From Publishers Weekly
Attorney and novelist Junkin (The Waterman) makes his nonfiction debut with the little-known story of Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, who in 1984 was falsely accused of the brutal sex murder of a nine-year-old girl in Maryland. The local authorities narrowed in quickly on Bloodsworth based on questionable eyewitness identifications, while neglecting a slew of clearly worthwhile leads. Bloodsworth was convicted and sentenced to death, before an appellate court found that the state had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense concerning the suspicious figure who had helped direct police to the child's corpse. Yet the retrial again ended with a guilty verdict, although the judge's reservations about the circumstantial evidence led him to impose two life sentences. As Junkin tells it, Bloodsworth's inner strength and determination enabled him to survive in prison and to learn of advances in DNA fingerprinting that led to his 1993 exoneration and Maryland's belated identification of the killer. While this book isn't as gripping as Randall Dale Adams's account of his escape from death row or the writings of lawyer Barry Scheck, Bloodsworth, who became an advocate for abolishing the death penalty, deserves to be better known, and the battery of mistakes that led to his lethal jeopardy should disturb any fair-minded reader on either side of the capital punishment debate. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Franz Kafka's classic novel of paranoia and persecution, The Trial (1925), conjures up visions of an unreasoning society in which "innocent persons are accused of guilt, and senseless proceedings are put in motion against them." Its protagonist is Josef K., a helpless everyman arrested and ultimately executed for an unknown crime. His last words -- "Like a dog!" -- remind us that humanity is the first victim of a totalitarian state. The Trial is fiction; the story of Kirk Bloodsworth is not.Tried and convicted for a sadistic murder he did not commit and then sentenced to death, Bloodsworth is an American Josef K., an icon of a system that failed him -- and justice -- at every turn. Imprisoned for nine years, he found solace and, in time, salvation through uniquely human skills: writing and reading. When he chanced upon Joseph Wambaugh's The Blooding (1989), a nonfiction account of the first use of genetic fingerprinting to solve a homicide, Bloodsworth realized that DNA analysis could also be used to clear his name. With the determined assistance of attorney Robert Morin (who is now a D.C. Superior Court judge), he ended his nightmare and opened a new chapter in the debate on capital punishment.Tim Junkin presents this sobering and at times surreal story in Bloodsworth. Its subtitle -- The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA -- is arguable, since Bloodsworth was not on death row at the time of his release. (His death sentence had been overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals -- a cavil, perhaps, because he then received two consecutive life sentences.) Written with its namesake's participation, this brisk narrative forcefully expresses Bloodsworth's confusion, anger, frustration, despair and, ultimately, forgiveness. Junkin also strives for objectivity and factuality, particularly when revealing how right-minded people -- whether police officers or prosecutors, judges or jurors -- can make spectacularly wrong decisions that lead to the imprisonment and even the death of innocents.On July 25, 1984, 9-year-old Dawn Venice Hamilton was violated and killed in a wooded suburb of Baltimore, not long after two boys had seen a strange man accost her. Days later, young ex-Marine Kirk Bloodsworth abandoned his alcoholic wife and troubled life in Baltimore for his hometown of Cambridge, Md. He told several people he'd done something bad. That unfortunate choice of words helped convince detectives and prosecutors that their flawed homicide investigation was righteous -- and almost sent Bloodsworth to the gas chamber. Yet his experience is not unique and should give pause to those who equate arrest with guilt and question the rights we provide those accused of crimes.Baltimore County police were eager to take a vicious predator off the streets, but their zeal targeted one unlikely suspect -- and let a monster go free. As Junkin reveals, there was no malice, no mischief, simply a frighteningly banal collision of good intentions, lousy legwork and bureaucratic complacency.Good police work is everything television says it is not. Cops "let the cow train the horse": following the facts rather than shaping them to fit hunches and theories. When facts prove difficult or elusive, the solution is to pursue more facts -- not to twist or ignore them, however alarming the crime. No physical evidence tied Bloodsworth to Dawn Hamilton. His conviction was based on what police academy cadets and first-year law students know is the least reliable of all evidence: eyewitness testimony. And here that testimony was voiced by impressionable children, transformed into a dubious composite sketch and channeled through a suggestive lineup -- morphing with dire inevitability to match the man whose picture the witnesses were repeatedly shown.Junkin also shows how Bloodsworth was victimized by a staple of today's popular entertainment: psychological profiling. Pioneered by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit and romanticized in the novels of Thomas Harris, this investigative technique proposes that crimes, particularly those involving extreme or serial violence, tell a story about their perpetrator -- one that is biographical and predictive. But detectives and even prosecutors read a premature profile of Dawn Hamilton's murderer as an indictment of Bloodsworth instead of using it as intended, to narrow the field of suspects.Junkin's only misstep is to start this compelling account at its climax: the DNA testing that freed Bloodsworth. Without first knowing the deeply human stories of Dawn Hamilton and Kirk Bloodsworth, readers can't feel, or even begin to comprehend, the extraordinary drama of that moment.Not surprisingly, Bloodsworth argues (as Kirk Bloodsworth has done since his release in 1993) against capital punishment -- and for the Innocence Protection Act, which would provide federal funds for DNA testing of inmates. But Bloodsworth's ordeal, however chilling, didn't implicate other discomforting facts about the death penalty: that many death-row inmates lacked effective trial counsel and that a disproportionate number of them are African-American. And it doesn't speak to whether certain crimes, like the cruel slaughter of Dawn Hamilton, deserve or even demand retribution. Death, the civilized world's penalty for murder until the 1950s, remains on the books in 38 states and in federal and military courts. Capital punishment has divided the Supreme Court, legal scholars, philosophers, religious leaders and politicians -- and in recent years has become entangled with issues of abortion, euthanasia and bioethics.Kirk Bloodsworth's story brings much-needed clarity to the debate. Although Americans may differ on the legality and morality of the death penalty, we can't accept a criminal justice system that makes Franz Kafka's visions real. Reviewed by Douglas E. Winter Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
DNA has so seeped itself into the popular consciousness that it's hard to remember that, in the early 1990s, it was only beginning to emerge as a forensic tool. This hard-hitting and moving examination of the first death row inmate whose conviction was overturned through the use of DNA evidence combines forensic science, knowledge of police procedure (and police malpractice), trial coverage, and chilling representations of prison. The inmate saved by DNA (in 1992) has a name even Dickens couldn't improve upon: Kirk Bloodsworth. A Chesapeake Bay crabber, Bloodsworth was convicted of the mutilation slaying of a nine-year-old girl in 1984. Junkin, an attorney, is at home tracing the police and legal snafus that imprisoned an innocent man. He presents two parallel stories: that of Bloodsworth's conviction and torturous prison experiences and that of the D.C. lawyer who took on his case. Outrage-provoking. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Charged with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. From the beginning, he proclaimed his innocence, but when he was granted a new trial because his prosecutors improperly withheld evidence, the second trial also resulted in conviction; this time he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. In jail Bloodsworth read every book on criminal law available in the prison library. When he stumbled across the first use (in England) of genetic fingerprinting, he persuaded a new lawyer to try for the then innovative DNA testing.

