CHAPTER 10 THE AFTERMATH OF WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS: REINTEGRATION AND COMPENSATION
| Jurisdiction | North Carolina |
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
• Appreciate the practical and psychological challenges faced by exonerees upon re-entering society.
• Conceptualize the wrongfully convicted as victims of state harm.
• Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the various means of compensating exonerees.
• Identify ways to improve re-entry services for exonerees.
• Understand the limitations on holding criminal justice actors, especially prosecutors, accountable for wrongful convictions.
On Wednesday, July 25, 1983, Elinor Helmick was watching five children: her own two children, her niece and nephew, and Dawn Hamilton, the daughter of their friend, Thomas. The youngsters went out to play but two of them went into the woods, which were off limits. Elinor sent her niece and Dawn to go find them and call them back. When only three of the four children returned, Elinor went looking for the missing Dawn.
Elinor ran into two neighborhood boys, Christian and Jackie, who said they had seen Dawn at a nearby pond. According to the boys, they were with Dawn at the pond when a man came up and asked what she was doing. She informed the man that she was looking for her friend, Lisa, and went with the man into the woods. They described the man as about 30 years old, white, with blond hair and a mustache.
Elinor called the police and within hours, more than 100 officers were on the search for Dawn. Her shorts and underwear were found hanging in a nearby tree, and her body was found shortly thereafter. The nine-year-old was naked from the waist down, with a stick penetrating her vagina and her head bloodied by a rock. Christian and Jackie, only 10 and 7 years old, worked with police to construct a sketch of the man they had seen with Dawn. The sketch was made public, and a few days later an anonymous tipster said it resembled a local man named Kirk Bloodsworth. Bloodsworth's wife, Wanda, had filed a missing person report; Kirk had left town on August 3 and had been sick before leaving.
Kirk Bloodsworth was arrested days later and identified by Christian in a lineup, even though Kirk had red hair, which Christian did not remember. Jackie could not identify Bloodsworth in a lineup, but he was arrested and charged with the rape and murder. He had several alibi witnesses, but was convicted in March 1985 and sentenced to death. After his conviction was overturned the next year, he was retried, convicted again, and sentenced to life in prison.
In late 1992, the evidence from the case was reexamined using the recently developed DNA testing. The results excluded Bloodsworth and he was released from prison on June 28, 1993. The governor of Maryland issued him a full pardon in December. Bloodsworth stands as the first person in the United States to be sentenced to death and later exonerated through DNA testing.
Exoneration was not the end of the struggle for Kirk Bloodsworth, an honorably discharged Marine. After his release, he struggled with a number of issues. He dealt with periods of homelessness, substance abuse, and stigma from the community. People in Cambridge, Maryland avoided him, pulling their children closer to them and crossing the street when they saw Bloodsworth in public. Many believed that he had been freed on a legal technicality and was not actually innocent. Someone even wrote the words "child killer" in the dirt on the side of his truck (Junkin, 2004; Norris, 2014; Westervelt & Cook, 2012).
Bloodsworth also desired justice for the victim, Dawn Hamilton, and her family. In 2003, a forensic biologist found stains that had not yet been analyzed. They were tested and run through the FBI's DNA database. A hit was found for Kimberly Ruffner, who was in prison with Bloodsworth and lifted weights with him while they were both incarcerated. Ruffner was charged with the crime in September 2003 and convicted in 2004 (Death Penalty Information Center, n.d.; Warden, n.d.).
For his troubles—a lost decade of his life and the label of a child rapist and murderer—Kirk was awarded $300,000 by the state of Maryland for lost income. He has since become an advocate for criminal justice and death penalty reform, and had part of 2004's federal Justice for All Act named after him: the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-conviction DNA Testing Grant Program.
Kirk Bloodsworth's story is emblematic of many who are wrongly convicted. Exoneration is not the final step in the journey. The experiences faced by those unjustly imprisoned have effects that linger long after their release. Nearly every aspect of life is affected to some degree, from struggles with seemingly basic everyday tasks to complex emotional and psychological challenges.
Virtually all people who are incarcerated face challenges when the time comes for them to reenter conventional society. This is true of parolees and probationers who are presumably guilty, but many of the struggles are exacerbated when the individual is innocent. Upon release, exonerees must deal with a diverse array of problems that affect them, their families, and others around them.
Many of the post-release difficulties are practical issues. Almost all exonerees face financial challenges, both short- and long-term. Many who are arrested for crimes are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and after their release from custody they generally return to their former situation. Thus, many lack transitional funds for basic necessities such as housing, clothing, and food (Westervelt & Cook, 2010, 2012). They may turn to family or friends for assistance which, even when it is possible, they may find to be embarrassing or uncomfortable. Unfortunately, seeking employment is a major challenge for nearly all exonerees. Many were incarcerated during their twenties and thirties, the period during which they would otherwise have been furthering their education, developing job skills, and building a career. Without a relevant knowledge base and skill set, and with a gap on their resumes for the period of incarceration, exonerees struggle to navigate the job market and secure meaningful employment. In addition, exonerees often have gaps in their education and lack the resources necessary to seek out, apply for, and maintain success in higher education.
The struggles faced by exonerees go far beyond education and employment, however. Prisons are physically challenging places to survive, characterized by violence, poor food, and substandard health care. Exonerees often deal with physical ailments including, among others, malnutrition, muscular atrophy, asthma, and skin conditions (Innocence Project, 2009; Westervelt & Cook, 2010, 2012). Following release, exonerees may have difficulty securing health insurance, which may be tied to employment or otherwise be unaffordable.
The health risks faced by exonerees are both physical and mental. Years of incarceration can have severe psychological consequences. Exonerees deal with post-traumatic stress and other psychiatric disorders, personality change, depression, stigmatization, and social rejection (Campbell & Denov, 2004; Grounds, 2004). While incarcerated, exonerees may have lost family members and friends, experienced broken relationships, missed out on their children's growth, and much more. These familial challenges can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, bitterness, and anger. Furthermore, rebuilding relationships is difficult. The experiences of a wrongful conviction may cause exonerees to have trouble connecting emotionally to others or building trust in their...
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