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.”

>>There's a big difference between accidents occurring and the government deciding that a person should be put to death.<<

Apples and oranges. Government is not a physical thing. It is a collection of people making decisions. If someone (or group) makes a wrong decision and accidentally "decideds to kill" his own troops in war in a "friendly fire" accident, it does not mean the fear of such an event should keep us from taking on the likes of Hitler, etc.

Likewise, the fear that a jury might accidentally send an innocent man to execution should keep us from defending the lives of our citizens by demanding the highest price be paid by the convicted perpetrators. That fear should be virtually nonexistent now, thanks to DNA testing. And I can't think of many cases these days that would result in this punishment that would not have some sort of DNA evidence either damning or acquitting the accused.

IOW, risk analysis strongly points to continuing on with executions post-haste, when the crime warrants it. And far worse things can happen to a man than the apparent premature end to their life.

Sure, but in the Church's own words, these conditions are, for all intent and purpose, non-existent. We're not talking about executing people in self-defense, for example, in a battlefield environment or one of civil anarchy, where the rule of law has disappeared and/or authorities cannot protect citizens at large. It's morally acceptable to protect oneself and to protect society, however, there is no room for the self-defense of society argument where the criminal can remain in prison for the rest of his life. Where the dignity of the innocent individual is not endangered, there is no justification to execute the criminal, whose dignity is inviolable by the mere fact that he is made in the image of God.

Re: Los Angeles gang violence uptick

"The measures follow a 14 percent increase in violent gang-related crime in 2006 despite a citywide decrease in crime over the past five years. Police say street gangs were responsible for 56 percent of the city's 478 murders in 2006." See below.

Police target 11 worst Los Angeles street gangs

FBI Crime Statistics for 2005

Violent Crime

The violent crime category includes murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault offenses. Nationally, preliminary data for 2005 showed increases in three of the four violent crimes from the previous year’s data. The number of murders and nonnegligent manslaughters rose 4.8 percent. Robbery offenses increased 4.5 percent, and the number of aggravated assaults was up 1.9 percent. Forcible rape was the only offense among the violent crimes that decreased in volume in 2005, down 1.9 percent from the 2004 figure.

A breakdown of the 2005 data by population group revealed that all city population groups experienced increases in violent crime when compared with those data reported for the previous year, with the exception of the Nation’s largest cities, 1 million and over in population, where the number of violent crimes was down 0.4 percent. By percent change in the number of violent crime offenses in 2005 compared with totals from 2004, cities with populations from 500,000 to 999,999 inhabitants saw the greatest increase, 8.3 percent, and cities with populations of 10,000 to 24,999 saw the smallest increase, 0.5 percent. In the Nation’s metropolitan counties, violent crime was up 2.1 percent, and in nonmetropolitan counties, it increased 1.0 percent.

A further examination of violent crime data for the population groups showed that cities with populations from 100,000 to 249,999 had the greatest increase in the number of murders, up 12.5 percent. Cities with 500,000 to 999,999 inhabitants experienced the greatest increases in both robbery, 9.9 percent, and aggravated assault, 8.5 percent. The number of offenses of forcible rape decreased in all city population groups except in those cities with under 10,000 in population, where the number of forcible rape offenses was up 1.5 percent from the 2004 level.

The Nation’s four regions all saw increases in violent crime in 2005. The Midwest experienced the steepest increase, 5.7 percent. The West had a 1.9-percent increase from the previous year’s number; the South, a 1.8-percent rise; and the Northeast, a 1.4-percent increase. All four regions had increases in murder, robbery, and aggravated assault. Contrary to the other three violent crime offenses, the number of forcible rapes declined in each region.

The following data indicates a declining trend in violent crimes (other than murder) until 2005-2006, which saw a sizable reversal of the decline. The murder rate has not seen any decline since 2002.

Historical Table

there is no room for the self-defense of society argument where the criminal can remain in prison for the rest of his life

And attempt to kill and/or actually kill guards and inmates for a decade or so.

If you and the law would support a regime wherein such mad dogs are strapped in restraints 24 hours a day and fed remotely via an IV so they do not have to interact with any other human beings ever, then I would agree that the claim of "necessity" would disappear in such cases. So would dignity as well, of course.

But some people, even outside of war and civil anarchy, need to go.

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?

Which is why the deterrant argument is faulty by nature. It's speculative. Here we are, some 40 years since the death penalty was re-instated, and there's no real way to measure whether the DP deters. If the ultimate penalty does not demonstrably deliver the ultimate benefit of reducing crime in a significant way, why do we give power to the state to take lives? The only reasonable impetus, therefore, is vengeance, which, spiritually speaking, is contrary to the teaching of Christ.

