Bloodsworth (20 page)

Judge Hinkel took a recess to consider his decision. He had the discretion to go either way. He recalled later, after Bloodsworth had been cleared, that it was perhaps the most difficult decision he'd ever made as a judge.

William Hinkel was a graduate of both the University of Baltimore and the University of Baltimore Law School. He'd worked as an insurance claims adjuster for a while, gone into private practice,
and then become involved in local politics. In 1966 he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates where he served one term. During his tenure, the legislature was debating a bill concerning the death penalty. Hinkel's colleague, Thomas Hunter Lowe, who later became a Maryland appellate judge, was initially a proponent of a death penalty statute. Hinkel was undecided, torn. Hinkel had amassed a large amount of literature on the death penalty: studies on whether it was a deterrent, whether it was beneficial to the community, statistics on economic considerations. He shared all of this with his friend, Lowe. Ironically, Lowe did an about-face. He voted against the death penalty law. Hinkel voted in favor of it.

Governor Marvin Mandel appointed Bill Hinkel to be a district court judge in 1971. Governor Harry Hughes elevated him to the circuit court in 1981. In Baltimore County, judges with sufficient experience received capital cases on a rotation basis. It was the luck of the draw that he got Bloodsworth. And vice versa.

After the verdict, Judge Hinkel reviewed the evidence. He thought the boys' identifications were credible. He thought the statements of Donna Hollywood, Bloodsworth's employer from Harbor to Harbor, that Kirk had claimed he was sick and needed his paycheck, and had then left town abruptly a week after the murder, were incriminating. The things Bloodsworth said in Cambridge disturbed him. The explanation that Bloodsworth gave as to why he told people he'd done a bad thing, the taco salad bit, he found hollow. It didn't ring true. The alibi witnesses as a group were unimpressive. Taken in total, he agreed with the jury that the evidence proved Bloodsworth was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

A judge comes to a case knowing little more about it than the jury. Judge Hinkel was not privy to all that was uncovered during the massive police investigation that went on, the many leads, the various witnesses offering diverse descriptions of the suspect. He
had no way of knowing much about Bloodsworth the man. He only knew what was brought out during the trial.

Back in his chambers, he wrestled over his decision. Even though he'd voted in the legislature for the death penalty, he'd never before been in a position to impose it. He was surprised Bloodsworth had chosen the judge rather than the jury to pass sentence. Hinkel actually had come to believe over time that the death penalty should be eliminated. Not so much because he felt sorry for defendants. More that he'd come to believe that as a result of the postconviction delays always associated with a death sentence, it created a prolonged and unnecessary period of uncertainty and sometimes agony for the family members of the victim. While he did not relish having to sentence anyone to death, he couldn't ignore the terrible details of this crime. The legislature had seen fit to pass a death penalty law. If a death sentence was not required for the rape, mutilation, and murder of a nine-year-old girl, it shouldn't be imposed on anyone. Judge Hinkel wasn't one to flinch from what he considered to be his judicial duty. He went over the various criteria required to be considered before passing sentence in a capital case. Then he returned to the bench. “Will the defendant please rise,” he said.

Kirk and Steven Scheinin both stood. Kirk Bloodsworth would not flinch this time either. He assumed a military bearing, his head held high. This time I won't buckle, he promised himself.

“This case involves probably the most terrible of all crimes—murder, rape, and sodomy,” Hinkel began. “And it was committed upon the most helpless of all citizens, a trusting little girl. The torture she endured and the horror that was visited upon her is beyond my words to describe.” He paused, looking at the defendant. “Therefore, I sentence you to death.”

This time there was no outburst in the courtroom. Not a word was spoken. The mood was somber. In the hallway outside, Curtis
Bloodsworth wept and fumbled through pictures of Kirk's growing up. Through his sobs he said to reporters, “I can feel for the parents of the lost child . . . But to be taking another innocent life . . . This is two crimes . . .”

A warrant of execution was signed by Judge Hinkel on March 28, 1985. Since Kirk was entitled to an automatic appeal to Maryland's highest court, the sentence was stayed pending its outcome.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated, can be compared.

