Former death-row inmate to lecture at College of Law

04/19/2010
 
 
   Kirk Bloodsworth
The first capital defendant in the United States to be exonerated by the use of DNA evidence will tell his story on Thursday, April 22, during a lecture hosted by the Post-Conviction Clinic at the College of Law. 

Kirk Bloodsworth will speak at 5 p.m. in the Great Hall. The lecture, co-sponsored by the Arizona Justice Project, which is housed at the College of Law, is free and open to the public.

This is Bloodsworth's first visit to Arizona, which is among the first states to be conducting a systematic and exhaustive search of inmates whose convictions could be overturned through DNA testing. The project is funded through the Bloodworth Program, which aims to find wrongful convictions and free innocent people.

Bloodsworth, of Cambridge, Md., served nearly nine years in prison, two of them on death row, before being released in 1993 after DNA tests conclusively proved he did not rape and murder a young girl. He has since become active in criminal justice reform, telling his story around the country and working for passage of the 2004 Innocence Protection Act, of which the Bloodsworth Program is a part.

Professor Zig Popko, director of the College's Post-Conviction Clinic, said Bloodsworth's visit allows students, faculty, staff and the community to learn about the real challenges facing our criminal justice system.

"Many people doubt that wrongful convictions happen in America because everybody gets a lawyer, the prosecution must disclose favorable evidence to the accused, the jury must find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and there are seemingly endless appeals," Popko said. "Yet, the 252 DNA-based exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals (in the U.S.) prove otherwise.

 

 
Zig Popko
"Kirk Bloodsworth was one of the earliest of these 252 individuals and the first to have faced a death sentence for crimes he did not commit," Popko said. "His tragic experiences force us to re-examine our complacency about America's criminal justice system generally and Arizona's in particular, where we have already had two DNA-based exonerations."

In 1985, Bloodsworth was convicted of and sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of a 9-year-old girl. Semen evidence showed she had been raped and sodomized, but Bloodsworth was convicted primarily on eyewitness identification testimony. He won a second trial, on the grounds that evidence had been withheld, but he was found guilty again and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. In 1993, the semen evidence from Bloodsworth's case was sent out for DNA testing, and he was proven innocent.

Bloodsworth said he no longer is bitter about the years that he lost, but he is surprised that more people aren't angry about the number of wrongful convictions that occur in the United States.

"We should not be allowed to have an innocent person go to prison, let alone be on death row," said Bloodsworth, noting the real killer in his case was apprehended in 2003. "I think our government has been largely indifferent to it, and I think we should be up in arms about that.

"I'm not against prosecutors putting away bad guys - I'm against them doing it under the table, hiding evidence or not making (DNA) testing available."

Bloodsworth said his message to law students, who someday will be armed with degrees that give them power and responsibility, is simple: "Stand up for what's right, and make sure you uncover what's wrong."

To read more about Bloodsworth, click here.
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