaker 3: with my court appointed attorney. And he comes into the
Speaker 3: room through an archway that's eight foot high and about
Speaker 3: eight foot wide. We have to talk to a glass
Speaker 3: and on a telephone type of application to talk. He
Speaker 3: sits with his back to a brick wall, and the
Speaker 3: first thing out of his mouth he says, Kirk, you're
Speaker 3: in a lot of trouble. I thought that was very
Speaker 3: astudent him right off the back, but he says, don't worry.
Speaker 3: I know my way around the courtroom, I know my
Speaker 3: way around a criminal justice system, and we're going to
Speaker 3: find our way out of here together. And actually it
Speaker 3: made me feel a little better. He was really up
Speaker 3: on his heels. He was going to help me prove
Speaker 3: my innocence. Right before he leaves, he reiterated the same thing,
Speaker 3: says Kirk, I know my way around the courtroom, I
Speaker 3: know my way around the criminal justice system. We're going
Speaker 3: to find our way out of here together. He put
Speaker 3: his hand on the glass as a jester to say goodbye.
Speaker 3: He picked up his briefcase, turned around and ran right
Speaker 3: into the wall. He wouldn't talk to me. That was
Speaker 3: only one of three visits this man came to see
Speaker 3: me in the eight months it took the seventy to
Speaker 3: death row. The trial lasted two weeks, and when the
Speaker 3: gavel came down, all my life man. The courtroom erupted
Speaker 3: an applause, like if we're at some game and somebody
Speaker 3: scored a winning touchdown for the team, that everybody like
Speaker 3: they had quite the arsenal against me. I had that guy.
Speaker 3: They couldn't find his way out of the jail. I
Speaker 3: don't see how in a world you can make justice
Speaker 3: come from that situation. It's like shooting a slingshot up
Speaker 3: at howitzer from on the top of a hill that's
Speaker 3: a hundred feet high. You cannot win that way. And
Speaker 3: that's the way they set up a lot of these cases.
Speaker 1: And that's why so many people end up pleading guilty,
Speaker 1: because they realize that their odds of winning are so
Speaker 1: infinitesimally small as yours were in this case. When I
Speaker 1: think you're David and Goliath, analogy is pretty good, except
Speaker 1: for there's no winning in this case, there's no happy ending.
Speaker 1: So Don Hamilton was the one that lost her memory
Speaker 1: lives on indeed, and I think that when justice was
Speaker 1: finally done in this case, that's the only thing we
Speaker 1: can do to honor her memory, I guess, is to.
Speaker 2: Actually get the real guy off the streets.
Speaker 1: So now you're convicted and sentenced to death, and for you,
Speaker 1: it was as bad as it can get.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty five, the Maryland Penitentiary in Ireland was
Speaker 3: probably one of the worst prisons in the United States
Speaker 3: at that time. A guard had been disin bout two
Speaker 3: weeks before I got there Jesus from a perceived insult
Speaker 3: from another inmate. I walked on this tier when I
Speaker 3: stepped off the bus, and when I stepped I had
Speaker 3: to hop as I had leg irons, waist chain cuffs
Speaker 3: and so forth. And you have to kind of like penguin,
Speaker 3: walk through this place till you get to yourself. And
Speaker 3: he locked you right in and they put me on
Speaker 3: that same wing that he was killed on. Now I
Speaker 3: can tell you all that my life expectancy was not
Speaker 3: supposed to be. I wasn't supposed to be alive after
Speaker 3: nine years basically, I mean because of what I was
Speaker 3: charged with.
Speaker 2: Right in prison.
Speaker 1: Of course, the pecking order, the bottom of the pecking
Speaker 1: order is people who are charged with exactly what you
Speaker 1: were charged with, which is which is hurting, harming, or
Speaker 1: even worse, sexually assaulting a child, and of course snitches. Right,
Speaker 1: those are the people that are at the highest risk
Speaker 1: of being killed. Inside you're under bo of the wrongs
Speaker 1: of the ladder. You're under defeated the ladder, right, and
Speaker 1: here you are, but you're looking at one of the
Speaker 1: only cats that ever walked out in population on his own.
Speaker 2: I remember my cell body next door to me.
Speaker 3: He said, man, you're crazier and a hootout. You can't
Speaker 3: go out there. I said, I don't care. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: fight just standing up one way or the other. They
Speaker 3: can fight me for anything they want, but they're not
Speaker 3: gonna fight me for what I didn't do. And it
Speaker 3: just never came right away. It never came right away.
Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of horror and a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Now I'm gonna use his nickname because I don't want
Speaker 3: to tell his real name. So his name is Blue.
Speaker 3: Blue taught me how to play chess. Now Blue was
Speaker 3: six foot five. He's a big boy and really tall.
Speaker 3: We read all the time. He's always in. Taught me
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff about prison life and what the
Speaker 3: who to mess with, who.
Speaker 2: Not to mess with.
Speaker 3: When I say he taught me to play chess, you're
Speaker 3: probably wondering how that happened because I'm in a cell.