—A
LBERT
C
AMUS

T
HE DAY AFTER HIS
sentencing, Kirk Bloodsworth was transported from the county jail to the Department of Corrections Orientation Center in downtown Baltimore. There was a protocol to be followed for inmates heading for death row. Death row inmates were special. Particularly in preparing for the long road to execution, the state had its rituals.

At orientation, Kirk received a physical exam, a venereal disease check, had his teeth looked at, and was placed in solitary confinement on suicide watch. For five days he sat in a dark cell, alone, with nothing to do but dwell on his own agony, on his future as a hated man, a man marked for killing.

After the state was satisfied that he had been sufficiently disinfected, a large bus pulled up in front of the building. Kirk was escorted onto it for the trip across the street. He was going into the notorious and ancient Maryland Penitentiary, the one place in the state known as death row. Kirk was the only convict on the bus. As it pulled into the entranceway to the prison, he could see the inmates streaming from the yard up to the perimeter fence. They'd been expecting him.

It was the detention center revisited, but worse. “We got your ass now, Kirk,” he heard one say. “Here he is, here he is,” he heard. “Child fucker!” was screamed across the yard. Dozens of men in prison clothes began shouting epithets at him. Some made obscene gestures. Some were laughing. “We got us some fresh meat,” somebody cried out. “Fresh meat,” he heard again. He kept his eyes fixed on the bus driver. He swallowed hard. Kirk wondered how he'd ever survive in such a place.

Guards escorted him out of the bus. For the first time, he got a close-up view of the prison. A castle, a dungeon from another world: walls of pitted black stone, watch towers, turrets, guards with automatic weapons. Prison officials surrounded him as they walked him along the causeway bordered on both sides by a fence topped with razor-cut wire. Inmates pressed against it making threats, sticking their tongues out, hooting at him. He was terrified.

In the receiving area he was given a mattress of cotton wadding and blankets. Still in chains, he was led down several tier hallways, up some stairs, and through a series of locking doors. As each one clanged behind him, he winced. On the third level up, in an area called the South Wing, guards pushed him into a cell. “This is your new home,” one of them said. “Welcome to death row.”

Roaches crawled over studded cinder-block walls peeling shreds of faded yellow paint. Tiny shadows moved over the bunk and seatless toilet, and scampered into holes in the crumbling concrete. Graffiti was scratched everywhere. The place had the stench of an outhouse. Bars ran across the front. The guards slammed shut the iron door. The lock bolt clicked and echoed in his ears. They walked away. Kirk stood there alone in the foul dimness of his cell and cried.

That evening for dinner a Styrofoam cup was shoved through the slat in the door. It was supposed to be spaghetti. Kirk looked down and saw one large overcooked tomato in the cup. That was
it. He also got a plastic bottle of Kool-Aid—”bug juice” to the inmates. He swallowed the tomato, trying not to taste it. Wrapping the blankets around him, he tried to sleep.

Once the lights were out, more roaches began dropping from the ceiling, landing on the floor, landing on him. In the darkness the roaches came down like snow. They made a constant crackling noise. He tried to seal the blanket around himself but could feel the roaches landing on him and crawling everywhere. It took him most of a week before he could even fall asleep in that hole.

I
N THE BEGINNING
they kept him on administrative segregation. He remained in his cell twenty-three hours a day, with an hour for a short walk, a phone call, and a shower. He had to be escorted everywhere. It was too dangerous to allow him out into the general population of inmates. Those awaiting execution had to be protected.

The South Wing of the Maryland Penitentiary, at least among cons and ex-cons, was an infamous place. Those on the street who'd survived the South Wing were given a wide berth. When Kirk got there all the guards wore knife vests. A month or so before, a guard had been killed. Word on the tier was that an inmate named Nathaniel Appleby had used a prison-made shank to disembowel the man over a perceived insult. The brutality of the place was palpable. Kirk could smell it, could feel it in the air. The pain and anger were like electric currents pulsing along the floors and walls.

