Testimony to Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment-I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today.
I am deeply honored and humbled that a former Marine and waterman from Cambridge, MD would sit alongside such proud and distinguished citizens of this state on this Commission.
My appointment to this Commission and my appearance before you today is the culmination of 24 long years of my life. I take very seriously our charge as a Commission to “study all aspects of capital punishment as currently and historically administered in the state.” That is an extraordinary responsibility and like you it is one that I do not take lightly.
But it is a responsibility that I have struggled with–for unlike you I have a unique perspective that no one else can give you-that of an innocent man sentenced to death by the State of Maryland for a crime he did not commit. I am living proof that Maryland’s capital punishment system is broken-I am living proof that Maryland gets it wrong.
Mr. Chairman and members of this Commission that is an awesome responsibility. And I have struggled with how to convey to you not only how my wrongful conviction affected my life but also the lives of my family and more importantly, the lives of Dawn Hamilton’s family.
How can I explain to you what it is like to hear the gavel come down on your life as you are convicted of a brutal murder and sentenced to death? Or what it is like to be the most hated man in the state of Maryland? What it is like to see your family totally devastated yet willing to mortgage their future to save their son? What it is like for Dawn Hamilton’s family to lose such a precious little girl and to sit through not one, but two trials that convicted me only to have the pain and terrifying memories resurface when they found out the real killer of Dawn was not me?
Mr. Chairman, there is only one way that I know how I can explain all of this to you. So I appear before you today, not as a Commission member but as a citizen of the state of Maryland, who served his country honorably in the United States Marine Corps who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal murder of nine-year old Dawn Hamilton, and who after 8 years, 11 months and 19 days in prison was the first death row inmate in the United States to be exonerated based on DNA evidence.
Twenty-four years ago my life changed dramatically when I was arrested for the brutal rape and murder of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton. At the time I was only 23-years-old; I was newly married; I was working full-time; and I had served four years in the United States Marine Corps. I had never been arrested before in my life.
Little did I know I would come to hold the distinction as being the first person in the United States to be exonerated from a capital conviction by DNA testing.
On July 25, 1984 Dawn Hamilton was tragically raped and murdered in Baltimore Country. She was playing hide-and-seek with a friend from her Fontana Village neighborhood when around 11:00am she came across two little boys fishing at a pond. Dawn asked the boys for help in the game but they were more interested in fishing. But a man at the rise of the pond with the sun behind his head came forward and offered to help Dawn find her friend. That was the last time Dawn was seen alive.
Dawn’s body was found around 2:30 that afternoon, laying face down in a pile of debris. Her underpants and shorts were found in a tree nearby. She had been brutally beaten, her head crushed by a rock. Her throat was stepped on so forcefully that the perpetrator left the imprint of the shoe he was wearing on her neck. She had been sodomized, raped, and sexually assaulted with a stick.
The word horror can not even describe what this little girl must have gone through.
Because of the notoriety of this horrific crime, the police were eager to find Dawn’s killer and ease the public’s anxiety and fear. The main witnesses were the two little boys fishing at the pond. They were asked to work with a composite artist and together they came up with a composite.
The man last seen with Dawn was described as a white male, between 6′ and 6′5″ tall, a slim to medium build, dirty blond to light brown curly hair, tan skin.
Neither boy mentioned red hair, side burns, or any missing teeth - all of which I had at the time.
But for some reason people seemed to think that the composite looked similar to me. So much so that I was tip number 286 out of 500 on a police tip line and the Cambridge Police Department brought me in for questioning in regards to the Dawn Hamilton murder investigation.
I went to the station voluntarily, knowing that I was innocent of this crime and feeling that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by cooperating. When I entered the police interview room, a pair of girl’s panties and a rock was lying on the table. I was never told why and they were quickly removed. I would later find out that the items were part of an experiment the police devised because they believed that the killer would have a strong reaction when confronted with the items related to the crime. I had no reaction. But after I left the station, I talked to my friends about what the police had done. I later discovered that the police used these statements I made to friends as validation that I knew something that only the killer would know.
On August 9, 1984 - 15 days after Dawn’s murder - around 3 o’clock in the morning, I was arrested for the rape and murder of Dawn Hamilton. I awoke to pounding on my front door and before I knew it I was being handcuffed, read my Miranda rights, and taken away from my home. That would be the last time I saw Dorchester County, and my small town of Cambridge for eight years, eleven months, and nineteen days.