Speaker 2: He's in a cell.
Speaker 3: They put death row prisoners on the ministrative segregation. The
Speaker 3: suicide was so he taught me how to play by
Speaker 3: calling the pieces out, so we had to call a
Speaker 3: man pawn four and so forth, and then he would
Speaker 3: tell me what he was doing.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: He also taught me about the law. He was one
Speaker 3: of the leaders from the Nation of Islam. You know,
Speaker 3: he's a heavy hitter in there. He'd been there like
Speaker 3: twenty years. And one day when I got off a
Speaker 3: lock up and he come off, and he had come
Speaker 3: to the chow hall and he tapped me on the
Speaker 3: shoulder and said bloods he he said, I'm leaving to day.
Speaker 3: That's what some of the people called me. And I said, man,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? Because he was a three
Speaker 3: time loser, he was never going to get out. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to argue with blue because he was six
Speaker 3: foot five. He had the most intense eyes of anybody
Speaker 3: I ever seen, like Samuel L. Jackson's the closest thing
Speaker 3: I could think of now. But think of Samuel Jackson's
Speaker 3: eyes if they were a caramel collar, and that was blue.
Speaker 3: He was intense man. When he would talk to you,
Speaker 3: his eyes get big.
Speaker 2: And and he told me, he said, I'm going home today.
Speaker 2: He said, I got a peel bond, so I'm out
Speaker 2: of here. I bumped knuckles with him, and I said, man,
Speaker 2: I hope to see him play chess in the inner
Speaker 2: Harbor someday, you know.
Speaker 3: And he went back to his cell. I went back
Speaker 3: to the library where I worked, and he packed up
Speaker 3: all his stuff. He made a chest set out of
Speaker 3: state soap. Some of the best artists in the world
Speaker 3: are in prison. He carved this out of a disposable
Speaker 3: razorably he took out.
Speaker 2: Of a rasor.
Speaker 3: He got dressed in his three feet suit, put on
Speaker 3: his coofee, sat down, tied his tie up, and then
Speaker 3: took two two number two pencils and shoved them right
Speaker 3: through his eyes.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. I mean, that's why I had to pause
Speaker 1: for a second. And I've heard that story before, but
Speaker 1: it seems impossible for a human being to do that
Speaker 1: to themselves.
Speaker 3: Well, in Bluesmond, that was the way to get out.
Speaker 3: He thought it was going to kill him. See he
Speaker 3: was going to he was trying to commit suicide. What
Speaker 3: it was all about? I had seen him about a
Speaker 3: year later. Instead of that really intense caramel colored eye
Speaker 3: man that I knew, We're walking through the hallway bent
Speaker 3: over now and there was only these gray spots.
Speaker 2: In his eyes.
Speaker 3: And I asked him, I said, Blue, why did you
Speaker 3: do that?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 3: It was echoed to that hallway in the hospital. He said,
Speaker 3: I didn't want to see it anymore. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to feel it anymore. I didn't want to be it anymore.
Speaker 3: And the revelation that came to me from when.
Speaker 2: He said after I watched him hobble away with the
Speaker 2: nurse down the hallway, was how was I going to
Speaker 2: do it? Blue was guilty. He knew it.
Speaker 3: He knew he had messed his life up, but I
Speaker 3: hadn't done anything. And he turned around and said, you'll
Speaker 3: make it one day with a smile, looking at the wall,
Speaker 3: thinking I was staying there close so and this was
Speaker 3: our life penitentiary.
Speaker 1: If you had witnessed guys jumping off the tier and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other.
Speaker 3: Horrors, yep, hang you body bootlaces. And there was plenty
Speaker 3: of people that killed himself. I knew one guy that
Speaker 3: took a bunch of sedatives and taped a plastic bag
Speaker 3: around his head and just fell asleep.
Speaker 2: So it was. It was as.
Speaker 1: Terrible and as terrifying a situation as anybody could ever
Speaker 1: find himself in.
Speaker 2: But you had to find a way out. You were
Speaker 2: not in a position to give up.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you'd give up, the state would have
Speaker 1: killed you, and that would have been we wouldn't be
Speaker 1: here talking about it now.
Speaker 3: Well, I never had a chance to go to death
Speaker 3: road because I turned my case over and my case
Speaker 3: was overturned by discovery evidence. So I got a second
Speaker 3: t but the same people came to testify. They were
Speaker 3: seeking the death penalty again. They wanted to kill me
Speaker 3: bad and shut me up because I would not shut up.
Speaker 3: I was convicted again, and this time I was sentenced
Speaker 3: to double life in the second trial, but I still
Speaker 3: was going to die in prison, and I said, man
Speaker 3: had nobody didn't, And they put me out regular population.
Speaker 3: They did everything they could.
Speaker 1: I thought they were thinking somebody else would kill you
Speaker 1: if they could kill it, right, And a double life.
Speaker 1: That's a crazy thing too, right, I mean, nobody has
Speaker 1: two lives.
