Washington, D.C. – Kirk Noble Bloodsworth urged the Senate Judiciary Committee today to require the Department of Justice to follow the law and begin providing federal funding to states for post-conviction DNA testing under the grant program that bears his name.
In written testimony to the Committee, Bloodsworth, the first person sentenced to death row to be exonerated by DNA evidence, criticized the Justice Department for failing to approve a single state grant application under the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program. The program was part of the Innocence Protection Act, which was signed into law in 2004 as part of the Justice for All Act.
Congress has appropriated nearly $14 million for the Bloodsworth program, which provides federal grants to states to pay for DNA testing which can exonerate the innocent and help identify the true perpetrators.
“The failure of this Department of Justice to grant states money under the Bloodsworth program is not accidental, nor is it the result of the states’ failure to comply with the grant’s provisions,” Bloodsworth said. “The Justice Department has been against this program from the very beginning. They fought it every step of the way, from introduction to enactment, and they’re continuing their opposition by holding the program’s funding hostage.”
“Had it not been for DNA testing, I would have died an innocent man in prison,” Bloodsworth said. “I know there are other cases like mine out there. The Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program was meant to prevent innocent people from ending up on death row and ensure that the truly guilty were caught. One would think that this simple principle would be enough to convince reasonable individuals to allow states immediate access to these important funds.”
Bloodsworth, a former Marine, spent nearly nine years in prison, including two on death row, for the brutal 1984 rape and murder of Dawn Hamilton, a 9-year-old girl he had never met. After years of fighting for a DNA test, evidence from the crime scene was submitted to a lab for testing. In 1993, state and federal labs concluded that Bloodsworth's DNA did not match any of the evidence received for testing.
Almost a decade later, on September 5, 2003, the Maryland State's Attorney announced that a DNA match had been made in the nearly 20-year-old case. That person pled guilty on May 20, 2004 to the murder for which Bloodsworth had been wrongfully convicted.
Bloodsworth is currently a Program Officer for The Justice Project (TJP), where he works to educate policy makers and advocates on the need for reforms to increase the accuracy and fairness of the criminal justice system. He has been an ardent supporter of the Innocence Protection Act (IPA) since its introduction in Congress in February 2000.
The Justice Project (TJP) is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to fighting injustice and to creating a more humane and just world. More information on The Justice Project is available at www.thejusticeproject.org.