My conviction was based mainly on the eyewitness identifications of five people - the two boys who worked on the composite and three adults who claimed to have seen me with Dawn on the day of her murder. As later proven through DNA testing, each person was wrong in their identification of me as the perpetrator. Each identification further stigmatized me as a child rapist and killer, but I was innocent. The fact is I became the most hated man in Maryland.
There wasn’t a day that passed that I didn’t try to tell someone I was innocent of this crime. I thought someone was finally listening when in 1986 my conviction was overturned due to a Brady violation made by the State. Potentially exculpatory evidence about another suspect in the case was withheld from my defense team and I was granted a new trial by the Maryland Court of Appeals.
Though the outcome of the trial was not a death sentence, it might as well have been. I received double life for a crime I did not commit. I was to die inside one of the worst prisons in the United States, the Maryland Penitentiary, an innocent man.
Prison life can only be described as Hell on Earth. On death row I was in a constant state of anxiety over when I would eventually take that long walk to the gas chamber. I still have nightmares of it to this day. I can still hear the slam of my cell door on the infamous south wing like the slam of the tail gate of a dump truck. When I close my eyes I can still see the steel and slate cell where I spent many hours thinking I would lose my mind.
One night the power suddenly went off and the tier was pitch black. You could hardly see the hand in front of your face. I could hear people screaming, see other inmates lighting fires. The noise became so deafening I felt like the building could collapse underneath the weight of all the screaming. In the darkness I started to hear a cascade of something around my cell door and then objects began to hit me on the chest and in the face. Just as suddenly the power went off, it came back on and the cascade I heard and the objects that I felt turned out to be thousands of cock roaches descending from the ceiling like a wave running to the cracks.
This was my life.
I was denied justice, but most importantly Dawn Hamilton and her family were being denied justice with every day I was incarcerated and the real killer was free to hurt more people.
This thought is what drove me to continue to fight to prove my innocence. Though I had my share of depression and doubt I stayed strong through the support of my family. They never doubted my innocence. Some of my family is here today and I would again like to thank each and every one of them for their continued support through the years.
The key to my freedom came in the form of a book, The Blooding, that described a technique known as genetic fingerprinting and the first time a process called DNA testing was used in a criminal case in England to solve a series of homicides. I had an epiphany - “if it can convict you, it can free you.”
At the time of my first trial, DNA testing was not very advanced. However when I came across this book in 1992, DNA testing was breaking new ground. My attorney, Bob Morin, requested that the evidence from my case be released for testing and the Baltimore County prosecutors agreed. But a letter from prosecutor Ann Brobst brought our plans to a halt. The letter stated that the biological material from my case was inadvertently destroyed.
Fortunately that turned out to be wrong. Judge James T. Smith from my second trial decided to keep some of the physical evidence and store it in his chambers rather than hand it over to the evidence room where it should have been located. I can not for sure say why he decided to keep the evidence in his chambers but his decision reminds me of something Judge Smith said about the evidence that led to my being granted that new trial. Addressing the courtroom he said, “this is not gamesmanship we play here; it is about the truth.” I can only believe that in his decision he knew that there was more truth to be told and thus decided the physical evidence would be better off stored in his chambers.
I am grateful for Judge Smith’s decision because it meant that all the evidence could be tested for DNA. With the state’s agreement samples were sent out to be tested. But while my family and I waited for the results, the worst thing happened.
Three months before the results came back, on January 20, 1993, my mother died of a heart attack. I was escorted to the funeral home to view her body, still handcuffed and shackled. I was given five minutes with my mother. She was the one who had taught me that if I don’t stand up for something I would fall for anything. So I stood up. I stood up for Dawn Hamilton and her family and when the DNA results were revealed I made it my mission to seek justice for Dawn by finding her killer.
On June 28, 1993, after almost nine years in prison including two on death row, I walked out of the Maryland prison system a free man. But I still suffered. DNA testing was still relatively new and some did not understand what a powerful scientific tool it was. Of course it didn’t help that the prosecutor’s office would not admit the role they played in my wrongful conviction. While I was described as “not guilty” by the prosecutor’s office, the office maintained it was not prepared to call me innocent either.