Speaker 2: You can't do that, you know, no matter what you do,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1: You can't go, you can't die, come back to life,
Speaker 1: and didn't die again. But if they could, if they would,
Speaker 1: they would have executed you twice. They could have gotten
Speaker 1: away with it. Yeah, But so so then you got
Speaker 1: your sentence overturns, and now now you go back. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like a I mean it's like a pyrrhic victory, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you win, but you lose it. And plus
Speaker 1: on top of everything else, you're a young guy. So
Speaker 1: you got to look forward now to if you survive
Speaker 1: and if somebody doesn't kill you in prison, or you
Speaker 1: don't get sick or anything else that could happen, or
Speaker 1: you don't go crazy and.
Speaker 2: Lose your mind like blue.
Speaker 1: You're looking forward to fifty years of this absolutely miserable existence.
Speaker 3: These were consecutive life since right. See, you can't get
Speaker 3: out of.
Speaker 2: That, no way you can do it. You were dying.
Speaker 1: You're a dying prison. But obviously that's not what happened,
Speaker 1: because you're here. There's a fantastic, amazing story, sort of
Speaker 1: a miracle story actually about how you actually did manage
Speaker 1: to become the first DNA xignery in the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget the story of how you were
Speaker 1: able to prove your innocence.
Speaker 3: I was a library for seven and a half years,
Speaker 3: so I read everything from Gestalt psychology to Stephen King.
Speaker 3: But Jason, don't ask me about that Gestalt book because
Speaker 3: I have no idea what that gad they was. But
Speaker 3: I got this book in the mail one time, and
Speaker 3: it was written by Joseph Womble, who was very famous
Speaker 3: back in the seventies.
Speaker 2: This book I read, he wrote about the first.
Speaker 3: Time DNA was ever used in a criminal case in England,
Speaker 3: and it was about these two murders, Linda Mann and
Speaker 3: there's this other gown named Dawn too. I read with
Speaker 3: rapt interest, and nobody could figure out who killed these
Speaker 3: two little girls over there, and then they were trying
Speaker 3: to find out how to catch them, and they couldn't
Speaker 3: catch this guy, so they got help from this professor.
Speaker 3: His name is Alec Jeffries. He is the founding father
Speaker 3: of what we know is genetic fingerprinting or DNA testing.
Speaker 3: I could not even spell dioxy rib and nucleic acid
Speaker 3: back then. He's the one that developed a new test
Speaker 3: that could genetically identify one person from another, and it
Speaker 3: was fascinating. He come up with this technology just by
Speaker 3: a mistake doing some polymorphisms. Okay, somebody have to look
Speaker 3: that up about gray seals and the Antarctic. That's how
Speaker 3: it all came to pass. And so he said told
Speaker 3: the consoles in the Scotland yard, said, look in Nara,
Speaker 3: there's killings over there. I think we can identify and
Speaker 3: we test the seamen. Not only did he find the
Speaker 3: real culprit in this case, as it turns out, but
Speaker 3: there was a man who confessed to a crime turned
Speaker 3: out to be he's false confession. Not only did they
Speaker 3: exonerated him and caught the real killer, who happened to
Speaker 3: be a baker to live right in town.
Speaker 2: What year was that?
Speaker 3: That was in nineteen eighty five or so, So the
Speaker 3: technology was catching up to me. I remember, coming out
Speaker 3: of my bunk, I hit my head. I was reading
Speaker 3: a book and I hit my head. I started remembering
Speaker 3: and I'm getting chills right now on my arms remembering
Speaker 3: the part in the book and it just said the
Speaker 3: DNA and the semen was found and all that. Then
Speaker 3: it popped in my head about the semen that was
Speaker 3: found on Dawn's body in this case, slides swabbing as
Speaker 3: many spermatozoa scene and closed quotes in the report I
Speaker 3: had right in front of me. I flipped out. I said, look,
Speaker 3: I got to get this test done. So I wrote
Speaker 3: the prosecutor, who has since passed away. Her name was Ambrokes,
Speaker 3: and I said, look, I need this test. She wrote
Speaker 3: me back a letter and this is what she said, Jason,
Speaker 3: we regret to inform you the DNA has been inadvertently destroyed.
Speaker 3: I got so mad when I read that letter. I
Speaker 3: can still remember myself reading it and just like kind
Speaker 3: of resigning myself to the fact that I was going
Speaker 3: to die in this place.
Speaker 2: It was over.
Speaker 3: I didn't resign. I got mad or my face turned
Speaker 3: red again. I just I threw everything in the corner,
Speaker 3: all my papers, all my books, every single thing, all
Speaker 3: my clothes, everything I had in myself. I had a
Speaker 3: book of matches, I lit that sucker, and the book
Speaker 3: of matches went out.
Speaker 2: And then it hit me.
Speaker 3: I don't think they destroyed it. They just didn't know
Speaker 3: where it was.
Speaker 1: Let me go back for a second. So you let
Speaker 1: the book of matches. You were going to set all
Speaker 1: your stuff on fire. Yeah, but the matches didn't work.
Speaker 2: They blew out. Amazing. How do you do that in
Speaker 2: a cell? I like to know.
