Bloodsworth Read online

  BLOODSWORTH

  TIM JUNKIN

  A Shannon Ravenel Book

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  Contents

  Preface

  I A Stain Lifted

  II A Crime in Fontana Village

  III A Composite, a Profile, a Gambit

  IV Trial and Error

  V The Death House

  VI Broken Justice

  VII Freedom

  Epilogue

  Spring 2004

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  Praise for Bloodsworth

  Also by Tim Junkin

  PREFACE

  1865 WAS A MOMENTOUS YEAR. The American Civil War was drawing to a close with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre. Slavery in the United States was about to be abolished. And far away in the beautiful Abbey of St. Thomas in the small provincial city of Brno in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a short bespectacled abbot with a love of botany was putting the finishing touches to his studies on pea breeding. Unwittingly, the abbot was about to unleash a chain of events that would lead directly to the remarkable story of anguish and courage that you are about to read.

  The abbot was Gregor Mendel, and his work on pea hybrids revealed for the first time the fundamental laws of inheritance that apply just as well to you and me as to his pea plants. Mendel had discovered genes, the particles of inheritance. It took another eighty-eight years for scientists to work out exactly what these particles look like—the DNA double helix—thanks to James Watson and Francis Crick.

  My own involvement came, as happens in science, entirely by accident. I had joined the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester in the English Midlands as a rookie lecturer in 1977. My fascination was with exploring inherited variation directly in human DNA. By total chance, we stumbled onto bits of DNA that varied hugely between people, allowing us for the first time to identify individuals by their DNA. Thus was DNA fingerprinting born. By a strange twist of fate, in the very year of the first DNA fingerprint, a young girl was raped and murdered and a man was convicted of this terrible crime and sentenced to death—that man was Kirk Bloodsworth.

  Everyone now knows that DNA can be used in criminal investigations—with high profile court cases and popular TV series like CSI it would be hard not to know of the power of DNA to identify the guilty. But what of the innocent? In fact, the first time we used DNA in a criminal investigation, way back in 1985, it led to a prime suspect in a similar case of rape and murder being shown to be innocent of the crime. Without our DNA evidence, and given his (false) confession, I have no doubt that he would have been convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Here was DNA as a two-edged sword, clearing the innocent as well as identifying the guilty.

  The current impact of DNA on police work is huge. The numbers speak for themselves: in the United Kingdom, our national criminal DNA database now carries some three million DNA profiles and has already proved crucial in over five hundred thousand investigations. But these bald numbers hide countless personal stories—some squalid, some touching, some tragic, but none I think as extraordinary and inspiring as that of Kirk and his quest to escape death row.

  My wife, Sue, and I had the great privilege of meeting Kirk and his wife, Brenda, last year at an award ceremony in London. This was emotional stuff—here was a gentle giant of a man who has turned a personal tragedy into a force for great good. Kirk is DNA’s champion, tirelessly campaigning for testing of DNA evidence of convicted people, with over 150 individuals who served long sentences or faced state execution now freed from U.S. jails. We need a Kirk in Britain too.

  I am delighted to see Kirk’s story published. This is an extraordinary tale of terrible injustice, of anguish and frustration, of courage and fortitude. It’s a tale of a truly good and inspirational man. And of the true power of DNA.

  Sir Alec Jeffreys

  Leicester

  June 6, 2005

  PART I

  A STAIN LIFTED

  And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.

  —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

  ONE

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON of April 27, 1993, Bob Morin sat in his law office located near the city courthouse in Washington, D.C., and stared out his window at the new Olsson’s bookstore across the street. There were books in there he’d wanted to read for years but couldn’t find the spare hours. Morin had been up most of the night assisting lawyers in Austin on an emergency petition for a stay of execution on behalf of a Texas inmate scheduled to die by lethal injection. For weeks, he’d been immersed in preparing to defend a man at trial facing a possible death sentence in Maryland. He’d also been assisting lawyers in Georgia and South Carolina on numerous postconviction strategies in capital cases in those states. And he’d been preparing pleadings opposing the federal government’s first attempt to apply a new death penalty law in a military tribunal. That April afternoon, Morin had just returned from a meeting with the federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice. His khaki suit was creased, his tie undone. He wanted to change into the blue jeans, pullover shirt, and sandals that he usually wore in the office and that lay in a heap on the floor, but he felt too tired to move.

