Bloodsworth

by Tim Junkin

  After the state was satisfied that he had been sufficiently disinfected, a large bus pulled up in front of the building. Kirk was escorted onto it for the trip across the street. He was going into the notorious and ancient Maryland Penitentiary, the one place in the state known as death row. Kirk was the only convict on the bus. As it pulled into the entranceway to the prison, he could see the inmates streaming from the yard up to the perimeter fence. They’d been expecting him.

  It was the detention center revisited, but worse. “We got your ass now, Kirk,” he heard one say. “Here he is, here he is,” he heard. “Child fucker!” was screamed across the yard. Dozens of men in prison clothes began shouting epithets at him. Some made obscene gestures. Some were laughing. “We got us some fresh meat,” somebody cried out. “Fresh meat,” he heard again. He kept his eyes fixed on the bus driver. He swallowed hard. Kirk wondered how he’d ever survive in such a place.

  Guards escorted him out of the bus. For the first time, he got a close-up view of the prison. A castle, a dungeon from another world: walls of pitted black stone, watch towers, turrets, guards with automatic weapons. Prison officials surrounded him as they walked him along the causeway bordered on both sides by a fence topped with razor-cut wire. Inmates pressed against it making threats, sticking their tongues out, hooting at him. He was terrified.

  In the receiving area he was given a mattress of cotton wadding and blankets. Still in chains, he was led down several tier hallways, up some stairs, and through a series of locking doors. As each one clanged behind him, he winced. On the third level up, in an area called the South Wing, guards pushed him into a cell. “This is your new home,” one of them said. “Welcome to death row.”

  Roaches crawled over studded cinder-block walls peeling shreds of faded yellow paint. Tiny shadows moved over the bunk and seatless toilet, and scampered into holes in the crumbling concrete. Graffiti was scratched everywhere. The place had the stench of an outhouse. Bars ran across the front. The guards slammed shut the iron door. The lock bolt clicked and echoed in his ears. They walked away. Kirk stood there alone in the foul dimness of his cell and cried.

  That evening for dinner a Styrofoam cup was shoved through the slat in the door. It was supposed to be spaghetti. Kirk looked down and saw one large overcooked tomato in the cup. That was it. He also got a plastic bottle of Kool-Aid—”bug juice” to the inmates. He swallowed the tomato, trying not to taste it. Wrapping the blankets around him, he tried to sleep.

  Once the lights were out, more roaches began dropping from the ceiling, landing on the floor, landing on him. In the darkness the roaches came down like snow. They made a constant crackling noise. He tried to seal the blanket around himself but could feel the roaches landing on him and crawling everywhere. It took him most of a week before he could even fall asleep in that hole.

  IN THE BEGINNING they kept him on administrative segregation. He remained in his cell twenty-three hours a day, with an hour for a short walk, a phone call, and a shower. He had to be escorted everywhere. It was too dangerous to allow him out into the general population of inmates. Those awaiting execution had to be protected.

  The South Wing of the Maryland Penitentiary, at least among cons and ex-cons, was an infamous place. Those on the street who’d survived the South Wing were given a wide berth. When Kirk got there all the guards wore knife vests. A month or so before, a guard had been killed. Word on the tier was that an inmate named Nathaniel Appleby had used a prison-made shank to disembowel the man over a perceived insult. The brutality of the place was palpable. Kirk could smell it, could feel it in the air. The pain and anger were like electric currents pulsing along the floors and walls.

  Kirk learned quickly how the inmates communicated after lockdown. Elaborate systems were set up using the most primitive materials. Dental floss was essential. The cons used it to create pulley lines down the length of the hall. Somebody would tie a bar of soap to fifty yards of dental floss and then slide the soap down the tier floor. Some got so good they could sling it from one end to the other. A receiving inmate would grab it through his bars with a jigged-up hook, a bent paper clip on the end of a pencil. The inmate would take what was on the string, tie a pack of cigarettes to it, and send it back or pass it along. The men used pieces of cracked mirrors, which they held outside their cells. Looking in the glass shards, they could see down the tier and know if any guards were around. When the hall was clear, the inmates let their commerce fly. Sandwiches, weed, drugs, “jump steady”—homemade wine from tomato puree—and mash beer all were passed along, bartered for cigarettes, cash, or services. Plastic bottles would go swinging down the tier.