Speaker 3: I always felt like somebody blew him up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was no wind in there.
Speaker 1: We know that.
Speaker 3: So not that I know except me. So I called
Speaker 3: Bob Moore and who was my lawyer? Now, this guy,
Speaker 3: he was a lawyer of some record man. He was
Speaker 3: just smart as he could be. He's the chief judge
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. And a superior court right now. Wow,
Speaker 3: he's an awesome guy. And the quality of attorney that
Speaker 3: I had now was different. So I called Bob on
Speaker 3: the phone and I said, Bob, you gotta go check.
Speaker 3: He already thought of it, He already thought of the DNA.
Speaker 3: And they said that he destroyed it. And I said, Bob,
Speaker 3: you better go check because if you don't, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: call you twenty times a day versus ten. He went
Speaker 3: back to the Towson Courthouse in Baltimore County where I
Speaker 3: was tried. Sure enough, it wasn't there. He happened to
Speaker 3: pass my law clerk in my second trial and they
Speaker 3: knew each other. He said, Bob, what are you doing here?
Speaker 3: He said, well, I'm looking for the Dawn Hamilton evidence
Speaker 3: in the Kirk Bloodsworth case. He said, well, I know
Speaker 3: where that's at. It's in the judge's closet, a paper
Speaker 3: bag in a cardboard box sitting in the floor. And
Speaker 3: there it was the swabbings, the stick, all the stuff
Speaker 3: done needed and Jason, it was half of one cell.
Speaker 2: Did free me And I'm getting the chills now, right.
Speaker 1: So that's where the miracle comes in, right, the fact
Speaker 1: that he ran into the clerk in the first place,
Speaker 1: that he happened.
Speaker 2: To ask oft how he doing, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: What are you working on? And he told him and
Speaker 2: then you know, he knew where it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's incredible, it's synchronicity, it's serendipity, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. But it also points to the fact
Speaker 1: that you could have very easily given up at the
Speaker 1: time when you were told that the evidence was gone.
Speaker 2: You'd have to be almost nuts to say, well, it
Speaker 2: was not gone. I'm telling you it's not. You just
Speaker 2: told it was gone by somebody who should know. But
Speaker 2: you didn't give up it.
Speaker 3: And that's I wouldn't stop because they had already hit
Speaker 3: evidence about us another suspect. That's why the case was overturned.
Speaker 3: That's what gave me the mindset. They go and get
Speaker 3: him to check right, Well, that's how that's how you
Speaker 3: got that. That's how it was overturned. Just to clarify,
Speaker 3: that's how it went from being a death sentence to
Speaker 3: a life sentence. It is because in the second trial
Speaker 3: you were able to prove that they were that they
Speaker 3: had withheld evidence. It withheld evidence about another suspect, and
Speaker 3: who was right at the crime seeing the day of
Speaker 3: the murder. Now, of course he wasn't a real call
Speaker 3: pread but it took a year to do that test.
Speaker 3: So I get this posted note. It said urgent, call
Speaker 3: your attorney.
Speaker 2: Urgent.
Speaker 3: The guard stuck the post a note and it slid
Speaker 3: it in the cell and I got it and he
Speaker 3: said call your attorney. So I said, you gotta let
Speaker 3: me out. I was the librarian. He let me out,
Speaker 3: So I called Bob Moran on the phone collect about
Speaker 3: a million time. If you knew Bob Moore, and he's
Speaker 3: very quiet, very quiet mob manner God. And he was
Speaker 3: screaming on you, Kirk, you're innocent, man, you're innocent. I
Speaker 3: knew that. Get me out of here. He said, the
Speaker 3: DNA test come back. You are innocent. And I just
Speaker 3: remember sating there in a puddle. I told you, man,
Speaker 3: I've been telling you all the time. So he said,
Speaker 3: look now, this is new. Nobody's ever done. This has
Speaker 3: been on the Capitol conviction before. So you can't tell anybody.
Speaker 3: Don't call anybody, don't tell anybody. So I called everybody.
Speaker 3: I wasn't gonna this is my life and I will
Speaker 3: go live it. Well, what would you call everybody? Everybody
Speaker 3: could Jane Miller Channel eleven News. She called everybody. When
Speaker 3: it hit the press, it was all over. I was
Speaker 3: big news in nineteen ninety three. In Juo Your Family,
Speaker 3: June twenty eighth. My dad was the first call.
Speaker 2: What do he say?
Speaker 3: He was like, what he didn't understand, you know, he
Speaker 3: didn't really understand. They knew that I was taking this test,
Speaker 3: but they didn't understand. And with the implications of DNA
Speaker 3: were They had no idea. My father's you know, a
Speaker 3: simple man, and he just didn't understand. He said, but
Speaker 3: we're going to get out of here.
Speaker 2: So okay.
Speaker 1: So now you've done exactly what your lawyer told you
Speaker 1: not to do. You call it everybody. Everybody now knows you.
Speaker 1: You got to be bouncing off the walls, right. And
Speaker 1: then it's after the DNA was tested and proved that
Speaker 1: you were innocent.