  Morin looked over a desk piled high with files. His gaze stopped on the dream catcher tacked to his office door. It was an authentic Navajo relic, presented to him by a grateful client. Raised a Boston Catholic, he preferred the simple Native American spirituality to any institutional religion. He studied the dream catcher on his door and made a wish for the one client whose image he couldn’t shake, the one client who was haunting his thoughts. He took a deep breath, looked up a number on his Rolodex, picked up the phone, and dialed long distance.

  At forty years old Bob Morin had devoted most of his legal career to assisting people facing the death penalty. By age thirty he had walked away from both a lucrative position in private practice and a promising academic career at Georgetown University to join the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta in an effort to fight the swelling tide of death sentences being imposed and carried out in nine southern states. From there he’d gone on to become a public defender in Maryland, specializing in death penalty cases, and then in the nation’s capital he formed a small law firm dedicated to helping death row inmates. Morin had long believed that the way the death penalty was being imposed in the United States was unjust. Now, having spent years battling executions in state after state, he’d become certain of something else—that there were inmates facing execution or serving life terms in prison who were innocent. One such person, in whose innocence Morin had come to believe strongly, was Kirk Bloodsworth.

  Kirk Noble Bloodsworth had been sentenced to die in Maryland’s gas chamber for the 1984 rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. After being granted a new trial by a Maryland appellate court, Bloodsworth had been convicted a second time. His appeals to the higher courts in Maryland had all been exhausted. In February 1989 Morin had received a call from Gary Christopher in the state public defender’s office, asking him to meet with Bloodsworth. “Every lawyer who’s touched this case believes the kid is innocent,” Christopher had said. Morin had been reluctant. He knew that Bloodsworth’s sentence after his second trial had been changed from death to two consecutive life terms. Morin was swamped with death penalty cases and felt like a triage doctor at a disaster site. He had so many clients scheduled for execution that he couldn’t afford to spend time trying to help one facing only a double life sentence. But when Christopher called a second time, Morin, as a favor to a colleague, agreed to visit this kid Bloodsworth. He
had no intention, though, of becoming his lawyer.

  A month later, in late March, Morin and his partner, David Kagan-Kans, had driven to the Maryland Penitentiary to meet with another client. They figured they’d briefly interview Bloodsworth while at the prison. The plan was to hear the man out, then politely tell him that they just didn’t have the time or the resources to take on his case. Over the years Morin had interviewed hundreds of incarcerated prisoners seeking a lawyer’s help and knew all too well the typical convict rap.

  “Kirk came into the interview room all pumped up,” Morin recalls. “He was a big kid, and he’d been lifting weights. His hair was long and shaggy, wild looking. He had bushy sideburns and a Wyatt Earp mustache running down his face. He wore mirrored sunglasses and had a pack of Kool Filter Kings rolled up in his sleeve. The classic biker con. I figured the interview would be short . . .”

  Bloodsworth immediately took off his sunglasses. His eyes were teary. He shook hands with the two lawyers. “The first thing I want to do is apologize for the way I look,” he said. “This is not me. This is not who I am. But this is the way I have to look to survive in this place. This is what I’ve had to become . . .”

  Morin had never had a prisoner come on to him like this before. They talked further. Bloodsworth seemed interested in the little girl who had been killed. As though he had a connection to her. He wanted more than just to get out of prison. He stressed not only that he was innocent, that he didn’t commit the crime, but that he wanted to find out who did. “For the sake of the little girl,” he kept emphasizing.

