Free PDF Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA Evidence, by Tim Junkin
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Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA Evidence, by Tim Junkin
Free PDF Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA Evidence, by Tim Junkin
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Review
"Kirk Bloodsworth is an American Josef K., an icon of a system that failed him—and justice—at every turn." —Washington Post Book World
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From the Back Cover
“Chilling, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring. I urge you to read it.” —SISTER HELEN PREJEAN, author of Dead Man Walking CHARGED WITH THE RAPE AND MURDER of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland’s gas chamber. Maintaining his innocence, he read everything on criminal law available in the prison library and persuaded a new lawyer to petition for the then-innovative DNA testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence. He was pardoned by the governor of Maryland and has gone on to become a tireless spokesman against capital punishment. Bloodsworth’s story speaks for 159 others who were wrongly convicted and have since been released, and for the thousands still in prison waiting for DNA testing. “The reader will be swept along to an amazing and shocking conclusion that could never be believed as fiction.” —JOSEPH WAMBAUGH, author of The New Centurions “Unbroken by the horror and anguish of his ordeal, [Kirk Bloodsworth] has now dedicated himself to saving other innocents from the living hell he endured.” —SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee * CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR NOTEWORTHY NONFICTION, 2004 * ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION BEST NONFICTION OF 2004
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Product details
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book; 1st Printing edition (October 14, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1565125142
ISBN-13: 978-1565125148
Product Dimensions:
5 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
76 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#239,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is the story of Kirk Noble Bloodsworth (Yes, that is his real name.) who was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit and who might have spent the rest of his life in prison had it not been for the science of DNA and his own perseverance. The story begins in July 1984 in Baltimore. A nine-years-old girl named Dawn was playing not far from her home with two boys. A man approached her and lured her into the nearby woods. That was the last time anyone had seen her alive. She was found dead few hours later, savagely murdered and raped.What followed next was a perfect storm of police mistakes, questionable decisions, choices made by cops that at the time made sense but later proved wrong, coincidences, selective hearing, some poor decisions on Bloodsworth’s part and other factors and events that came together and resulted in an innocent man being convicted of a crime he did not commit. Individually, these things were of little importance. But when they combined, a great injustice was created.I will not go over the details of the investigation into Dawn’s death. The author devotes some hundred fifty pages to it and he does an excellent job at doing so. Not only is the whole case interesting on its own, but the author manages to recount it in truly gripping way. I do not exaggerate when I say that I could not wait to turn the next page as I was reading this book. Besides, if I were to recount the events in detail, then what would be the point in reading the book?Basically, the first mistake that the police did was to rely solely on the witness accounts of the two boys who were playing with Dawn that day. The boys were aged only ten and seven. Police also asked the FBI to come up with a profile of the killer. FBI did so, but later admitted that the investigation was at that point at too premature stage to create a profile. (All the facts were not in yet.) Besides, a profile is just one of many tools that should be combined with other evidence and clues to find the killer. It should not be used completely on its own, as it appears to have been in this case.While the police were searching for the killer, Kirk Bloodsworth happened to be in Baltimore. He was trying to salvage his marriage with his estranged (and quite difficult) wife. It did not work out between them, so he got fed up and left town to go back home.Who is this Kirk Bloodsworth? Just an ordinary young man in his early twenties with no criminal record or any violent history. He had recently finished his tour of duty with the Marines where he had stellar record. True, he had a tendency to rush into things without thinking and had something of a careless “happy-go-lucky†personality, but overall he was a good man with strong values and a heart of gold. He came to the attention of police when his wife called authorities after his abrupt departure.Kirk bore some passing resemblance to the suspect in Dawn’s case and he fit the FBI profile to some degree. He was visibly nervous when cops came to talk to him because he was smoking marijuana (one more reason to legalize it) and that made the cops suspicious. They released him after an interrogation, and he went around drinking and smoking more pot and making comments that, in retrospect, were natural to make in his situation, but at the time appeared damning. Police arrested him the next day. Right from that moment, the system took it for granted that he was the murderer.Bloodsworth was tried and found guilty, even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder. The prosecution based their case on five witnesses, including the two boys. All the witnesses were unreliable. Kirk denied his guilt vehemently and presented five witnesses to provide him with an alibi, although they too were unreliable. The jury later admitted that the evidence was very weak, but they convicted him anyway.A year or so later Bloodsworth managed to appeal his conviction. He got a better lawyer who shed serious doubt on the prosecution’s case. But even though this time the evidence was even weaker than the first time, Bloodsworth was convicted again. The only good thing that came out of the trial was that this time he was sentenced to life in prison.Prison was hell for him. The convicts were threatening to kill him, and indeed one attempt was made on his life. He had developed a drug addiction that almost killed him. But all this time Kirk kept researching his case and trying to find a way to clear his name. When DNA testing appeared in early 1990s, it was Bloodsworth who kept pestering his lawyers to test the evidence from the crime scene with DNA. Eventually they agreed to pay for the expensive DNA tests.The DNA cleared him and he walked out a free man after nine years, but many people still thought that he was guilty. DNA was poorly understood back in those days and many thought that Bloodsworth had been cleared on some technicality. Many in his hometown thought that he was a child killer and they let him know it. Following his release, the DA office stated that “Bloodsworth is not guilty, but he is not innocent either.