Speaker 2: Then what happened. How long did it take to get
Speaker 2: to trial again? And how that end up? And the
Speaker 2: deal we made with the prosecutors.
Speaker 3: If it was not me, they would have their own experts,
Speaker 3: so they sent it to the DNA lab. It took
Speaker 3: another few months. Now this is a sad part. I
Speaker 3: can't say the other without saying this. Yeah, twenty four years.
Speaker 3: My mother passed away just a few months but five
Speaker 3: months before I got out, and the day President Clinton
Speaker 3: got inaugurated. It's a bad year, a bad time of
Speaker 3: year for me. I had just talked to her on
Speaker 3: the phone a couple of days before I was allowed
Speaker 3: to go see her body in handcuffed and shackles for
Speaker 3: five minutes. I wouldn't know about the DNA for another
Speaker 3: few months. She was my biggest fan. She's the reason
Speaker 3: I could read. But she to write me letters and
Speaker 3: in the PostScript she would say, write his light. If
Speaker 3: you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And
Speaker 3: she never liked you to sit still. She would always say,
Speaker 3: don't sit there like a bump on a deal. Pickle
Speaker 3: used to baby laugh.
Speaker 2: She was awesome. So that's it, I mean, that's really it.
Speaker 2: It's a hard enough thing for anybody to go through.
Speaker 1: And the idea that you were able to see her
Speaker 1: for a grand total of five minutes and then she
Speaker 1: was never able to see you as a free man again,
Speaker 1: and that you were there.
Speaker 3: In this She always knew though. She always knew I
Speaker 3: was innocent. She would tell me all the time, and
Speaker 3: my father would constantly ask me, because you know, he's
Speaker 3: come from a different error. Police officers don't arrest you
Speaker 3: for just nothing. I didn't say it was nothing, but
Speaker 3: I didn't do it. Then it was different. But he
Speaker 3: told him all to go to hell early on because
Speaker 3: he knew that it was screwing me around, and it was.
Speaker 2: It was obvious.
Speaker 3: So that weekend William Sessis was the director of the
Speaker 3: FBI called Ann Brokes to prosecuting attorney and said, your
Speaker 3: DNA tests have come back for Bloodsworth and it's not him.
Speaker 3: We've not only agreed with his experts, but we found
Speaker 3: another spot of semen that matches the same guy that
Speaker 3: you have in the database or in the DNA, and
Speaker 3: it's not Bloodsworth. You better let him out, you said,
Speaker 3: an innocent man to death row into prison, and on
Speaker 3: July twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three, I stepped out of
Speaker 3: free man.
Speaker 1: I want to go back and talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the actual killer, okay, and how they missed him
Speaker 1: the first time, and how you actually ended up interacting
Speaker 1: with him in prison, which is really a strange twist
Speaker 1: of this whole story.
Speaker 2: Right, What was the guy's name? Who was the actual
Speaker 2: killer of this poor little girl?
Speaker 3: Kimberly shee r. Ruffner was let go two weeks before
Speaker 3: Dawn's murder for two attempted rapes the two other little
Speaker 3: girls a year prior. The children wouldn't testify against him.
Speaker 3: He had dressed up like a security guard and tried
Speaker 3: to accost him in the bushes. They were scared wouldn't
Speaker 3: testify against him, so the judge had to let him go,
Speaker 3: and he used to frequent this area. From what I
Speaker 3: understand now, remember what I told you that the original
Speaker 3: suspect was reportedly six foot five, curly blond hair, bushy mustache,
Speaker 3: tan skin, and skinny. Roughner's five foot six and one
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty pounds. Wow, so witness identifications big time now.
Speaker 3: That police report about him came in eight days before
Speaker 3: I was arrested. The cops never went back to look.
Speaker 3: They were too busy trying to fit the square peg
Speaker 3: in a round hole. See, he lived in Baltimore City,
Speaker 3: which wasn't far from the county line. He used to
Speaker 3: cross the county line. Back in those days, cops wouldn't
Speaker 3: talk each other for whatever the reason, but they wouldn't chat.
Speaker 3: And that's how this thing happened. Ten years later, when
Speaker 3: they went to search it for this guy they did,
Speaker 3: they opened up the cold case. Major Rusting Price is
Speaker 3: the one that's responsible for capturing Roughner. The surreal part
Speaker 3: of the story is the fact that he ended up
Speaker 3: being locked up.
Speaker 1: He committed a subsequent crime after they wrongfully convicted you
Speaker 1: or wrought arrested you even he was free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was arrested three weeks after me for attempted
Speaker 3: rape and murder of a woman at Fell's Point, where
Speaker 3: he busted in her door and tried to cut the throat.
Speaker 3: She got the knife from him, what I understand, and
Speaker 3: stabbed in the foot. Cops followed to his house from
Speaker 3: the blood trail, and that's how he got He got forty.
