Bloodsworth

by Tim Junkin

  Stein called Dr. Richard Lindenberg, a specialist in neuropathology. Lindenberg explained the mechanism by which medical examiners can tell from brain injury whether the injury was caused by the head being struck by an object, on the one hand, or the head being slammed into an object, on the other. A contrecoup injury, he explained, is brain damage occurring inside of the brain opposite to where the wound is made and suggests that the brain was slammed into an object. If a rock were used to smash Dawn Hamilton’s brain, he said, the injury inside the skull would be to that part of the brain closest to the impact. That wasn’t the case here. Her brain was damaged in an area away from and opposite to where her skull was impacted. She was not struck with the weapon, he concluded. Rather, her head was slammed down onto a hard surface. She was not murdered, he concluded, by the rock.

  But Lindenberg slipped up on cross-examination. He made a mistake, trying to be too glib, perhaps, too much the knowledgeable expert.

  “Doctor, now we are talking about a significant force, isn’t that true?” Michael Pulver asked him. “We are not talking about a little girl falling on a rock in the woods?”

  “Well, it could be,” Lindenberg answered. “Depends on how fast she falls, whether she slipped on muddy ground or just fell over on her buttocks and then hit the brain, hit the skull . . . You can get the same injury just by falling backward, particularly if you glide on a banana peel or something, or ice.”

  A banana peel? Even a young trial lawyer couldn’t miss an opening like that.

  “Assuming she didn’t fall on a banana peel in the woods, Doctor, you also saw these photographs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Saw the injuries to the face, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, is it your opinion this was caused by her falling in the woods?”

  “This could be . . .” he answered, trying to explain himself.

  Pulver picked up a picture showing Dawn Hamilton’s face bashed in, her head partially crushed and bloody, her eye damaged. He showed it to the doctor, then held it up for the jury.

  “Now, if I understand your testimony, Doctor, these injuries to Dawn Hamilton were caused by her falling in the woods?”

  Despite his expert’s stumble, Stein might have ended his case there. He’d skewered the state’s witnesses and raised the issue of whether the rock was even a factor. Rather, he called Richard Gray to testify, trying to implicate him as the murderer. Stein went through Gray’s story, trying to raise the questions that had bothered Detective Mark Bacon. He even followed up by calling investigator Sam Wallace who’d gone to Gray’s house and seen a red carpet rolled up outside. But Gray and the state were both ready. Gray had answers to every question. And in rebuttal the state called police officers to further confirm his answers to those questions.

  The defense case ended. Kirk Bloodsworth had produced no alibi witnesses, no character witnesses, and had declined to take the stand to deny that he was the murderer. Leslie Stein had put his eggs in just a few baskets. The jury would have to doubt the quality of the state’s evidence, would have to understand and agree with Stein’s suggestion that the rock was not the murder weapon, and that this fact exonerated the defendant; or the jury would have to conclude that Richard Gray was more likely the murderer. But where was Mr. Bloodsworth? Some of the jurors had been waiting for him to testify. Why didn’t he tell us he didn’t do this? several questioned afterward. And where was he that day? Wasn’t he with anyone who could vouch for his whereabouts?

  The jury heard closing arguments on April 6. Ann Brobst was calm, even-keeled, low-key. She told them that five eyewitnesses placed Kirk Bloodsworth at Fontana Village. Two of those who saw and identified Bloodsworth at the lineup were children who were terrified of him. Jackie Poling was too frightened of him to point him out at the lineup, she said. She asked the jurors to consider why. Why would little Jackie Poling be so terrified of this man if he weren’t certain he was the killer?

  Leslie Stein argued it wasn’t the rock that killed Dawn Hamilton, and it wasn’t Kirk Bloodsworth either. During his closing, he was solicitous of Detective Capel and praised his dedication to his job. Capel had just made a wrong assumption, Stein said. About the murder weapon, about the rock. And that mistake had led to the wrong man being put on trial. Stein tried to point the jury to Richard Gray. He went through an exhaustive critique of the evidence.

  After the arguments concluded, Judge Smith instructed the jury on the law, on what they now were required to consider. Back in his chambers the judge was troubled. He had significant reservations about the reliability of the child witnesses’ identifications. He told his staff that evening that if the verdict were up to him, he might very well find that there was a reasonable doubt.

  Leslie Stein believed he’d tried a superb case. Still, he worried about the jury’s take on the first conviction. Every day the Baltimore area papers had carried news reports on the developing trial. These stories referred to the “retrial,” and the fact that the defendant had been “convicted” before, been previously “sentenced to death.” The jurors had to know this. Obviously they knew that the police and prosecutors still believed Kirk was guilty. How hard would it be, Stein wondered, to overcome all this in addition to the photos of Dawn, the horrendous nature of this crime?

  That night Kirk lay awake until first light. He thought he had a good chance, pinned to Stein’s strategic calls. Stein should know, shouldn’t he? He was the savvy professional. But Kirk couldn’t fathom why it should be so close. Wouldn’t the system clear him of this ugly crime? Perhaps deep in his gut he knew that he was in trouble. But no. He could win. He told himself this. He tossed on his bunk. This jury would see the truth.

  The next day, Stein felt confident. The buzz around the courthouse was that Bloodsworth would walk. The courtroom clerk, anticipating a not-guilty verdict, began preparing release papers. Ann Brobst chain-smoked outside the judge’s chambers. “If he’s acquitted,” she snapped at Stein, “I’m going to throw myself out the window.”

  “You should dismiss this case,” Stein fired back. “To even go forward on the evidence you have is reprehensible.”

  For six hours the jury deliberated before reaching a verdict. Finally, they came back to announce their unanimous decision. Kirk’s insides were churned when he rose to hear it. Six hours was much longer than before. Long enough to acquit, he thought. He faced the foreman and listened to the verdict. Kirk Bloodsworth was guilty on all counts. Guilty! Kirk was stunned. His face burned crimson. The words sheared through his brain. He couldn’t believe it. Kirk hung his head and sobbed. He was nearly cried out. Once again, guards took him back to a cage; again he was a dead man walking.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE MENTAL HEALTH clinic director, Dr. Gene Ostrom, was surprised, two years after his phone call to Judge Hinkel, to receive a subpoena to testify in a posttrial hearing in the Dawn Hamilton murder case. Not only did he have to appear, but several of his staff were summoned to testify as well.

  Leslie Stein had filed a motion for a new trial alleging once again that the failure of the state to turn over exculpatory evidence in a timely manner was a violation of Brady v. Maryland. Judge Smith agreed to hold an evidentiary hearing on the matter, set for June 12, 1987. If the motion were denied, Judge Smith intended to go forward with Kirk’s sentencing immediately following the hearing.

  Again, Kirk Bloodsworth had been forced to make the impossible choice of whether to be sentenced for a rape and capital murder he didn’t commit by the jury that convicted him or by the judge who presided over his trial. This time Leslie Stein counseled him at length about this decision, though Kirk seemed distant, absent, off in some zone of trauma. Still, after repeated discussions, Kirk agreed that he’d been impressed by Judge Smith’s manner. Smith seemed to be a gentle man. Kirk thought he might also be merciful. Despite the mistake he made going with Judge Hinkel the first time, Kirk elected to be sentenced by Judge Smith.

  Over the days
following the verdict, Kirk’s emotions careened from one extreme to another. He felt he was living in a world gone mad, chained inside some insane theatrical production that kept repeating itself. Days went by when he could hardly speak. He’d cry for hours, then get angry. Gradually, as his June hearing date approached, a flat obstinacy took root. He asked his dad to buy him a new sweat suit—pants and jersey—all black, and black tennis shoes to match. He would dress in black at his sentencing as a way to protest the court’s injustice. Black, from then on, would symbolize his innocence.

  At the posttrial hearing on Stein’s motion for a new trial, Dr. Ostrom told the court that in July 1984 he’d been the director of a community mental health center near Rosedale. David Rehill had been well known to his staff as a patient of the center. Ostrom related how he’d called Judge Hinkel in March of 1985 and told him of his concerns about Rehill. Until recently, he told the court, no one had ever followed up with him about these concerns.

