Catholic wrongly convicted devotes life to ending death penalty

Tried and found guilty of the brutal rape and murder of a 9-year-old Rosedale girl, the barrel-chested crabber from the Eastern Shore was sentenced to die in the gas chamber for his horrific crimes.

But Mr. Bloodsworth didn’t have anything to do with what he was accused of. A former marine with no criminal record, he had been wrongly convicted and would later become the first American on death row to be exonerated by DNA testing.

But as he was led onto the grounds of the Maryland State Penitentiary in Baltimore in 1985 on his first day on death row, no one believed his story – least of all the other prisoners.

Handcuffed and shackled as he slowly made his way across the yard of the penitentiary, Mr. Bloodsworth noticed other prisoners racing to the fences to glimpse the monster they had heard so much about.

This was the man a Baltimore County jury convicted of beating Dawn Hamilton with a rock, sexually mutilating her, raping her and strangling her to death by stepping on her neck.

As the new prisoner shuffled onto the old prison campus, he was dwarfed by the gothic structure’s tall granite walls, silver spires and imposing turrets that loomed ominously over Forrest Street like a medieval castle.

“We’re going to do to you what you did to that little girl,” they screamed. “We’re going to get you, Kirk!”

Seated on the couch in the living room of his small home in Cambridge more than 20 years later, pain was still visible on Mr. Bloodsworth’s face as he recalled those long-ago events that forever changed his life. With his brow deeply furrowed, the plainspoken 46-year-old man said he believed hell is a place of torment and that his experiences must be similar to those in that place of misery.

“I remember that first night in my cell and the smell coming from this place,” he said, recounting how roaches frequently scurried along the walls of his small living quarters.

“Not only did it stink of every kind of excrement you could think of,” he said, “but you also could smell hatred – and it was all pointing at me.”

The threats that greeted him when he first entered the state penitentiary continued through the night and beyond, with inmates shouting through the air vents how they planned to torture him.

Despite the strong temptation to despair, Mr. Bloodsworth said he decided he would fight to prove his innocence. He believes God sustained him through nearly nine years of taxing prison life, sending him otherworldly consolations and leading him into the Catholic Church.

With the same steely determination that got him through his prison ordeal, Mr. Bloodsworth is now devoting the rest of his life to abolishing the death penalty and seeking reforms of what he calls a “broken” criminal justice system.

On the day he was found guilty, Mr. Bloodsworth said he remembers being housed in a Baltimore County holding cell with another man who sat in the shadows. For two hours, the stranger didn’t say a word as he ate a sandwich and sipped an orange drink. Then he turned to his fellow prisoner and told Mr. Bloodsworth not to worry. The Eastern Shore native couldn’t tell if the man was black or white because there wasn’t much lighting, which he said was “odd.”

“Everything is going to be alright,” Mr. Bloodsworth recalled the man saying. “You’ll be OK.”

After Mr. Bloodsworth heard the guilty verdict and returned to the holding cell, the man was gone and only half the sandwich remained. When he asked the sheriff’s deputy where the “other guy” was, the deputy responded that Mr. Bloodsworth had been the only person in the cell.

“Maybe I wanted to see something – I don’t know,” said Mr. Bloodsworth, pausing to light up a cigarette – the white smoke of which swirled in soft vaporous pirouettes near his now-graying hair.

The encounter with the “angel” wasn’t Mr. Bloodsworth’s only dealing in the spiritual realm. Another time, he remembers being touched on the shoulder with two fingers while he was alone in his cell. He thinks it was a sign from God that he wasn’t really alone.

Growing up in the Baptist and Methodist traditions, Mr. Bloodsworth had attended a small Christian high school and had counted himself a believer. His mother was a deeply devoted Christian who encouraged him to read the Bible – an assignment he took up in earnest in prison, reading through the Scriptures twice.

As a young man, Mr. Bloodsworth had worked for a funeral home where his only exposure to Catholics came during funeral liturgies. That’s where he first learned to genuflect and was impressed by the reverence Catholics showed in the practice of their faith.