From even a non-spiritual perspective, we naturally want an eye-for-an-eye, but in the satisfying of our vengeance, we give the state power it should never have, except in extreme circumstances. We all cringe at the thought of the government tapping our phones, but we're willing to give the government the power to kill us? It does not compute, and under the wrong circumstances (say, a radical secularist government and society that seeks to banish Christianity - yeah, unlikely now, but talk to me in twenty years) such power could be abused to an extreme.

Don't get me wrong. I'll be the first to admit that I get a certain, immediate feeling of satisfaction when I hear that a violent killer has been sentenced to death. But in grasping the bigger picture, I have a severe conflict with the DP. I'm not sitting in judgment of anyone who supports the DP. I'm working out what the Church is saying versus my natural impulse. This debate has been a good one.

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?

A bad person? No. I'd want the mf-er dead, and want to do it myself. But the goal of the state is to mete out justice, not to satisfy your (or my) desire for revenge.

A murderer has already committed execution on an innocent person. The have killed that person, wrecked families forever, ruined lives, and prevented that person from having a legacy. They deserve death.

I don't give half a damn what a murderer deserves. He deserves nothing. He is a non-entity who deserves no more than a passing thought. The important question is what is best for the general good, for the innocent, for society at large. I am unconvinced that, in most cases, the death penalty meets this criterion.

That's why I said it must be absolute that the guilty has committed the crime. If so, justice is required.

If you're saying that criminals should only be executed when their guilt is absolutely certain, and I'm saying that criminals shouldn't be executed, we're saying the same thing. Absolute certainty exits only in the mind of God, and only His judgment is perfect.

So trial and conviction by one or more juries, endless appeals and an average stay on death row of over 20 years before the sentence is carried out compared to walking into a convenience store and blowing away a clerk is not a higher standard?

Higher? Certainly. High enough? Debatable. I've seen enough coerced confessions, stacked juries, railroad jobs and outright bigotry under color of law that I'm loath to entrust the state with the power to determine life and death. That's even before DNA testing, which offered the first definitive and scientific proof that things are not what the jury thought they were.

(As an aside, DNA testing does not "prove innocence" -- a victim could have been raped by one person and murdered by another. Unlikely, but possible. A negative DNA match does undercut the case for guilt and raise a large, never mind reasonable, doubt.)

And attempt to kill and/or actually kill guards and inmates for a decade or so.

The prison guard is there by choice, just as a soldier is on the battlefield in Iraq by choice. He places himself in harm's way as a great sacrifice for the public. Although his life is worth as much as yours and mine, he accepts the risk, and so, the nobility of his calling. The public at-large has a reasonable expectation not to be a victim of violent crime, the prison guard knows his risk is greater.

Furthermore, as I've mentioned, executing murderers doesn't remove the danger of a prison guard being killed by a lesser criminal. The only way to completely protect prison guards is to either not have prison guards, or execute everyone.

This will eventually be accomplished with robots, and without strapping people down and feeding them with an I.V. I wonder how many people will suddenly oppose the death penalty when that comes to pass. Not many, I'd wager. Even so, such conditions would not prevent the criminal from maintaining a relationship with his Creator, and its certainly not an inherent indignity to be isolated, when one considers the life of a hermit.

But some people, even outside of war and civil anarchy, need to go.

I'd hate the worthiness of my life to be a matter of opinion. Opinions change you know, and it's certainly not unheard of for governments to suddenly be of the opinion that Christians are worthy of being put to death. Our society rejects Christ, our courts don't believe in the sanctity of life, our doctors are gradually gaining the power to end life at their own discretion, and a nation just north of us has essentially categorized the Bible as hate speech. If we don't reject the death penalty here and now as an affront to human dignity, when the time comes, we're going to be the first ones lined up against the wall, I assure you.

Furthermore, as I've mentioned, executing murderers doesn't remove the danger of a prison guard being killed by a lesser criminal.

Someone serving life without parole in a system where life without parole is the severest punishment has no fear of receiving a harsher sentence, so he is not incentivized to not kill guards and fellow inmates.

Someone serving 5-10 for robbery and aggravated assault is incentivized not to kill prison guards.

I'd hate the worthiness of my life to be a matter of opinion.

I am not referring to matters of opinion. I am referring to the fact that certain inmates will kill a guard if they have half a chance to do so.

Comparing murderers who try to kill guards to Christians imprisoned for their faith is more than a little silly.

We're moving into Mumia Abu Jamal sympathizer territory in which all prisoners, by virtue of being prisoners, are unjustly incarcerated prisoners of conscience.

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