After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in the country, Kirk Bloodsworth was vindicated by DNA evidence. He was pardoned by the governor of Maryland and has gone on to become a tireless spokesman against capital punishment.

Bloodsworth exposes the details of inevitable human error in a capital murder case and in a legal system gone awry. And it tells the story of how one man, through dogged tenacity and courage, saved his own life and the lives of many other innocent men on death row.

This is a page-turner of a book that will move hearts and change minds.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Bloodsworth is the true story of unsurpassed courage and character, of relentless struggle, of abiding hope, and of a modern-day miracle. Charged in 1984 with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. From the beginning, he proclaimed his innocence, but when he was granted a new trial because his prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence, the second trial also resulted in conviction. Bloodsworth did not give up. He wrote hundreds of letters from prison. He read everything he could find in the prison library about murder investigations. In The Blooding by Joseph Wambaugh, he found what he needed to save himself -- an account of the new DNA "fingerprinting" used to solve a case in England. Then he found a lawyer willing to fight for the innovative testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth was vindicated by DNA evidence. He was pardoned by the governor of Maryland and has gone on to become a tireless spokesman for criminal justice reform. Gripping, suspenseful, heart wrenching, Bloodsworth reads like a thriller, with an ending no fiction writer could imagine. It exposes the details of inevitable human error in a capital murder case and in a legal system gone awry. It tells how one man, through dogged tenacity, saved his own life and the lives of many others on death row. This is a book that will move hearts and change minds.

FROM THE CRITICS

Douglas E. Winter - The Washington Post

Kirk Bloodsworth's story brings much-needed clarity to the debate. Although Americans may differ on the legality and morality of the death penalty, we can't accept a criminal justice system that makes Franz Kafka's visions real.

Publishers Weekly

Attorney and novelist Junkin (The Waterman) makes his nonfiction debut with the little-known story of Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, who in 1984 was falsely accused of the brutal sex murder of a nine-year-old girl in Maryland. The local authorities narrowed in quickly on Bloodsworth based on questionable eyewitness identifications, while neglecting a slew of clearly worthwhile leads. Bloodsworth was convicted and sentenced to death, before an appellate court found that the state had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense concerning the suspicious figure who had helped direct police to the child's corpse. Yet the retrial again ended with a guilty verdict, although the judge's reservations about the circumstantial evidence led him to impose two life sentences. As Junkin tells it, Bloodsworth's inner strength and determination enabled him to survive in prison and to learn of advances in DNA fingerprinting that led to his 1993 exoneration and Maryland's belated identification of the killer. While this book isn't as gripping as Randall Dale Adams's account of his escape from death row or the writings of lawyer Barry Scheck, Bloodsworth, who became an advocate for abolishing the death penalty, deserves to be better known, and the battery of mistakes that led to his lethal jeopardy should disturb any fair-minded reader on either side of the capital punishment debate. (Sept. 10) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal