Man cleared of rape, murder charges learns he was imprisoned with the real perpetrator

[DealMonkey]

Another good reason why the death penalty is wrong...

WashingtonPost.com: Ex-Death Row Inmate Hears Hoped-for Words: We Found Killer

By Susan Levine
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A01

At a Burger King on Maryland's Eastern Shore yesterday, Kirk Bloodsworth sat down with the prosecutor who helped send him to death row for the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. Nearly two decades later, Ann Brobst told him, DNA had identified the man who had really done it.

"We got a hit on a guy," he remembers hearing, in the immeasurable fraction of a moment before he began weeping, realizing the words' import, realizing that the state at last considered him a completely innocent man. Beside him, his wife, Brenda, broke down and wept, too.

"You know how long I've waited to hear you say that?" Bloodsworth asked Brobst, who twice persuaded a jury to convict him of Dawn Hamilton's brutal death -- and who yesterday apologized for how that had shattered his life.

But there was more. The suspect, Brobst went on, is already in prison in Maryland, halfway through a 45-year sentence for burglary, attempted rape and assault with intent to murder. His name: Kimberly Shay Ruffner.

"My God," Bloodsworth said, "I know him."

In a plot twist few involved could have imagined, the Baltimore County state's attorney's office now believes the killer in the 1984 slaying has been hiding behind bars since a month after the crime. Prosecutors announced yesterday that Ruffner, 45, had been identified by a stain of semen analyzed for the first time this spring and then entered into state and federal DNA databases. It was the same kind of evidence that in 1993 led to Bloodsworth's exoneration after almost nine years of incarceration.

During several of those years, he and Ruffner lived only one floor and a couple of cells apart in the state's maximum security prison in Jessup. "He lifted weights with us," Bloodsworth said. "I spotted weights for him."

The two never talked about why Bloodsworth was in prison, but the former Marine and Eastern Shore waterman is sure Ruffner knew.

From the day of his arrest, Bloodsworth maintained loudly and vigorously that he had no involvement, that he had been nowhere near the woods, just east of the Baltimore line, where the girl disappeared in July 1984. Two boys fishing in the area that morning told police they had seen her walking with a strange man. After a suspect's composite was publicized, a hotline tipster suggested that police check out Bloodsworth, who recently had moved up from Cambridge to try to save a failing marriage.

He was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. His sentence was overturned in 1987, but he was convicted again and given life without parole. After his pardon and release -- his was the first DNA exoneration in this country of someone who had been on death row -- a growing cadre of supporters urged Baltimore County prosecutors to use the same scientific technology to try to identify the true killer.

The delay in doing so, coupled with prosecutors' repeated hedging on Bloodsworth's innocence, infuriated many.

Yesterday, those supporters exulted with him.

"It must be a huge burden lifted," said Peter Loge of the Washington-based Criminal Justice Reform Education Fund, a group Bloodsworth has worked with as an outspoken death penalty opponent.

At the same time, Loge focused on the "troubling questions" the case continues to raise. "The data was there," he said. "Why wasn't it run before? What if it had already been destroyed? . . . This speaks to the broader reform that is needed, laws requiring DNA evidence [to be taken] and requiring its preservation and testing."

...

 

[Quixotic]

thats awesome, but on the other hand, damn, that really sucked =(

 

[Pennstate]

This is what happens when the job of prosecutors have become a "sport" of getting reelected. Winning records means EVERYTHING, even if it means winning using selective evidence.

 

[Quixotic]

Originally posted by: Pennstate
This is what happens when the job of prosecutors have become a "sport" of getting reelected. Winning records means EVERYTHING, even if it means winning using selective evidence.

true that

 

[Drift3r]

It's funny really though in a sad kind of way. I've seen specials on tv about guys who were cleared via DNA evidence, and eye-witnesses who admit to the fact that they we're lying and the DA's who convicted them still refuse to admit that they were wrong and fight to keep the poor saps in jail.

 

[Quixotic]

what? and put a blemish on their record? =P

 

[Quixotic]

how sad would it have been if the man had been put to death...

 

[NewSc2]

Originally posted by: Quixotic
how sad would it have been if the man had been put to death...

I'm sure it's happened before. Several times

 

[rocadelpunk]

do these people get any sort of restitutions?

 

[Bleep]

If anyone has noticed the Prosicutors in Florida are lobbying for a bill that would prevent this kind of thing from happening. They dont want these old cases revisited with DNA evidence, they say it is to much work.

Bleep

 

[Quixotic]

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk
do these people get any sort of restitutions?

haha, and what could you ever give me to make it worth losing X of my useful years...

 

[tcsenter]

This is what happens when the job of prosecutors have become a "sport" of getting reelected. Winning records means EVERYTHING, even if it means winning using selective evidence.

There is no reason to believe the prosecutor used 'selective evidence' in this case. Forensic DNA testing wasn't available when Bloodsworth was convicted two different times by two different juries.

He was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. His sentence was overturned in 1987, but he was convicted again and given life without parole.

He wasn't even facing the death penalty when he was exonnerated in 1993.