I was frustrated because I was looking for guidance on how to find Dawn Hamilton’s killer while it seemed the prosecutor’s office was only interested in looking for new ways to tie me to this crime.
It would take ten years from the time of my release for Dawn’s killer to finally be identified. And it is was five years ago this day on September 5, 2003 that I was sitting in a Burger King across from Ann Brobst, the prosecutor from my case, and two homicide detectives in my home town of Cambridge. Mrs. Brobst had come to tell me that a DNA match had been made in the DNA database from the evidence that had led to my release. The DNA matched that of Kimberly Shay Ruffner, a man that had been mentioned during the Dawn Hamilton investigation. The tip was never followed up on.
Ruffner was not between 6′0″ and 6′5″ like the original description stated but 5′7.” He weighed 160 pounds.
At the time he already had a criminal history. Ruffner was wanted for some rapes in the Fells Point area. I was an honorably discharged United States Marine with no criminal history.
As fate would have it Ruffner and I lived in the same prison tier for five years. He was in prison for the attempted rape of a Fells Point woman. He never said a word to me.
I am very lucky to be here today. And make no mistake about it-I am not here because the system worked-I am here because like in all exonerations a series of miracles happened that lead to my exoneration. Since my exoneration, I have dedicated my life to two things. First, bring justice to Dawn Hamilton and her family by finding her real killer. And on May 20, 2004 Kimberly Ruffner plead guilty to the premeditated first-degree murder of Dawn and was sentenced to life in prison.
And second, to do all that I can to make sure that what happened to me never happens to another individual in not only the state of Maryland but in this country as well.
My story Mr. Chairman is not unique. Nor is the state of Maryland the only state that has convicted innocent people and sentenced them to die. No, my story has been played out in addition to mine 128 times across this country and 25 other states have made the same mistake as Maryland in convicting an innocent person to death. But in the end it is only a story unless one does something about the systemic flaws that led to my wrongful conviction
As a Commission you are charged with making recommendations to the Governor regarding “the application and administration of capital punishment in the state…” But I am here to tell you, as a citizen of this state who was wrongfully convicted not once but twice for a crime I did not commit, I submit to you that you must do more-you must make recommendations to improve the fairness and accuracy of our criminal justice system as a whole to ensure that what happened to me never happens again in this state.
This Commission has heard testimony from many that the death penalty should be repealed. Whatever the Commission decides in that regard it is, in my humble opinion, imperative that as part of its recommendation the Commission also suggests ways to improve Maryland’s criminal justice system.
First and foremost, we must recommend improvements to Maryland’s post-conviction DNA statute. Although the state does grant access to post-conviction DNA testing for those in prison, there are significant limitations that make it extremely difficult for petitioners to obtain testing.
Biological evidence must be preserved so that these tests can be conducted. While Maryland re quires preservation of evidence for the most serious criminal cases, the current statute allows for the disposal of evidence in other instances. Nor does the statute mandate that biological evidence follow a chain of custody or be maintained in a way that ensures the preservation or integrity of the evidence in instances where it is kept.
This is unacceptable. Without proper handling evidence is prone to loss or destruction. Advocates for petitioners should not have to go on a treasure hunt for evidence in order to submit it for post-conviction DNA testing. I am fortunate that my attorney cared enough about me and believed in my innocence to pursue that task.
It is important that Maryland provide counsel for indigent petitioners seeking DNA testing and provide funds to cover the costs, two things the current statute does not cover. Again, I am very lucky to have had a lawyer who believed wholeheartedly in my innocence, agreed to work on my case pro bono, and covered the costs of the DNA testing personally. Maryland must enable all petitioners seeking DNA testing to have the assistance of counsel and the state should pay for testing for those who can not afford it.
Justice Thurgood Marshall once said, “The measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis.”
I believe every wrongful conviction is a crisis, and in order to stem the crisis we must make every effort here in Maryland to increase the fairness and accuracy of our criminal justice system.
The time is now. We can not wait until another Kirk Bloodsworth comes around because next time Maryland may be too late. I urge this commission to recommend measures to reduce wrongful convictions so we can do everything possible to ensure another case like mine does not happen in the state.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of the commission for your attention. At this time I’d be pleased to answer any questions.