Speaker 1: Five years to that right, and that woman never needed
Speaker 1: to go through this in the first place. Had the
Speaker 1: work been done in a different and a better way,
Speaker 1: they would have gotten the real guy. So he ended
Speaker 1: up committing this another horrible crime a few weeks after
Speaker 1: he had got literally gotten away with murder, and he
Speaker 1: ends up in the same prison with you. But you
Speaker 1: don't know it, obviously, but he does, right, He knows
Speaker 1: who you are, That's what he says. He said he
Speaker 1: didn't know I was in there for what he did,
Speaker 1: but I don't believe. So how weird is that looking
Speaker 1: back and realizing that this is a guy who's on
Speaker 1: the same literally living with you, who was a guy
Speaker 1: who was responsible for not only for this horrible crime
Speaker 1: against humanity, but also for a second horrible crime against humanity,
Speaker 1: which is putting it inst the man almost almost having
Speaker 1: you executed for the crime that he committed.
Speaker 2: They asked him in court.
Speaker 3: He was charged with her murder and he got life
Speaker 3: because I didn't want him to get to death penalty,
Speaker 3: because I wanted him to stay alive for the rest
Speaker 3: of his life and think about what he's done.
Speaker 2: Kirk, When you were released from prison, can you paint
Speaker 2: a picture for us of what that was like.
Speaker 3: Well, it's I'm sitting in the prison and they had
Speaker 3: the warden let me on out, and he gave me
Speaker 3: my little bit of commissary money and they give you
Speaker 3: a check, and so he gave me the money and
Speaker 3: I went on out and they drove me from the
Speaker 3: prison to the top of the hill. When I hit
Speaker 3: the top of the hill, he had a limousine waiting
Speaker 3: for him from ninety eight Rock. It was a local
Speaker 3: rock station. It was my dad and me and this
Speaker 3: lady friend. They kept coming to see me in prison.
Speaker 3: We were into limo and they had a case of
Speaker 3: beer in a limo, and.
Speaker 2: The limo it was just great. It's almost like well,
Speaker 2: from the outhouse to the penthouse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I'm moving on up like George and Wheezy.
Speaker 1: So they take you into limo did you go get
Speaker 1: something to eat?
Speaker 2: Did you go? Woh man? They had.
Speaker 3: They took me around the city. There was a baseball park.
Speaker 3: They had pizza and stuff for me. He took me
Speaker 3: for a little spin around. Okay, so he drove around.
Speaker 3: Eventually wanted at your dad's house. Yeah, And then what happened?
Speaker 3: At four in the morning. There's nobody home. Dad's gone,
Speaker 3: My mother's you know, not there, but she's everywhere to
Speaker 3: all her stuff was around and there was a toaster
Speaker 3: sitting up on the counter. So I hadn't had toasts
Speaker 3: in ten years. So I got the bread out, I
Speaker 3: got the jelly in the butter, and I put this
Speaker 3: toast in there and buttered it up. And it was
Speaker 3: eating this thing, and I started laughing. I just thought
Speaker 3: it was funny. I picked up the phone and I
Speaker 3: called Bob Moore and my lawyer at four o'clock in
Speaker 3: the more, say Bob, guess what I'm doing. He said,
Speaker 3: I don't care. Okay, tell me what are you doing?
Speaker 3: I said, I'm eating a piece of toast. And that's
Speaker 3: what he started doing. He started left. And you never
Speaker 3: realize how important a piece of toast is to you
Speaker 3: when you don't have it when liberty is taking away.
Speaker 2: So you come out.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because for as long as I've been
Speaker 1: doing this work, one of the questions people asked me
Speaker 1: the most frequently is what happens to the exoneries when
Speaker 1: they get out? Do they get a big check? And
Speaker 1: what does the state do for them? And your case
Speaker 1: is frighteningly common in terms of the fact that it
Speaker 1: relied totally, really on wrangfuel. I was his identification, which
Speaker 1: is a factor in seventy five percent of the wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction cases. Not the only factor in everything, but in
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of cases it's a factor.
Speaker 2: But back to this, so were you compensated?
Speaker 3: I was in Maryland, which I understand today they're introducing
Speaker 3: a new bill that would pass some of the stuff
Speaker 3: I had to go through in order to get my compensation.
Speaker 3: So you would, you would automatically, if you get pardoned
Speaker 3: from the governor, go right to compensation after you've been
Speaker 3: erroneously if you've been erroneously convicted of anything. So that's
Speaker 3: something I support. But there is no federal compensation for
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted peoples, and I think there should be, And
Speaker 3: there's no innocent measure and no nothing. As a matter
Speaker 3: of fact, you don't have any right once you're convicted
Speaker 3: to innocence anymore. You can argue that in a court
Speaker 3: of appeals that you're innocent only after a certain period
Speaker 3: of time after.
Speaker 2: You've been convicted.
Speaker 3: You have anywhere from thirty to ninety to so many
Speaker 3: days to do that. You know you're asking for a
Speaker 3: new trial based on newly discovered evidence. You can do that,
Speaker 3: but you cannot argue innocence in a court of appellate court.