  Curtis brought Kirk a small television. Kirk quickly realized he’d need an antenna in order to get reception. Another inmate named Half, a black man with a muscle builder’s torso but stubby legs, showed him what to do. He gave Kirk a piece of wire from a broken up radio and had him mash it into a bar of soap with a formaldehyde base. By hanging the soap out the levered window slat, and attaching the loose end of the wire to the TV, Kirk got some programs. Half became Kirk’s first friend in the joint. He had a silver-starred front tooth, and liked to lift his lip in a snarl that showed it off. His left bicep was tattooed with an angel of death. He liked to play chess. Sometimes he talked street philosophy. Early on he offered Kirk advice. “Stay away from the gambling,” he told Kirk. “Stay away from the queers, stay away from drugs, don’t borrow nothing, and you’ll be fine . . .”

  Around dinnertime every day, the South Wing went crazy. Pandemonium ruled on the tier. The guards rarely ventured in then. Everyone except those on lockdown milled about. It was noisy, chaotic. Springsteen, Prince and the Revolution, or Aerosmith would blare from competing radios. Kirk’s first week there, one inmate supposedly committed suicide. He was found hanged in the laundry. Another guy got napalmed. Inmates squirted him and his cell with naphtha, a flammable cleaning solvent used in the machine shop, then threw in a match. Kirk heard the man’s screams. He heard them afterward in his dreams.

  Kirk saw cons walk by his cell carrying toothbrushes honed into shanks, full soda cans in a pillow case, soap bars in socks—all weapons that could put the hurt on a man. From time to time someone would walk near Kirk’s bars and show him a weapon or mumble some guttural threat.

  “I’ll be there shortly,” Kirk would reply. “I’ll be there. You won’t have to wait much longer . . .”

  It was the guys who didn’t say a word, though, that frightened him the most. The ones who needed someone new to hate. The silent ones who seethed. They were the ones who’d attack without warning. Here he was, a convicted child killer, the perfect target.

  AFTER TWO MONTHS on lockdown, thinking too often about the gas chamber, Kirk badly needed a change. He was sick, bored, claustrophobic, mired in self-pity and depression. It was late spring. He wanted to walk in the yard, to feel the outdoor air. He wanted to go to the weight room, to get a job, have contact visits, to have some kind of life. He needed to use the library. He was ready to risk whatever awaited him. He petitioned the assistant warden to be removed from administrative segregation and put into general population. That’s when he first met Sergeant Cooley Hall, the security guard from Trinidad, and first told him that he was holding hostage an innocent man. It was Hall who recommended that Bloodsworth be given a temporary pass to general population. On a trial basis. To see how he did.

  Initially Kirk just got tested. Men would watch him, circle him, see if he’d give them something. They’d ask him for things. He knew if he showed any weakness they’d be on him like jackals on a crippled calf. He decided his only chance was to act like a tough former marine, to adopt that “take no prisoners” attitude. He tried to exude the image that the marines had wanted to instill in him: that he was a force to be reckoned with. He was determined never to show fear.

  There were tribes within the prison, groups who hung together, protected one another, fought against other tribes. The Muslims fought the bikers. The
Aryans fought the blacks. The D.C. guys hung together and avoided those from Baltimore, the B-mores—for “be more careful.” There were only a handful of cons from the Eastern Shore. One was named Richard Stillman, who’d killed his girlfriend’s parents with a shotgun while they were sleeping. This happened in Cambridge when Kirk was twelve. Stillman, according to the press accounts, had then had sex with the daughter in the same room with her murdered parents. It had been in all the papers. In the prison, Stillman wore bib overalls and a straw hat. He never shaved. With a very long scraggily beard and hooded eyes, he claimed to worship the devil. He kept an altar in his cell. Stillman was called a nighttimer, or a shorteyes, as word in the prison was that the stronger inmates raped him at will. He also was supposed to be a snitch. Half advised Kirk to stay far away from Stillman. Kirk did. Kirk realized, though, that he needed friends. Unexpectedly, he gained a few. Friends like Half, like Big Nick—a very large and fierce-looking ex-Pagan who spotted weights in the gym.