While in custody with Baltimore County before going to death row, parishioners from the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Towson visited him and other prisoners during regular chapel services.

Encouraged by their visits, it was at the Maryland State Penitentiary where Mr. Bloodsworth began deep theological discussions with Deacon Al Rose, the Catholic prison chaplain there. The two would talk for two or three hours at a time. The more he learned, the more he wanted to convert.

At Easter time in 1989, Bishop John Ricard, Baltimore’s former urban vicar, visited Mr. Bloodsworth at Deacon Rose’s invitation. Mr. Bloodsworth had been studying his catechism for several months and was ready to be received into the church.

Deacon Rose remembered that a guard asked the bishop to leave Mr. Bloodsworth’s cell, requiring the urban vicar to administer the sacraments of confirmation and holy Eucharist through the bars of his closed cell door. Standing underneath the gas chamber where Mr. Bloodsworth’s life was to be ended, Bishop Ricard completed the solemn rites that initiated him into a new kind of life – a spiritual one Mr. Bloodsworth cherished.

Asked what it was like to receive Communion for the first time, Mr. Bloodsworth softened his serious countenance and smiled.

The bond between Deacon Rose and Mr. Bloodsworth was one that strengthened over the years. The Catholic chaplain at the penitentiary for more than three years, Deacon Rose had heard plenty of inmates tell him they were innocent. But Mr. Bloodsworth was one of the few he believed.

“You work enough years among inmates and you get a feel for how guys tell stories,” said Deacon Rose, now retired and ministering at St. Isaac Jogues in Carney. “There was no question in my mind this was a guy speaking the truth.”

One of Mr. Bloodsworth’s darkest days was when his beloved mother, Jeanette Bloodsworth, died five months before the DNA evidence proved his innocence in 1993. Deacon Rose was the one to break the news of the death of Mrs. Bloodsworth to her son. The deacon accompanied him to a private viewing of her body with two armed guards.

“I told Kirk that your mom is up there in heaven,” remembered Deacon Rose, 76. “The saints do intercede for us and I just believe that lady had something to do with him getting the break with the DNA evidence.”

Mr. Bloodsworth believes one of the main reasons he was arrested was the tremendous pressure Baltimore County police were under to find the person who had committed those heinous acts in the summer of 1984. Two young boys identified him as the person they saw near the crime scene and an anonymous caller said he had been seen with the girl earlier in the day.

Mr. Bloodsworth, who never met the murdered girl, had told an acquaintance he had done something “terrible” that day. He was referring to his failure to buy his wife dinner, but it was used against him in a different context.

Although he lived in the area of the crime, Mr. Bloodsworth had returned to the Eastern Shore soon after the murder – making it look like he had fled. Misfortune seemed to conspire against him at every turn.

The Maryland Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in 1986 because of withheld information at his original trial, but he was again found guilty by a second jury and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Of the nearly nine years he spent behind bars, two of them were on death row.

Mr. Bloodsworth was the one who had first proposed the idea of DNA testing. An avid reader in prison who served as the librarian, he learned about the new technology in a book called “The Blooding.” Robert Morin, his attorney, was able to get his client tested.

It was exactly that post-conviction testing that proved Mr. Bloodsworth’s innocence in 1993. He was released and paid $300,000 in compensation – the accumulated salary the state said he would have earned as a waterman. Gov. William Donald Schaefer pardoned him that same year.

Mr. Bloodsworth said he had to endure the suspicions of many who believed he had gotten off on a technicality. It was difficult for him to maintain a job after his release because people thought he was a murderer. DNA testing later identified the real killer – Kimberly Shay Ruffner, a man who had been previously charged with sexually assaulting children. He pled guilty to the Dawn Hamilton murder and is now serving a life sentence.

Ironically, Ruffner had been serving time for another crime in the same prison as Mr. Bloodsworth. The two had lifted weights together.

