Authors: Tim Junkin
The prosecutors were trained in the art of conjuring up images for the jury. Bob Lazzaro understood the importance of detailâof selecting the right word, of gesture, intonation, understatement, a pauseâand how these can weave an indelible tapestry in the mind's eye. His opening statement bespoke authority. He was natural, sincere, his manner genuine. The facts were terrible but fascinating. He held the jury in his sway.
Steven Scheinin tried a contrasting approach. His opening was short and abrupt. His spoke in a loud nasally voice. He ranted about how dozens of police had haphazardly trampled through the woods that day destroying evidence, polluting the crime scene. The
physical evidence would clear Bloodsworth, he told the jury, and mentioned the single head hair and a fingerprint. The print, the jury would later learn, had been found on an old church flyer, yellowed with age, which had been picked up off of one of the dirt trails a long way from where Dawn's body had been discovered. Scheinin never mentioned the alibi witnesses or where Kirk was during the crime. He never explained why Kirk knew the rock was the murder weapon, why Kirk had left the Baltimore area abruptly, or what he'd meant by his statement to Rose Carson that he'd done a bad thing. He never mentioned that Kirk would testify and deny the crime. To Kirk, Scheinin looked unprepared and overmatched. His opening statement resembled a carnie act. Watching his lawyer, Kirk was scared to death. He sat there feeling the suspicion already emanating from the judge, from the jury. He was terrified that the die was already cast.
A trial is a game. A contest. A re-creation that may or may not bear any semblance to what it purports to mimic. The lawyer's job is to win this contest. To convince the jury of what the lawyer advocates. Good lawyers can make a difference in a case, irrespective of the truth. Lazzaro and Brobst knew their job well. The next day they began by calling Elinor Helmick to the stand, who quietly replayed for the jury how on July 25, 1984, she'd gone searching for Dawn and then called the police for help. Elinor was followed by Thomas Hamilton, who in a grieving voice related how he'd found his little daughter's shorts and underpants in a tree. The story the jury had already heard from Lazzaro began to unfold.
Detective James Roeder was called to identify and describe the items taken from the crime scene. Dawn's clothes, the stick, and the rock were all entered into evidence. Through him the prosecutors also sought to introduce color photographs of the scene and more importantly, of Dawn Hamilton's body. Scheinin objected. He'd previously filed a motion seeking to exclude these pictures. They
were too prejudicial, he argued. Would evoke too much of an emotional response from the jurors. They weren't necessary to the state's proof. The prosecution countered that they were the best available evidence proving the location and state of the body, the nature of the wounds, the amount of blood, the various aspects of the crime scene. Judge Hinkel had to weigh whether the probative value of the photographs was outweighed by their prejudicial impact. He ruled that the pictures could come in. They were introducedâhanded one by one to the jury to study and circulate. Color photographs of the little girl with her head bashed in, blood covering her face and eye. Close-ups. Her body, half nude, on the ground. Photographs of the killer's footprints on her neck. Photographs of the broken tree branch stuck up her vagina. The jurors were horrified. Kirk could see some of them physically recoil, could feel their visceral revulsion.
Lazzaro called the medical examiner, Dr. Dennis Smyth, to testify as to the cause of death. Smyth explained how Dawn Hamilton had died from a combination of strangulation and blunt trauma to her brain. He also described how at autopsy he'd used an instrument similar to a Q-Tip to take swabs from the mouth, rectum, and vaginal cavity of the victim; smeared a small portion of the fluid from these cotton swabs on glass slides; and stained them for preservation. Smyth had visualized some sperm on the vaginal smears and a larger amount of sperm on the rectal smears. Thinking that the semen might yield a blood type, he'd given the original cotton swabs, containing the bulk of the fluid samples, to Detective Ramsey to take to the FBI lab for testing.
