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In July 1984, the body of a 9-year-old girl was found naked from the waist down,
in woods near Cambridge, Maryland.
She had been *** and beaten to death.
Police released a composite sketch
drawn by two boys, who had seen a man walking with a girl
and they got a call saying it looked like ex-marine Kirk Bloodsworth.
Kirk was arrested and could provide no solid alibi.
He protested his innocence
but the case went to trial, and the courtroom erupted in cheers
when he was found guilty and sentenced to die in the gas chamber.
In 1991, after reading about the new science of DNA,
Kirk's lawyers managed to get a sample of *** that had been preserved from the crime scene, tested.
This proved his innocence
and he became the first death row inmate to be released on DNA evidence.
In 2003, the real murderer was found.
He was a known child sex offender
who had been released from jail locally less than two weeks before the ***.
I first heard about Dawn's *** on the news,
And you know, it was god awful, god awful ***
I mean, the average person can't fathom what happened to that child.
I had been questioned on August 8th, 1984 about it
and I told them I had nothing to do with it.
2:45 the next morning, "Boom! Boom! Boom!"
on my cousin's door
and somebody said:
"Step outside Mr Bloodsworth, you're under arrest for first degree *** of Dawn Venice Hamilton, you son of a ***."
They convicted me on all counts;
guilty of first degree ***, guilty of *** assault,
guilty of ***, guilty of all this and
I'm just standing there and my face is about as red as you can get a face.
I'm so pissed and mad.
And my father's, you know, trying to object to the judge
like that's gonna help
and my mother's just crying.
They put me in a cell
and a 300 and something pound door slammed shut,
just like the tail gate of a dump truck.
And I could touch either wall, by just going like this.
Literally. I mean just by an inch either way.
And I could hear the cat calls coming from this place, you know.
We're gonna get you Kirk,
We're gonna do to you what you did to that little girl.
I kind of shut down.
I didn't know what to do, but I felt my emotions coming.
And I pushed my face into my blanket
and I just cried myself to sleep.
I kept telling people I was innocent
but it's like you're in a sound-proof room
and everybody else is on the outside right,
and you're on the inside and you're screaming and you're beating on the window,
and you're trying to tell them
and they're just walking by you like you're not even there.
Faith is important, you know.
You're innocent, you can prove it,
it is just gonna take time.
I got this book about the first time that DNA was ever used in a criminal case.
That's where my epiphany came.
If it can convict you, why can't it free you?
I started remembering,
"many spermatozoa found" close quotes, in a report, in a slide.
My lawyer paid for the DNA out of his own pocket.
Some $10,000 worth.
Never asked me for a dime of it back.
I was sitting in my cell and it was some time around the end of April maybe, of 1993.
And a guard sticks a post-it note in my cell,
says "Urgent. Call your attorney. Urgent."
I got on the phone and he was screaming on the other end,
"Kirk you're innocent, you're innocent man!"
And I said, I know that. When are you gonna get me out of here?
My story is not unique,
and only 18 of us from death row have been exonerated through DNA.
Out of the 142 that we are now,
and in most cases there's no DNA,
then you have DNA, and they won't let you test it.
We cannot be that, you know, obstructionist
against the DNA testing because it affects everyone.
Dawn Hamilton's family, the euphoria that they were feeling at the time when they thought their daughter had justice,
was a lie.
The anguish and pain that my father and mother felt,
it was horrible for them.
Everybody was telling them their son was a monster.