  Ostrom related that on July 25, the day of Dawn Hamilton’s murder, Rehill showed up at the clinic sometime after noon and asked to talk to a counselor. He was not scheduled for a visit that day and was willing to wait three hours to see someone. An employee of Ostrom’s testified that Rehill wanted to talk about a relationship he had with a little girl that day. Ostrom’s secretary remembered that Rehill was wearing some kind of shirt that showed off his muscles and that he had scratches on him. He had curly hair then, and she was pretty sure he had a mustache. Another employee remembered that he was wearing shorts, probably light colored.

  Here was a man, similar to the portrait in the composite sketch, dressed like the stranger at Bethke’s Pond, with curly hair and a mustache, who showed up unannounced at a mental health clinic, with scratches on his face, shortly after Dawn Hamilton was killed, asking for counseling over his relationship with a little girl. Yet he’d never been put a in a lineup and his photograph had never been shown to the eyewitnesses.

  Leslie Stein had subpoenaed David Rehill to this hearing. He called Rehill to the stand. Rehill had a lawyer accompanying him. Rehill answered a few questions about his personal appearance back in July of 1984, but when asked where he was on July 25, his attorney objected. He raised Rehill’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to allow him to answer. Stein requested that the state give him immunity so that he would be required to answer the questions. The prosecutors declined. Stein argued passionately. He accused the state of bad faith if it refused to do so. If the state were at all interested in the truth, he argued to Judge Smith, it would grant Rehill immunity to find out what he knew before it would send a citizen to the gas chamber.

  Ann Brobst and Michael Pulver had deaf ears. They declined to give Rehill immunity. They never seriously entertained it. The state already had its culprit. It had no interest in further prolonging the inquiry.

  Leslie Stein then argued before Judge Smith that his motion for a new trial should be granted. Upon first learning of Ostrom’s phone call to Judge Hinkel, Stein had sent out an investigator to interview people at the community health center, but the witnesses with the critical information were off work that day. Stein hadn’t had sufficient time to follow up and conduct a thorough investigation in the few days before trial. He had no way of knowing how significant the evidence was. The state’s conduct in withholding the information for two years was inexcusable, he argued. And the evidence was compelling that Rehill, not Bloodsworth, may have killed Dawn Hamilton. Certainly this evidence deserved further study. A new trial was warranted.

  Pulver and Brobst argued that Rehill was not exhaustively investigated because he didn’t meet the description given of the suspect. Rehill was only five feet eight inches tall and weighed 180 pounds, as opposed to the six-foot-tall muscular man the child witnesses had described.

  Judge Smith became agitated, then angry. He was outraged, he said, at the Baltimore County detectives for not following through with an investigation of Rehill, for not putting Rehill in a lineup. The discrepancy in the descriptions, given by children in the first place, was of little significance, and the decision to ignore David Rehill as a suspect was ridiculous, he said. Judge Smith further lambasted the state’s attorney’s office for waiting two years to provide the information to the defense. “I am disappointed in the state’s attorney’s office,” he said. “I am disturbed,” he said. “It isn’t gamesmanship we are playing here. It is truth. You represent your position, that’s true. But the ultimate is truth . . .”

  For a moment, Leslie Stein thought Judge Smith was going to grant a new trial. As Smith vented his anger, Stein began poking Kirk in the ribs with his elbow. “He’s going to do it,” Stein whispered. “He’s going to do it . . .”

  But then Judge Smith changed tacks. He was also uncomfortable that Leslie Stein had not moved for a continuance of the trial date, even though he had learned of this new information just days in advance of trial. A continuance would have allowed the defense ample time to investigate the new information. Judge Smith thought that Leslie Stein was a smart and capable lawyer. He wasn’t sure, but he wondered whether Stein had tried to play both ends. Smith did not feel the court could permit the defendant to sit on the new information, not request a continuance, and then after he lost the trial come forward and claim prejudice. The only fair analysis, Judge Smith reasoned, led to the conclusion that the evidence was not newly discovered after the trial. It was known to the defense before the trial. Hence, the motion would be denied.