Detective Ramsey followed Dr. Smyth on the stand. He first related for the jury his experience as a crime fighter: five years with the Baltimore City Police Department, followed by ten years with Baltimore County, four of those as a homicide detective. Ramsey then described the crime scene, the location and state of the body,
and how he and his detectives had canvassed the area for clues. Ramsey explained how he had attended the autopsy and then transported the crime scene evidenceâDawn's clothes, the cotton swabs, the rock, the gum wrapper, the stick, and the sheet Dawn's body was wrapped inâto the FBI laboratory for testing. He told the jury that in October he'd picked up the vaginal washing from the medical examiner and taken it to the FBI as well. He volunteered that a piece of yellowed paper, an old flyer from the Calvary Baptist Church, had been picked up by Thomas Hamilton on one of the trails in the woods. Scheinin got him to acknowledge that it contained a fingerprint that wasn't Bloodsworth's. So what? Ramsey testified he'd suspected that the pair of tennis shoes recovered from Dawn Gerald's Randolph Road row house were Bloodsworth's and that he'd measured them with a ruler to be 10½ inches from toe to heel, similar to the size Bloodsworth wore. This testimony surprised Sheinin. Apparently, it surprised Lazzaro and Brobst as well. All the lawyers had assumed the shoes were actually size 10½. Sheinin, having finally seen the shoes in the courtroom, and realizing that they were in fact size 8, later recalled Ramsey and examined him relentlessly on this deception.
Lazzaro next called William Heilman of the FBI and asked him about the shoe print. Heilman claimed to have expertise as a shoe print examiner, though he had never before been qualified in a court of law as an expert in this field. He had attended a seminar on the subject, he testified, and read several books on shoe print comparisons. Scheinin objected to his testimony and argued that he was not sufficiently qualified to give opinions as an expert. Judge Hinkel overruled the objection and allowed him to testify.
Heilman told the jury that he had compared the herringbone marks on Dawn Hamilton's neck with the soles of the sneakers taken from Dawn Gerald's house. He'd even prepared a blowup chart for the jury with side-by-side photographs of the neck marks
and the shoe print. He opined that while there wasn't enough of a body mark to compare it with an entire shoe sole, the portions of the body mark that were visible did correspond with portions of the shoe soles. On cross-examination, he couldn't say whether the body markings were from a right shoe or left shoe. He couldn't even say whether the impressions on the body were made by the shoes in question. He agreed with Scheinin that hundreds of thousands of the type of tennis shoe seized from Dawn Gerald's house were sold every year. The gist of his testimony was that he couldn't conclusively link the marks to the shoe. He could only say that the marks
might have
been made by the shoe.
A fingerprint expert from the FBI testified that he'd tried both the chemical ninhydrin and a laser technique in an effort to lift prints from the stick, the gum wrapper, and the rock. He'd been unsuccessful.
Jack Quill, an FBI fiber analyst, testified that the one head hair retrieved from the scene was intertwined with the red fiber. The fiber was probably from a carpet. Could the head hair have gotten to the scene because Dawn Hamilton had been playing on a carpet and picked up the loose hair before she'd gone outside, the prosecutor suggested? Quill thought it was a reasonable theory. He'd never been asked to compare the hair with those of the victim or anyone other than Bloodsworth. While it wasn't the defendant's hair, it could have been anyone's.
William B. McInnis was called as the FBI serology expert. McInnis had obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from Louisiana Tech University, undergone fifteen hours of postgraduate training in forensic science, spent a year as a crime scene trainee, and had several years' experience as a crime scene analyst. He'd previously qualified as an expert in court over a hundred times. McInnis testified he had examined both Dawn Hamilton's shorts and underpants and had made black markings on the panties. He
testified that he'd not been able to identify any semen on either piece of clothing. The cotton swabs had no identifiable semen on them either. He found some traces of blood on the rock but of an insufficient quantity to test.
With each of these witnesses, Scheinin made his points on cross-examination. He got Jack Quill to reiterate that the one human hair recovered could have been from the killer and definitely was not Bloodsworth's. He had Ramsey acknowledge that none of the physical evidence linked the defendant to the crime. He asked McInnis why there was no semen on the FBI swabs when sperm had been found on the smears taken from those same swabs by the medical examiner, Dr. Smyth. He got McInnis to admit that semen, if found, might have yielded a blood type that potentially could exclude a suspect. Where were the sperm cells? Where was the scientific evidence, which might have revealed the killer's blood type and exonerated his client? But after seeing the bloody photos of Dawn Hamilton, was the jury even listening?
Lazzaro and Brobst then began with their identification witnesses. Nancy Hall was first. She told the jury that the man seated at the defense table was the same man she'd seen on Orion Court outside her Fontana Village apartment the morning Dawn was killed. Hall said she'd seen the man twice in the area in the week before the crime. Scheinin made some headway with her. He had her explain how she'd believed that the composite resembled her friend Mickey Manzari and that she'd even told police where to find Manzari to arrest him. But Scheinin never brought out that Hall had seen Kirk on television before going to the lineup.