  Morin began trying to explain the legal difficulties to Bloods-worth. He told him there were immense hurdles to overturning his conviction a second time, particularly as his appeals were over. Even if a legal basis to further contest his conviction could be found—a constitutional violation previously overlooked or significant new evidence unknown at the time of his second trial—no judge, state or federal, would be eager to put the victim’s family through the ordeal of a third trial. And even if a new trial were granted, how would they go about convincing a jury that there was reasonable doubt?

  “Mr. Morin, I appreciate what you’re saying,” Bloodsworth interrupted him, “but this is not about reasonable doubt. If you’re going to be my lawyer, you need to understand this. I did not do this. I am innocent. This is what we must prove. I am not here to get a lawyer to raise a reasonable doubt. If you take this on, it is not to raise a technicality—I am innocent. We must prove that. We must prove who really did this.”

  Morin was amazed. He’d never heard an inmate talk like this. But he did know some things about this one that were extraordinary. He’d learned that Bloodsworth had written hundreds of letters from prison proclaiming his innocence, that every day this man woke up thinking of a new person to write. Every day, seven days a week, for five years . . . A guilty man, Morin figured, just wouldn’t have the energy, the perseverance, the will.

  “Kirk,” Morin responded. “You say you are innocent—”

  Bloodsworth interrupted him again. “Mr. Morin,” he said, “if you’re going to be my lawyer you just can’t use phrases like that. It’s not that I’m just saying that I’m innocent. I truly am innocent. And we have to find the person who really did this.”

  BOB MORIN AND David Kagan-Kans walked together out of the prison without saying a word. Morin was frustrated, angry. They stood together on the stone curb outside the penitentiary walls. The sky was overcast, the air chilly. Traffic whizzed by. Morin slammed his file down on the hood of his old Chevy. The last thing he needed was this—an innocent client with no money, with almost no hope or chance. While the public defender’s office might provide some small stipend for the representation, it would be a major undertaking involving hundreds of hours, a case his small firm would probably have to fund, and one that would further exhaust resources that were already stretched thin. He looked at his partner. They were thinking the same thing. “You know we have to do this,” Morin said.

  “I know,” Kagan-Kans answered.

  “It’s going to be a bear. I mean, how are we ever going to prove he’s innocent? I’m just not sure we can do anything for this kid.”

  “Right,” Kagan-Kans answered. “Right.”

  Two prison guards in brown uniforms walked by. Kagan-Kans stretched out his arms and looked up at the low sky, which had begun to spit. He lowered his head and watched his partner. “But isn’t this why we became lawyers?”

  Morin smiled and nodded. He picked up his file and got into his car.

  TWO

  OVER THE FOLLOWING THREE Years, from early 1989 through early 1992, neck deep in dozens of other pressing death penalty cases and trying to help his wife raise their two young sons, Bob Morin devoted every spare minute to the details of Kirk Bloodsworth’s life, his case, the circumstances of the crime, the manner of the police investigation, and the actual trials. All of this and particularly Bloodsworth himself—his background, his natural dignity—further convinced Morin that he had an innocent man for a client. The dilemma was how to prove it.

  Trying to find some basis on which to make a case, some edge, however slight, Morin exhausted every available legal remedy. Building on what other lawyers representing Bloodsworth had done before him, he hired investigators to pursue leads concerning other suspects dismissed by the police, searching under every rock from Maryland to California to try to find evidence that would establish the identity of the real murderer. The information pointing to a different killer that he amassed was disturbing, even convincing, but not legally sufficient to clear Bloodsworth. Morin tried to locate the child eyewitnesses, witnesses who’d since grown up whose testimony convinced two juries to convict his client, to see if they’d admit to error or a change of mind. He prepared and filed a habeas corpus petition, known as a collateral attack, a way to challenge the conviction on federal constitutional grounds never raised before. He even tracked down evidence of two murders that occurred after Bloodsworth’s incarceration, murders that bore features strikingly similar to the crime for which his client was convicted. He was hoping to establish that a killer with the same modus operandi was still at large and that Bloodsworth thus was innocent. Again, this information, while unsettling, was not legally sufficient to compel his client’s release. Morin had come up empty on all counts. Every effort led to a dead-end. He had nearly lost hope and given up when Kirk Bloodsworth’s own reading and bullheaded obstinacy convinced Morin to reconsider the use of an emerging forensic tool, one unheard of just seven years earlier, in 1985, when Bloodsworth was initially tried.