  It didn’t take long. After a few weeks of being out in general population, Half approached him. “Word is, Blood, that they’re trying to hit you,” he told Kirk. “Word is there’s a fifty-pack contract out on your ass.” Kirk had been in the weight room every day his first weeks out. He’d met a couple other lifters. One was Bozo; another was Big Tony. He was getting physically strong again. He knew he’d have no life at all if he stayed locked down in protective custody. “Let ‘em come,” he said.

  It happened, though, when he least expected it, when his guard was down. He was coming out of the weight room in the early afternoon in late May. He wanted to get in a shower before all the scud balls got in there. His mother had sent him a robe, and he went to his cell and changed into it. He wore the robe and a pair of tennis shoes into the shower. Kirk had learned to wash with his back to the wall, always alert. He thought he was alone and started shampooing his hair. He ducked his head under the water to rinse out the suds. Three guys suddenly were there, in front of him, all black men. They must have been waiting for him. One threw a soapy rag in his face, trying to blind him. The idea was to blind you, incapacitate you, flip you around, and then take turns raping you. The idea was to turn you into a punk. As the rag hit Kirk in the face, one of them swung a sock stuffed with batteries, a prison-made bola, and struck Kirk hard in the back of the head. Batteries flew everywhere as Kirk went to his knees.

  He flailed back at them with everything he had. They were all slipping on the soapy floor. One tried to get a choke hold around Kirk’s neck. Kirk was hurt and woozy, but still strong. He tried to bite the man’s arm. He got punched hard and thought he was going to black out, that he was done. That’s when Half showed up. Half could act like he was certifiably crazy. He had no fear. The men saw Half run in and they scattered. Half dragged Kirk out of the shower.

  “Why did you help me?” Kirk asked him. He was bleeding badly from his head. Blood covered his face, making it difficult to see.

  Half shrugged. “‘Cause I felt like it.” He smiled the snarl that showed off his starred tooth. “‘Cause I like your name, maybe. Not so much the Kirk but the Noble and the Blood . . .”

  Half had picked up a battery. He showed it to Kirk. “You were lucky, man. If that sock hadn’t broke, they’d a whacked you over and over.”

  Kirk nodded. On the tiled island lay his towel. He used it to try and staunch the bleeding.

  “You know, Blood,” Half went on, “you’re gonna’ have to do something about this. I don’t care how you get them, but you have to. If you don’t, there ain’t nothing I can do to help you.”

  “What?” Kirk said. “What you want me to do?”

  “Think of something,” Half answered. “‘Cause whether you lose or not, you got to retaliate. See, the only way these people will stop messing with you, is if they know they got to fight you every time.”

  Kirk’s head was badly split open. He needed medical care. Much as he hated to, he had to post at the infirmary. The warden got wind of his injury and gave Kirk ten days lockdown in solitary for fighting. The guards never found out who it was he fought with.

  Two days after Kirk got back into general population, he saw the man who’d thrown the soapy rag in his face. For ten days Kirk had been thinking about what Half said. He’d never done a violent thing in his life, but he believed Half that they’d never let him alone if he let this go. The man was talking on the phone and hadn’t seen Kirk. Kirk backed up around the corner. A skinhead was mopping the floor, using a bucket with a metal mop wringer. Kirk picked up the metal mop wringer by the handle. It weighed at least fifteen pounds. Just as he had riding in that police car the night of his arrest, Kirk felt that he was in some kind of bizarre movie. The man on the phone still had his back to Kirk. Kirk approached. His last few steps were silent. He knew how to track. When he was close enough, when he could hear the man whispering on the phone, Kirk whistled. The man turned, and as he did Kirk gave him all he had with the mop wringer. He hit him square across the temple and knocked the man up into the air and across the hall into the far wall. The man lay on the tier floor twitching. He remained in a coma for three days. No one ever said a word about it. No one saw anything. That was the way of the South Wing.

  Half and Bozo came by to see Kirk that night. “See,” Half said, “now you’ll get some respect around here.”

  “I didn’t like it,” Kirk said. But there was an aspect to it that had made him feel better. He’d fought back and finally won a battle.