James Keller was called next. A small, gentle black man, he took his time walking from the double oak doors to the witness stand. He couldn't hear too well and put his hand to his ear. Keller told of seeing a stranger on the way to work the day of the crime. He recalled for the jury going to a lineup and picking Bloodsworth out.
He identified Bloodsworth in court as the man he saw. He maintained that he was certain of his identification. Scheinin never brought out how Keller came to the attention of the police, that the first time he claimed to have recognized Kirk and contacted them was the weekend of Kirk's arrest, over two weeks after the crime. And Scheinin never questioned Keller as to whether he'd seen Bloodsworth on television before attending the lineup.
Chris Shipley took the stand. It was clear that he was frightened, that he didn't want to be there. Lazzaro asked him what the stranger by the pond looked like. “Curly hair, a bushy mustache, and muscular,” he said. Lazzaro walked him through the creation of the composite, his photo ID, the lineup. And when asked if he saw the man standing by the pond on that terrible day anywhere in the courtroom, Chris didn't hesitate. He raised his arm and pointed to Kirk Bloodsworth. Scheinin couldn't go too hard with Chris or it might look like he was bullying a child. But he might have done more. He asked Shipley how tall the stranger was, and Chris answered that he was about six feet tall. Scheinin never confronted Chris with his original height description, that he first told detectives that the man was six foot five. Scheinin did, however, enter into evidence the statement Chris had given detectives on the afternoon of the crime, which contained the height description. He also had Chris admit that the stranger by the pond did not have red hair. It was honey yellow, Chris agreed. For the most part, though, Chris's trial testimony was believable and compelling.
Little Jackie Poling was called and failed to identify Kirk in the courtroom. But he was followed by his mother who told the jurors how Jackie had come to her after the lineup and told her that number six, Kirk Bloodsworth, was the man at the pond. Scheinin did little with her.
Donna Ferguson testified after Jackie and also pointed to Bloodsworth as the strange man in Fontana Village the day of the slaying.
She claimed she'd seen him walking with Dawn, that he told Dawn that he was playing hide-and-seek with Lisa, and that he invited Dawn to help him go find Lisa. Ferguson said she was just six feet away from Dawn and the stranger. “I got a good look at his face,” she said. Scheinin did better with Ferguson. He brought out her prior inconsistent statements, that she'd originally told the police that she never saw the face of the man with Dawn. And he got her to admit she'd smoked a joint the morning of the crime. But she was the fifth one to identify Kirk. Five different identification witnesses. Hard to overcome.
Lazzaro and Brobst weren't finished. They called Detective Capel to fill in the blanks, wrap up the story, reiterate how the composite was created and how the photo and lineup identifications came about. Capel mentioned the missing persons report filed by Wanda Bloodsworth and described the gambit played on Kirk, suggesting that the detectives didn't think Bloodsworth even saw the rock on the table. Capel repeated what he considered to be the incriminating statements Bloodsworth had made afterward about the rock. He also volunteered that Bloodsworth had said that he'd been out buying drugs on the afternoon of the murder. Cross-examining Capel, Scheinin brought out that Chris Shipley had first described the strange man as being six feet five inches tall. Scheinin got Capel to agree that Bloodsworth must have seen the rock on the table, given what he said afterward. The two fenced, back and forth. Scheinin asked Capel about the man who'd found Dawn Hamilton's clothes, Richard Gray, and elicited that a pair of panties had been discovered in Gray's car. During the redirect examination, though, Capel told the jurors that Gray had been eliminated as a suspect through interviews.
Donna Hollywood, from Harbor to Harbor, then testified, providing information about Kirk's strange behavior after July 25, his claim of illness, his abrupt departure. The prosecutors finished by
calling Rose Carson and then Tina Christopher. Rose told the jury that Kirk, after he came back to Cambridge, told her that he'd done “a very bad thing, and also that he'd gone to the state hospital for help.” Tina Christopher said that she couldn't remember back to August “too good.” She was asked if she saw Kirk Bloodsworth in the courtroom, and she answered no. When prodded by Ann Brobst, she remembered that back in August, Bloodsworth had helped some friends move a motorcycle and then had talked to her of a murder. He went on about a little girl, a bloody rock, and some guy that was with him who was supposed to have done it, she said. She testified that about three times he told her that there was a guy with him who took the little girl off. Because she seemed to be having trouble remembering, Brobst showed her a written statement police had taken from her and asked Judge Hinkel to admit the written statement into evidence. Scheinin objected, but the judge allowed it. During cross-examination, Scheinin brought out that Tina was smoking marijuana when she supposedly heard Kirk talking about the murder.