“I tell you the difference between the day before they found who really did it and day after was like I had just won the World Series for the town of Cambridge,” said Mr. Bloodsworth, who annually throws a “freedom party” complete with steamed crabs and beer. “Everyone treated me completely different.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Bloodsworth, now remarried, has become an outspoken advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, most recently speaking in Annapolis in support of a bill that would replace the death penalty with prison sentences of life without parole.

Working for The Justice Project, a Washington-based organization that pushes for criminal justice reform, Mr. Bloodsworth lobbied for the passage of a bill that provides funding for post-conviction DNA testing. President George W. Bush signed the Innocence Protection Act of 2003 on Oct. 30, a day before Mr. Bloodsworth’s birthday. The act established the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program.

“We need to do post-conviction testing to find out if there are other innocent people on death row before we start throwing switches,” said Mr. Bloodsworth, pointing out that since 1973, more than 150 people have been wrongfully convicted and later freed from prison based on DNA evidence.

Bishop Ricard, the man who welcomed Mr. Bloodsworth into the church, said his story shows the urgency of abolishing the death penalty.

“It’s a barbarian, grotesque way of meting out justice,” said Bishop Ricard, now bishop of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla.

“It’s so clear that the administration of capital punishment in this country is dismally unjust,” he said. “It really singles out the poor and minorities. If you have the money for proper legal counsel, you don’t receive the death penalty.”

Bishop Ricard commended Mr. Bloodsworth for his contributions to the abolitionist cause.

Mr. Bloodsworth acknowledged that he might have good reason to be angry for all he’s been through. But he doesn’t hate the prosecutors who pursued him, the police officers who arrested him, members of the community who distrusted and harassed him, or the real killer who kept quiet all those years.

“I forgive them all,” Mr. Bloodsworth said. “God has to sort that out now. I leave that all up to him.”

The former discus-throwing champion admitted to some actions in prison that don’t square with his faith. Early during his sentence, he fended off an attack by three prisoners in the shower. In order to prevent future attacks, he later physically assaulted each of them.

“I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, but it was the right thing to do for me,” he said. “I’m not proud of it at all, but it probably saved my life in the end.”

Returning to the importance of faith, Mr. Bloodsworth said his belief in God made him a survivor.

“We all go through these trials in life,” he said. “You just have to kind of accept what happens to you with some sort of grace.”

God never asks his people to have faith the size of a mountain, Mr. Bloodsworth said, he just asks to have faith the size of mustard seed to “move that mountain.”

“That’s what makes people achieve greatness,” he said. “It’s not necessarily themselves, it’s the electricity that drives them – it’s that lump of coal that’s burning bright in their own soul that gets them through it and for me that’s God, the Catholic Church and my mother and what she taught me.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m grandiose on my part, but it’s certainly something,” Mr. Bloodsworth responded. “In the bigger sense of it all, I think that maybe that was all meant to be. There is a bigger picture.”

>>I wouldn't want to be a victim of that sort of "accident".<<

I used to be in a prison ministry band. I've been to all sorts of prisons. If I was ever looking at a trial that could end in me spending ANY time in prison (whether I did the crime or not), unless I was visited by an angel in my jail cell as this guy was, as soon as I got out on bail I would be headed straight out of the country, never to be seen again.

I would avoid prison at all costs and I have NO resect for the courts.

One could then argue that there should be no life-without parole sentences, or even custodial sentences at all, because the hyperwealthy will generally be able to avoid the harsher end of sentencing for any crime.

Agreed, that could be argued as well, however, a longer prison sentence doesn't violate the inherent dignity of a human being in the same way killing him does. There's a big difference between being alive and being dead, and that's where the Church (at least) draws the line in its teaching.

Thanks for the x-link.

As I pointed out on the other thread, I have a problem with the whole concept of prison as it is known today. I don't think it is effective either as a means of punishment or as a way to safeguard the public from criminals. I would prefer to see a simple three-tiered system of criminal punishment: confinement (under Spartan conditions -- say an outdoor fenced pen behind the local courthouse) for misdemeanor crimes, corporal punishment (caning) for non-violent felony crimes, and hanging for crimes of violence. Hanging would be used only in cases where a plea of "guilty" is entered by the accused; those claiming innocence would be given a commuted sentence (up to life) without possibility of parole, to be served in a prison camp run under military discipline.