  “You got to get ‘em all,” Half told him.

  Kirk did. He caught another of the men alone, stoned, smoking a joint in a spot blind to the guards. Kirk’s first punch caught him in the ear. Kirk pummeled him as hard and as fast as he could until he ran out of strength. The man lay in the fetal position, crying for Kirk to stop. “You leave me the fuck alone, you hear?” Kirk yelled into the ear he had torn and inflamed.

  The third man didn’t even resist. When Kirk caught him, he just went limp. Kirk shoved his face into a cell door several times. Kirk was learning to fit in.

  TWENTY

  UNDER THE LAW, when a person is charged with a crime but not yet convicted, that person is cloaked with the presumption of innocence. The burden is on the state to produce evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Once a defendant is convicted in court, however, that presumption is reversed. A convicted felon is presumed to be guilty. To succeed on appeal, he has the burden of convincing a higher court that the trial judge committed a serious error or deprived him of a constitutional right. He must also show that the error or deprivation prejudiced his case and was not merely what is termed harmless error. Alternatively, if he can find what is referred to as newly discovered evidence—evidence unknown at trial that is sufficient to show his probable innocence, he may get a new trial that way.

  Following Kirk’s sentencing, Steven Scheinin and David Henninger withdrew as his lawyers. Neither were appellate specialists. Gary Christopher, head of the state public defender’s death penalty unit, thought it best to have new, fresh minds review the case. Also, a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a potential basis for a new trial, is always a possibility on appeal. With Kirk facing a death sentence, every angle needed to be explored. Scheinin did not object. He offered to help in any way he could. Kirk welcomed the change.

  In Maryland each county has its own district public defender in charge of that county’s office. The district public defenders are under the supervision of the state public defender. The state public defender had set up a special unit dedicated to countering death penalty prosecutions. Gary Christopher, a University of North Carolina Law School graduate, who had clerked for Judge Marvin Smith on the Maryland Court of Appeals, had been chosen to direct this unit.

  Typically, after a conviction, the public defender’s office concentrates only on preparing the direct appeal. Julia Bernhardt and George Burns, two lawyers from the state public defender’s appellate office, had been assigned this task. They would research a
nd write the appellate briefs. But Curtis Bloodsworth had gone to Baltimore, met with Gary Christopher, and convinced him that there was other information out there that pointed to his son’s innocence—information that had not surfaced at the trial. Gary Christopher met with Kirk. He was impressed with this twenty-five-year-old’s zeal and his passionate protests that he was not the killer. Even while the appellate process was running its course, Christopher agreed to direct a parallel attack on the conviction.

  While Bernhardt and Burns prepared the appeal, Christopher organized another investigation into the crime. Joanne Suder, an assistant trial lawyer, agreed to begin reinvestigating Dawn Hamilton’s death, interviewing additional witnesses, looking for new evidence. Joanne worked with an investigator from her office, Doug Cook, a retired state trooper. Christopher also enlisted the help of the district public defender from nearby Montgomery County, Ted Weisman, who had a particular interest in death penalty cases. Weisman was willing to add his support to the effort. He agreed to work with Joanne and offered to lend two of his more experienced investigators, Sam Wallace and Randy Edwards, to help work the case. Together they coordinated the process of finding and trying to interview witnesses, not just the ones called by the state to testify at the trial but all potential witnesses, whether from Fontana Village, Randolph Road, or from Cambridge. They planned to go after anyone who might be able to shed light on the crime. It was an ambitious undertaking.

  One way to clear Kirk would be to find the real killer of Dawn Hamilton. That’s what Kirk wanted, what he kept insisting on. His new legal team set about trying to track down other suspects. Suder, Weisman, Cook, Wallace, Edwards, and others from their offices began investigating the crime from scratch, as though they were new detectives on an unsolved case. They were committed to changing Kirk’s fate. They didn’t know how much time they had before the appeal would be resolved, before the postconviction remedies might be exhausted, before the countdown to execution began. Their work took on a new urgency. Over the next year, Ted Weisman would personally devote thirty to forty hours a week trying to save Kirk Bloodsworth while continuing to supervise an office of fifty people.