Speaker 3: I find that very bizarre, especially with the death penalty
Speaker 3: looming over people. We need compensation. These men and women
Speaker 3: need every dime and every bit of love we can
Speaker 3: give them.
Speaker 2: And I mean, don't amen to that.
Speaker 1: But back to your case, how long did it take
Speaker 1: you to get compensated and how much did you get?
Speaker 3: I got three hundred thousand dollars for my almost nine
Speaker 3: years of imprisonment in two years on death row, which
Speaker 3: they never really did. They never really calculated the death
Speaker 3: row time as being a torturous act. So he gave
Speaker 3: me three hundred thousand dollars, which comes to about three
Speaker 3: dollars and seventy two cents an hour.
Speaker 1: So you end up getting compensated, and then things get
Speaker 1: even more interesting, right because of the work that you
Speaker 1: have chosen to do and that you have done so effectively,
Speaker 1: because Kirk has been one of the most effective advocates
Speaker 1: meeting with government officials, politicians. And actually you have a
Speaker 1: bill named after you, don't I do.
Speaker 2: It's called the Bludsworth's Post Conviction DNA Testing Program. And
Speaker 2: what does that do.
Speaker 3: It's a federal grant program which gives moneies to states
Speaker 3: to pay for post conviction DNA testing. So that's a
Speaker 3: federal law. That's a federal law. Yeah, but states can
Speaker 3: get it. And it's called the Bloodsworth Program. Is named
Speaker 3: by Patrick Leahy and Orren Hatch, who took us eight
Speaker 3: years to pass that piece of legislation. And I'm pretty
Speaker 3: proud of it. There's a fella in Kentucky named Mike,
Speaker 3: I can't pronounce his last name. He got out on it,
Speaker 3: Thomas Hainsworth from Virginia. And there was another fella just
Speaker 3: recently got out from the Bloodsworth grant in Illinois.
Speaker 1: I believe have you gotten a chance to meet those guys.
Speaker 1: I got to meet both Thomas and Mike.
Speaker 3: But there's like thirty others, you know, so they've they've
Speaker 3: gotten out of prison because some states, say, like Kentucky,
Speaker 3: don't have the monies to pay for these testings. Like
Speaker 3: Kentucky's public defender system is non existence. Basically, they have
Speaker 3: a couple hundred dollars to represent somebody. They don't have
Speaker 3: any money. So, and Thomas Hainsworth was in there for
Speaker 3: twenty some years and now he works for the Attorney
Speaker 3: General's office in Richmond.
Speaker 2: Wow, so God bless him. How about that? Yeah, I
Speaker 2: take that one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got to take a minute to process
Speaker 1: that information. But what an exciting and what an incredible
Speaker 1: feeling that must be.
Speaker 2: Oh, I have to say that was one of the
Speaker 2: shining moments in my life.
Speaker 1: So, Kirk, You've also done a lot of work actually
Speaker 1: on getting rid of the death penalty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, help end it in Maryland. I've also worked in
Speaker 3: New Jersey which ended it, New Mexico. I did some
Speaker 3: behind the scenes stuff Connecticut, Delaware. I've seen it fall
Speaker 3: in several states, and I worked very hard in Nebraska
Speaker 3: and California last year and they fell.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'm going to come back. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna let.
Speaker 1: Them in Nebraska and California were really terrible results.
Speaker 3: Here's an example of the government, I think putting too
Speaker 3: much pressure on a thing because they're diametrically opposed with
Speaker 3: the elected legislature of the people. The people voted for
Speaker 3: that they vetoed and override his veto. Governor Ricketts decided
Speaker 3: to do it and spend money because his family's got
Speaker 3: a lot of money to reinstate the death penalty rights.
Speaker 2: Maybe just backshot kirk So in the basket.
Speaker 1: What happened in the last election was that the legislature
Speaker 1: overturned the death penalty, eliminated it, governor vetoed it, the
Speaker 1: legislature overrode the governor's veto, and then the governor financed
Speaker 1: a referendum and got and ran all these ads and
Speaker 1: got people riled up or whatever he did, and then
Speaker 1: got the public to vote on a referendum which reinstated
Speaker 1: the death penalty. I mean, he really wants to execute people,
Speaker 1: you know. I always find it strange too, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot. The one thing I can't relate to is
Speaker 1: people that are pro life and pro death penalty, Like
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 2: I don't see how those two match up.
Speaker 1: But that's me and of course, in California, we had
Speaker 1: the other problem, which is that they passed this horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible referendum which is like a speed up the death
Speaker 1: penalty referendum, which basically guarantees that we're going to execute
Speaker 1: a bunch of more innocent people.
Speaker 3: And billions and billions of dollars have flowed through that
Speaker 3: system in California and they've done nothing. They have seven
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty five death row people in the state
Speaker 3: of California and they're just housing these people.
Speaker 2: They'll die of old age before they die in the gas.