Ideally, we should have a Coventry -- an area where the law does not apply -- in every state. This area would have fenced and guarded borders, but the area within those borders would be terra nullis, no man's land, a place without any law or legal government at all. Those who choose to live without the law would be sent to Coventry, where no law exists, there to survive as best they can.

Great story. We can bandy about statistics all we like, but when we hear of the personal story of one man with a name, location and family, the issue becomes much more real. As Stalin said, the death of one man is a tragedy. The death of one million is a statistic.

America desperately needs to kick its killing habit, in all its various forms. This country will never be healthy until we firmly embrace life. Whether it's criminals, the unborn, the terminally ill or anyone else whom we deem unworthy of life or a danger or inconvenience.

Justice will be administered to all, one day, but it won't be here and now.

With all due respect to Deacon Bresnahan, murderers aren't the only ones who kill prison guards. If he's going to use that argument, then he's also arguing for the execution of thieves, rapists, drug-dealers, and pretty much anyone in a maximum security prison.

No one is saying that we should execute anyone who might commit a murder. No one is arguing that there is some perfect prediction system where we can take out all potential murderers. All the deacon was pointing out is that known murderers later killed others who might be alive if the murderers had been executed. We don't need to have perfect predictive capabilities. None exist in any case. One can still reasonably argue that capital punishment could have saved the lives of others who were not capital offenders.

If someone killed my wife, or raped and killed my daughter, or slaughtered my sons, am I a bad person for wanting the murderer executed?

Of course not. But the law itself begins with an assumption of innocence and prevents you from going out and administering that justice, yourself. The system is designed to deliver not only a truthful verdict, but a fair sentence. In the case of your hypothetically murdered family members, unfortunately, we have a system that has gotten to the point where a guilty person may or may not pay the price for the crime committed against you. If an innocent person is executed for these murders, how does that give you justice? How magnified would your sorrow be if, down the road, you discovered that you helped put an innocent man to death as a means of getting justice for your departed?

States such as California (which implements the death penalty) are seeing a horrendous uptick in violent crime between gangs (and sometimes involving innocent bystanders) in the L.A. area.

And, of course, the real deterrent effect to that kind of crime isn't an impersonal death penalty carried out by the state years later, but a highly personal and immediate death penalty carried out during the crime by a random gun-carrying citizen who gets caught in the crossfire.

When the state stopped trusting the armed citizen and started denigrating his role in crime prevention, it led directly to all of these other problems.

From Para. 56 of Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), an encyclical letter on various threats to human life which Pope John Paul II issued on March 25, 1995.

"This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offence."(46) Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfills the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated.(47)

It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: 'If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.'"

(46) Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2266

(47) Cf. ibid.

I don't know how one measures deterrance except by crime statistics, which are going in the opposite direction, if that's the case.

The problem is, no statistical movement can settle the case either way. We always have to scan a whole range of arguments and data when trying to come to a conclusion about the death penalty.

To definitively prove that the DP deters/doesn't deter murders, we would have to set up parallel universes where all conditions are the same except for the death penalty. You note above that California has the death penalty, but murders are increasing. But the question is, would they have increased more if the death penalty were not in force?

Let's look at it from the other side: in my state, Michigan, we don't have the death penalty. Let's say we institute it and murders drop 15%. Ishmac rejoices and says,"You see, I'm right!" But I would be dumb to claim this as definitive proof because murders may have dropped off for some other reason (eg, all the murderous types left MI because the economy here is tanking and there are fewer people here to rob, beat or kill). Maybe they all move to warmer climes like CA,or better hunting grounds like Chicago, where the death penalty deters some from committing capital crimes--we just don't know. We would have to run our parallel universes and see whether the decrease/increase would have been greater/lesser without the death penalty. So a mere increase or decrease in one direction won't make the case for either one of us, even if the stats seem straightforward.

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