  Kirk had been reading everything he could get his hands on in the prison library—newspaper articles, magazine pieces, legal treatises and appellate cases from old law books, as well as other second-hand books donated to the prison by local civil rights groups, churches, and charities. He read with a purpose, looking always for a door, a hook, anything to help prove his innocence. He had come across a recently published work of nonfiction, a true crime story by Joseph Wambaugh titled The Blooding, that described how in England a scientific technique called genetic fingerprinting was first used to solve a double murder. A young scientist there, Alec Jeffreys, had discovered a way to identify and compare DNA patterns extracted from blood or semen samples, patterns that like fingerprints are unique to each individual. In the village of Narborough, near the city of Leicestershire, two teenage girls had been raped and killed three years apart. The assailant had left semen on the body and clothes of each victim. By using his genetic fingerprinting, Jeffreys determined that the killer of both girls was the same man. The Leicestershire Constabulary, relying on this new science, had then undertaken to obtain a blood sample from every sexually active male living in the vicinity and to compare the DNA from each with that left by the killer. Incredibly, over a period of several years, police “blooded”—drew and tested the blood from—over three thousand men. Alec Jeffreys’s technique worked. In late 1987 the investigators found the DNA match. The
y arrested the killer, who confessed to both crimes. Kirk Bloodsworth read the book in one sitting and excitedly contacted Morin.

  In 1989, when Morin had first accepted Bloodsworth as a client, DNA testing was still in its early stages, though it was starting to generate interest in the legal community. Few people, however, seemed to understand its applications, how it worked, or how to interpret its results. It had never been used defensively in a capital case or to clear a convicted murderer. Nonetheless, Morin had considered whether a DNA test might help Kirk. He’d contacted a leading DNA laboratory in the country, Cellmark Diagnostics, to learn what would be needed to pursue a DNA analysis. Morin had reviewed all of the forensic reports in the file. The FBI had analyzed the crime scene evidence and reported that there had not been any spermatozoa or foreign blood specimens detected or preserved. Though cotton swabs had been used to gather fluid samples from the victim at autopsy, which were then smeared on glass slides, no semen had been found by the FBI. Morin had written to Bloodsworth’s prosecutors, requesting that any fluid specimens of the assailant be tested. They’d written back, reiterating that no such fluid specimens existed. According to Cellmark Diagnostics, even if the slides had contained identifiable semen, Cellmark’s testing techniques in 1989 could not analyze trace specimens preserved on glass slides. Moreover, any attempt to test them would probably completely destroy any existing DNA sample.

  But Kirk, fired up after reading The Blooding, blew over all these old “details.” He wanted a DNA test pursued. He called Morin repeatedly and pestered him about it. He wanted the evidence sent to a private DNA lab for testing. Morin knew that the science was changing fast. DNA technology was in a dynamic state. Scientists around the world were experimenting with improved methods for identifying, extracting, and testing DNA from a variety of sources. Breakthroughs probably would be forthcoming. If his client would be patient, Morin believed, the techniques might improve. The risks of an unsuccessful test destroying any remaining DNA might diminish. Morin cautioned his client to wait, to be patient. But Kirk was done with waiting. He was the one rotting away in a cell. “My life’s not worth living in here,” he told his lawyer. “Guys get jammed here every week. Black Smoky last month—somebody tied his neck to an overhead steam pipe. Guards called it suicide. And he was decent. One of the few.”