Speaker 1: Right, which makes it all symbolic and weird and ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't be around somebody like Kirk or
Speaker 1: Sunny Jacobs or any of the other death row dexigneries
Speaker 1: and not feel a deep anger and just a burning
Speaker 1: desire to eliminate the death penalty when you know, not
Speaker 1: only have we exonerated over twenty innocent people with DNA
Speaker 1: from death row, but also we know that a number,
Speaker 1: a large number of innocent people have been executed in
Speaker 1: this country. And to me, the number one is too big.
Speaker 1: I don't care what your motivations are, it is morally
Speaker 1: reprehensible to accept the idea that we're going to execute
Speaker 1: even one innocent person. So you've done a lifetime's worth
Speaker 1: of work. I'm fixing the system so people can get
Speaker 1: access to DNA testing nationwide. You had to bill named
Speaker 1: after you. You've helped abolish the death penalty in a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of states. It's an incredible series of accomplishments.
Speaker 1: And now the guy who was the crab fisherman is
Speaker 1: now in another unlikely to I know if you look
Speaker 1: at him, you say that if I had to make
Speaker 1: a list, if I just met you, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to make a list of somebody said what's the least
Speaker 1: likely profession that this guy could be in, I'd probably
Speaker 1: say ballet dance would probably be number one, and number
Speaker 1: two would probably be jewelry designer.
Speaker 2: Right, but you don't dance, No, but not make jewelry.
Speaker 1: Make jewelry. So let's talk about that because I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to give a plug because I've seen some
Speaker 1: of the jewelry and it's incredible. I swear to guy,
Speaker 1: you must have some fairies living there or something that
Speaker 1: help you, or elves.
Speaker 2: The Keeblers are out of business. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 2: how to hell you do it. I mean your hands
Speaker 2: are too damn big, but anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 3: So well, as it turns out, you really need some
Speaker 3: strong hands to bend silver or gold. And I have
Speaker 3: a business. It's called Bloodstones. It's a B l o
Speaker 3: O D S S t O n e s dot
Speaker 3: com and I've been doing it for two years. I
Speaker 3: went to Revere Academy in San Francisco. Four hundred and
Speaker 3: some YouTube videos later, and you got Bloodstones, and so
Speaker 3: I make everything. The only thing I don't work in
Speaker 3: right now is platinum.
Speaker 1: So give me that website again, just for people, bloodstones
Speaker 1: dot com. It's b l o O D S S
Speaker 1: t O n e s dot com. Go take a
Speaker 1: look at it. You'll be happy you did. You're gonna
Speaker 1: need some some gifts, I'm sure coming up for whatever
Speaker 1: holiday or whatever birthday for a loved one. And Kirk's
Speaker 1: doing an incredible thing now. He's actually making rings for exanarees,
Speaker 1: which are good.
Speaker 3: Well, that's soon to come out. That's soon to come out.
Speaker 3: And this is since I'm on your show, and to
Speaker 3: break this out because they don't they don't know this
Speaker 3: this ring. It will be free to any exonerie, death
Speaker 3: row or otherwise in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can wear it and I'm sure they'll
Speaker 2: wear it with pride.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's a beautiful it's a beautiful piece
Speaker 1: of you on top of that, So check out Bloodstones
Speaker 1: dot com. Last question, Kirk, for people who are listening,
Speaker 1: who are feeling the same sort of burning desire that
Speaker 1: I have after listening to you speak to get out
Speaker 1: there and do something to make a difference, what would
Speaker 1: you recommend they do? Is there a website they can
Speaker 1: go to? Is there what can they write letters? What
Speaker 1: should they be doing?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: I have an organization that I deal with two in
Speaker 3: their death row survivors. That's Witnessed Innocence.
Speaker 1: Dot org, Witness to Innocence dot ORGNISCE dot org, Witness
Speaker 1: to Innocence dot org.
Speaker 2: Got it and you can go to them and check
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 3: But I would really ask people to donate to the
Speaker 3: Innocence projects and the Witness Innocence and these type of things,
Speaker 3: and really whatever endeavor that axonneries have in life, you
Speaker 3: should support them and to try to help them and
Speaker 3: better themselves. And Alas and this is my plug for myself.
Speaker 2: My film is out. It's on DVD.
Speaker 3: It's called Bloodsworth and Innocent Man and you can get
Speaker 3: it at iTunes or on demand and it's out now.
Speaker 2: So oh man, I didn't even know that. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to get that Blood's Worth an Innocent Man. I'm
Speaker 2: going to watch.
Speaker 3: Stories on there and it's from my point of view,
Speaker 3: so you'll be able to check it in. It's done
Speaker 3: by Gregory Bain. He's did a really good job. You
Speaker 3: have to check it out.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to check it out. I hope you
Speaker 1: will too. Blood's Worth an Innocent Man. It's been really
Speaker 1: an extraordinary experience for me having you on the show,
Speaker 1: and I hope you'll never stop doing what you're doing
Speaker 1: because we need you out there is As I said,
Speaker 1: you're one of the most effective advocates I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: and the record speaks for itself.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts. It really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping.
Speaker 2: To prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org
Speaker 2: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
Speaker 2: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis.
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one