A Waterman's Journey

By Nathan Ward -- Library Journal, 6/1/2004

Before he was wrongly sent to death row for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth enjoyed the life of a Chesapeake Bay waterman. Convicted largely on the testimony of a seven- and a ten-year-old eyewitness, by 1989 Johnson had exhausted almost every legal option available—after winning a new trial, he was convicted a second time. Then he read the book that ultimately saved his life, Joseph Wambaugh's The Blooding, about the pioneering work being done in England with so-called genetic fingerprinting. Bloodsworth excitedly notified his lawyer, Bob Morin, and the two began a legal odyssey that, incredibly, would end with Bloodsworth's being freed based on DNA incompatability, a type of evidence unavailable to him when he was first sentenced. His story, Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA, written by Tim Junkin, will be published by Algonquin in September (a review will be forthcoming in LJ 6/15/04).

Junkin, a Maryland defense lawyer and novelist, believed Bloodsworth was innocent the first time he read about the case. "It had struck me then as somehow unlikely that a waterman would also be a child rapist," he recalls. "I had spent a season myself as a waterman, and have an appreciation for their lifestyle and ethic, and it may sound naive on my part, but I just didn't believe [the charges]. Then about two years ago I came across another story about Kirk in the Washington Post, which described his release and some of the difficulties he had faced coming home….Kirk's story seemed perfect for me. I'd worked as a crabber, as he does. I know and care for the same area, the Chesapeake Bay, that he does." Junkin also knew Bloodsworth's lawyer, who made introductions. "I gave Kirk my first book, The Waterman, to read. He liked it. He felt I could understand who he was. We went from there."

Bloodsworth spent much of his nine years in the horrific Maryland Penitentiary serving on its death row, adopting a biker tough-guy façade to stave off the beatings and rapes he could hear from his cell. All that time, he was also sending out scores of appeals to celebrities signed "Kirk Bloodsworth, A.I.M. (An Innocent Man)." When he was freed in 1993, many in Bloodsworth's Maryland community still weren't willing to see him as anything but the "child-killer" he'd been branded. Then, Junkin remembers, "I was halfway through my first draft of the Bloodsworth manuscript when I got an excited call from Kirk, telling me that they'd finally found the killer. He was extremely emotional. That the real culprit was finally identified, and identified by his [Bloodsworth's] efforts in finding that DNA, meant the world to him. The woman who had prosecuted him personally came to his home town to apologize to him. It gave him closure." Shockingly, the real killer turned out to be one of Bloodsworth's prison weightlifting partners, convicted through use of DNA evidence, a further tribute to Bloodsworth's persistence.

Since Bloodsworth's landmark exoneration, DNA testing has become widely recognized as scientific evidence often more compelling than that of eyewitness testimony or even fingerprints. It has since freed 12 other death row inmates, according to the Death Penalty Information Project, while the Innocence Project has freed 140 felons based on DNA testing. Following the discovery of the real killer of Dawn Hamilton, Bloodsworth "amazingly has become a powerful and positive force for justice," says Junkin. "He prefers being home in Cambridge, MD, with his wife, Brenda, working the water, being a crabber, living a quiet life. But he knows that what he has to say, endowed with the moral authority of his life experience, is important and can help change things. So he spends a good third of his time traveling and speaking, telling people his story." While "the hell he endured will forever be stamped inside him," Junkin observes, "What [Bloodsworth] has done in a remarkable way is to turn the hurt and anger inside into a positive and meaningful life."

Nathan Ward is social sciences editor, LJ Book Review