â€I read that sentence a couple of times and I still don’t understand it. You are either guilty or you are innocent. As far as I know, there is no third option.It took ten more years before the real killer was found. They could have found him much earlier, but the DA was refusing to enter the killer’s DNA samples into general criminal database because they were convinced that Bloodsworth was the murderer.So what does this whole story teach us? Many things. The most obvious one is that death penalty should be abolished.Bloodsworth managed to clear his name only because of luck and his own tireless efforts. As I watch the news, I start noticing a lot of stories about people being wrongfully convicted and released from prison after many years. Without death penalty, at least they have the time and the opportunity to clear their name. I am absolutely certain that at least a couple of innocent people have been executed in the recent past. As long as death penalty persists, innocent people will continue to be executed once in a while.But what about real criminals? Statistically speaking, most death row convicts must be guilty of the crimes for which they were sentenced. Shouldn’t they be executed? I would say that letting them rot in jail for the rest of their life is better punishment than letting them rot in jail for a couple of years and then killing them.Aside for the death penalty issue, Bloodsworth case illustrates many problems with criminal investigations. For example, on his way to court for arraignment, Bloodsworth was asked if he would like a blanket to cover his face from cameras. He refused. Consequently, his face appeared all over the news. Some of the witnesses who later testified against him saw his face on TV under the headline “Child Murderer†and convinced themselves that Bloodsworth was the man whom they had seen on that day when little Dawn was murderer. Perhaps it should be a rule that all suspects on their way to court must have their face covered whether they like it or not.But that was not the real problem in Bloodsworth case. During the investigation the police broke some of the procedures that were in place already in 1984, and made a number of questionable choices. The problem was not with procedures but with the people. The rape and murder of a little girl was so shocking that the police and the community developed a fanatical desire to find the murderer. They were all well meaning in their own way. The problem here was that once they locked their sights on Kirk Bloodsworth, they never gave him any benefit of doubt. As far as Bloodsworth was concerned, there was no such thing as innocent until proven guilty. There was serious evidence pointing at Bloodsworth’s innocence, or at least casting doubt on his guilt, but all of it was rejected or explained away. This was not done deliberately. Those people did not knowingly convict an innocent man. I imagine that they were good people who would have never sent an innocent man to prison. But the thought that Bloodsworth was innocent did not apparently even occur to them.That is what I find so sad in this case. Good intentions led to terrible injustice. I don’t know if there is any way to prevent this from happening again in the future. And that is what saddens me the most in this whole affair.
Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNAThis book, written by Tim Junkin is great book of how an innocent man was held in prison for nine years, supposedly guilty of the rape and murder of Dawn Venice Hamilton, a little girl. While reading the book I got so nervous if he really was going to be able to leave prison that I wished I had some mutton to chew on. I felt guilty while reading the book, as if I were the one that put Kirk in prison, but then, I realize that many men (and women) have been condemned and have died, innocent men (and women). It is incredible how every single detail is overtly described, although it decays the moral personality of the character. The government needed an arrest to be done, and it just hoped that Kirk's last wick of hope would end. But it didn't. Before being sentenced to death, twice in fact, Kirk was an oyster fisherman, who would regularly be tonging for oysters in Chesapeake Bay, on his family's skiff. He would usually fill in whole bushels of oysters. During this activity, Kirk would usually see egrets standing upon the dock and beaches. He would also sell cow tripe and ganders. Then, Kirk went to the military, he traveled to Europe and in Spain he smoked his first hashish, which tuned him into a drug addict, he did marijuana, crack, and many others. Then, Kirk married Wanda, a woman who probably doubled his age, and his parents did not like. She fazed Kirk, since she did not work and was always wasting money; it unsettled the personal home economy. Then, he leaves his wife and when coming back to his parents, he is accused of the rape and murder of a little girl. He couldn't believe it. The judicial process was incessant. Suddenly, he was in prison, and then a few years after, condemned to the death penalty. I can hardly believe how sporadic the political and judicial system used now can be. Then he left the penitentiary, and when I thought he was free at last, the mortician was preparing his deathbed. He went through several lawyers, his father spent lots of money on lawyers and private investigators, until Bob Morin, the famous non-profit lawyer, is able to take evidence that everyone thought useless and 'disposable' and through a special DNA lab, he was able to prove Kirk innocent. Then, this evidence approval was challenged by the jury, who had signed a letter saying that they wouldn't. At last Kirk is free. Because of Kirk, the gas chamber is not used today as a death penalty, but instead the fatal injection, which is considered to be more humane.It is an excellent book, in which we see how the DNA identification system was still developing 30 years ago (something pretty hard to believe, since we are now pretty used to the idea), and how one of these tests might even mislead the judges. This book also questions if there even should be a death penalty, if people should at least try to make themselves innocent, if there was a mistake in the jury (many cases). I greatly recommend this book to people who like and even dislike nonfiction, for it catches and hooks the reader, and it is a book nearly impossible to put down. I would give this book 4 stars, since nonfiction is not my favorite category, yet, it was a great book.
I find myself waiting for justice. It is going on four years, now, for my direct appeal to run its course. It seems injustice has found a home in Florida's county courts. In my case, there was no crime. A lawyer, and disgraced former deputy sheriff (porn phreak), had the audacity to falsely accuse me of cyberstalking him. Also, a junior prosecutor and 20-year veteran public defender (tweedle dum and tweedle dee) helped him secure my wrongful conviction. I am also writing my book, "Unleashing the Unimaginable," about how lawyers are taking control of Florida's courts. I am writing as I am waiting.
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