  Kirk once again was crushed. His hopes had come alive, only to be snuffed out again. Rehill and his lawyer were excused. This man, who might very well be guilty of the murder, was walking away, free. Judge Smith took a recess. Upon his return, the sentencing of Kirk Bloodsworth would go forward.

  JEANETTE BLOODSWORTH HAD wanted to accompany Curtis to the sentencing this time. She wore a floral dress and held a handkerchief up to her eyes. She had come to lend support to her boy. Cindy Bloodsworth and several other cousins were also there in the packed courtroom. During the recess, Kirk turned and found his mother’s eyes. He wanted so to go to her. All he could do was watch her, slightly nod, and mouth the words that he loved her.

  Leslie Stein began the sentencing hearing by calling a security guard from the detention center to vouch for Kirk’s good behavior while at the jail. Stein then pointed out to the court that Kirk’s family members were all in the gallery. Stein then looked at the defendant, motioned his head toward the witness stand, and called Kirk Bloodsworth to testify. Since Judge Smith had never seen Kirk testify at trial, Stein thought it important that the judge hear from him at the sentencing.

  Stein asked Kirk if he committed the crime, and Kirk answered no, that he did not. Stein asked him whether he’d admit to killing Dawn Hamilton if it would save him from the gas chamber.

  “No sir” was Kirk’s reply.

  Stein asked Kirk if he wanted to say anything else to the court. Kirk indicated that he did.

  One more time Kirk Bloodsworth tried to reach inside, tried to dig within himself, tried for once to find the right words, words that would ring true. “I feel very sorry for what happened to the child and for the family and what they must be going through,” he began slowly. “There is no way in my conscience that I could kill a little child or anybody for that matter. I respect life too much and I just couldn’t do it. And I didn’t . . .” Kirk struggled to keep composed, to not break down before a courtroom filled with people. “If you sentence me to death, Judge, there is no way down the road we can pull it back. I have no idea who killed the child. All I know is I didn’t do it. When they close the doors on that gas chamber, that’s it. You can’t call it back.”

  He heard his own words and trembled inside. He shut his eyes and opened them. He took a breath. He wanted his voice to echo loud. Clear. To somehow reach this judge. There in this hushed and crowded courtroom, this simple waterman, dressed in black as his only means of protest, railed against the injustice of his world. �
�I have been locked up for almost three years now trying to prove myself to this court, pursuing every avenue I know how. The death penalty just doesn’t fit me because I am not the criminal. I can’t tell you a lie, Judge. I feel sorry for what happened to that child, but I am not your killer. And if you kill me, you are never going to find out. I’m not speaking for myself but for the little child; that’s doing her an injustice . . . I have nothing else to say.”

  The state again argued vehemently that Kirk Bloodsworth should be put to death. Judge James Smith, though, couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d had his own reservations about the quality of the evidence, and these continued to disturb him. He wasn’t going to countermand the jury’s verdict, but he wasn’t going to sentence this young man to death either. Judge Smith, back in chambers, had reviewed the same criteria that Judge Hinkel had considered. The crime was the same and the defendant was the same. But he had decided to exercise his discretion differently. On the bench, Judge Smith went through a long colloquy addressing these various criteria in detail. Then he sentenced Kirk to two consecutive life sentences, one to follow the other. Kirk Bloodsworth’s life, to whatever extent he would have one in the Maryland Penitentiary, was saved.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  IT WAS THE SUMMER of 1987 when Kirk was sent back to the South Wing of the old Maryland Penitentiary. The place seemed even more dank and dim, even filthier, than before. Half the bulbs in the hallway ceilings were out. Corridors were murky; many of the cells were unlit. There was little ventilation. Roaches grubbed around everywhere. In the summer the upper tier was a hothouse, a sweatbox. The men in this dark world exuded heat. The stench of excrement and urine was pervasive. The place was a cauldron of pent-up hate, an incubator of violence. When Kirk returned, still only twenty-seven, this time facing the prospect of losing his whole life to such a place, he went into a tailspin, falling hard into a sea of self-pity.