Bloodsworth

Charged with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodworth 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. In jail, Bloodworth read every book on criminal law available in the prison library. When he stumbled across Joseph Wambaugh's book The Blooding, which describes the first use of genetic fingerprinting, he persuaded a new lawyer to try for the then innovative…