Though one must wonder what evidence the prosecutor did have against him; a resemblence to the composite and a failure to positively account for his where-abouts at the time of the murder?

This is what happens when juries don't understand the legal and logical significance of 'beyond any reasonable doubt'. A mere resemblence to a composite and not having an iron-clad alibi are not damning things upon which I could conceive of convicting someone for a misdemeanor let alone a capital offense. Expansive reasonable doubt there.

This is also what happens when prosecutors (or plaintiffs in civil cases) attempt to 'move' a jury by the crime and the victim, encouraging them to be advocates for the victim and their family instead of impartial non-advocates for either party.

Civil and tort law has essentially been reduced to a contest between who can emotionally sway the jury first (or more), seizing the moral high ground by painting the other party as 'greedy' or 'uncompassionate' or 'mean', distracting juries away from the real legal issues: fault and liability.

Swaying a jury emotionally is just as easily done in criminal law with similar results.

 

[Ppower]

My question is can he sue for being falsely incarcerated for 9 years? After all they cheated him out of 9-years of his life that he will NEVER get back! Hope he gets millions if he can and destroys the career of the idiot DA.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: Ppower
My question is can he sue for being falsely incarcerated for 9 years? After all they cheated him out of 9-years of his life that he will NEVER get back! Hope he gets millions if he can and destroys the career of the idiot DA.

It would be hard to do this. The state has committed no wrong by it's definition. Remember, he did not serve time because he was guilty, but because he was found guilty. The state also is immune from such lawsuits unless it exempts itself. He will probably be given some compensation, but it is at the states pleasure.

 

[DealMonkey]

Our legal system is imperfect. No legal system could ever hope to achieve 100% perfection. The guilty sometimes will be found innocent and vice versa. IMO, this case only serves as a reminder that we could be executing people that are innocent. As long as that possibility exists, I don't see how anyone with clear conscience could support the death penalty in this country.

 

[ReiAyanami]

why are there weight rooms in prison? so criminals can be stronger when they get out?!

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: Ppower
My question is can he sue for being falsely incarcerated for 9 years? After all they cheated him out of 9-years of his life that he will NEVER get back! Hope he gets millions if he can and destroys the career of the idiot DA.

Actually in some states the DA's make damn sure that in order for a person to be released they must sign a legal waiver or that person must put up with the DA fighting the case tooth and nail so that they don't get out. So in a lot of cases part of the reason some people who are wrongly convicted in the first place are let out of jail is because they signed a waiver in which they give up all rights to sue the DA's office and the State.

 

[Quixotic]

Originally posted by: ReiAyanami
why are there weight rooms in prison? so criminals can be stronger when they get out?!

seriously... some people might find it beneficial to live in a prison... free education and free fitness, whoohoo ^^

 

[Quixotic]

Originally posted by: Drift3r

Originally posted by: Ppower
My question is can he sue for being falsely incarcerated for 9 years? After all they cheated him out of 9-years of his life that he will NEVER get back! Hope he gets millions if he can and destroys the career of the idiot DA.

Actually in some states the DA's make damn sure that in order for a person to be released they must sign a legal waiver or that person must put up with the DA fighting the case tooth and nail so that they don't get out. So in a lot of cases part of the reason some people who are wrongly convicted in the first place are let out of jail is because they signed a waiver in which they give up all rights to sue the DA's office and the State.

if thats the case, that really blows

 

[tcsenter]

My question is can he sue for being falsely incarcerated for 9 years? After all they cheated him out of 9-years of his life that he will NEVER get back! Hope he gets millions if he can and destroys the career of the idiot DA.

Typically, it depends on whether or not the wrongly imprisoned can show any kind of negligence or misconduct on the part of prosecutors or police. Otherwise, a certain risk of reasonable error is presumed and states give themselves immunity from lawsuits arising from not only wrongful imprisonment but also death and injuries from things like mistaken police shootings. Even among those states which permit lawsuits, they usually cap the limits on what one can recover for damages and either don't permit or limit punitive awards, too.

Some states already have a compensation system for these kinds of cases. Its not much, usually a few hundred thousand dollars, give or take.

 

[Mean MrMustard]

Imprisoned with the real prepetrator?

Reminds me of Shawshank Redemption

 

[Quixotic]

Originally posted by: ELP
Imprisoned with the real prepetrator?

Reminds me of Shawshank Redemption

only worse... he spotted weights for the guy!!!

that's like... if Red was the perpetrator... whoa!

 

[dmcowen674]

An Atlanta man was just released after spending the last 16 years in prison. He was released after they ran the evidence from his trial through DNA tests that proved he did not committ the rape of two different women. He was jail with a life sentence.

The Georgia Legislature passed a bill to pay him $250,000 for his 16 years in prison. He has just come out with a book called "Exit to Freedom".
-------------------------------------

Exit to Freedom

His is the only first-person account of a wrongful conviction overturned through DNA testing. However disturbed readers may become by this portrait of a justice system undermined by its own cynicism, Johnson himself feels no bitterness toward his accusers. In a book that offers many lessons about freedom, that may be the most important one of all.