Kirk learned quickly how the inmates communicated after lockdown. Elaborate systems were set up using the most primitive materials. Dental floss was essential. The cons used it to create pulley lines down the length of the hall. Somebody would tie a bar of soap to fifty yards of dental floss and then slide the soap down the tier floor. Some got so good they could sling it from one end to the other. A receiving inmate would grab it through his bars with a
jigged-up hook, a bent paper clip on the end of a pencil. The inmate would take what was on the string, tie a pack of cigarettes to it, and send it back or pass it along. The men used pieces of cracked mirrors, which they held outside their cells. Looking in the glass shards, they could see down the tier and know if any guards were around. When the hall was clear, the inmates let their commerce fly. Sandwiches, weed, drugs, “jump steady”—homemade wine from tomato puree—and mash beer all were passed along, bartered for cigarettes, cash, or services. Plastic bottles would go swinging down the tier.

Curtis brought Kirk a small television. Kirk quickly realized he'd need an antenna in order to get reception. Another inmate named Half, a black man with a muscle builder's torso but stubby legs, showed him what to do. He gave Kirk a piece of wire from a broken up radio and had him mash it into a bar of soap with a formaldehyde base. By hanging the soap out the levered window slat, and attaching the loose end of the wire to the TV, Kirk got some programs. Half became Kirk's first friend in the joint. He had a silver-starred front tooth, and liked to lift his lip in a snarl that showed it off. His left bicep was tattooed with an angel of death. He liked to play chess. Sometimes he talked street philosophy. Early on he offered Kirk advice. “Stay away from the gambling,” he told Kirk. “Stay away from the queers, stay away from drugs, don't borrow nothing, and you'll be fine . . .”

Around dinnertime every day, the South Wing went crazy. Pandemonium ruled on the tier. The guards rarely ventured in then. Everyone except those on lockdown milled about. It was noisy, chaotic. Springsteen, Prince and the Revolution, or Aerosmith would blare from competing radios. Kirk's first week there, one inmate supposedly committed suicide. He was found hanged in the laundry. Another guy got napalmed. Inmates squirted him and his
cell with naphtha, a flammable cleaning solvent used in the machine shop, then threw in a match. Kirk heard the man's screams. He heard them afterward in his dreams.

Kirk saw cons walk by his cell carrying toothbrushes honed into shanks, full soda cans in a pillow case, soap bars in socks—all weapons that could put the hurt on a man. From time to time someone would walk near Kirk's bars and show him a weapon or mumble some guttural threat.

“I'll be there shortly,” Kirk would reply. “I'll be there. You won't have to wait much longer . . .”

It was the guys who didn't say a word, though, that frightened him the most. The ones who needed someone new to hate. The silent ones who seethed. They were the ones who'd attack without warning. Here he was, a convicted child killer, the perfect target.

A
FTER TWO MONTHS
on lockdown, thinking too often about the gas chamber, Kirk badly needed a change. He was sick, bored, claustrophobic, mired in self-pity and depression. It was late spring. He wanted to walk in the yard, to feel the outdoor air. He wanted to go to the weight room, to get a job, have contact visits, to have some kind of life. He needed to use the library. He was ready to risk whatever awaited him. He petitioned the assistant warden to be removed from administrative segregation and put into general population. That's when he first met Sergeant Cooley Hall, the security guard from Trinidad, and first told him that he was holding hostage an innocent man. It was Hall who recommended that Bloodsworth be given a temporary pass to general population. On a trial basis. To see how he did.

Initially Kirk just got tested. Men would watch him, circle him, see if he'd give them something. They'd ask him for things. He knew if he showed any weakness they'd be on him like jackals on a crippled calf. He decided his only chance was to act like a tough former
marine, to adopt that “take no prisoners” attitude. He tried to exude the image that the marines had wanted to instill in him: that he was a force to be reckoned with. He was determined never to show fear.

There were tribes within the prison, groups who hung together, protected one another, fought against other tribes. The Muslims fought the bikers. The Aryans fought the blacks. The D.C. guys hung together and avoided those from Baltimore, the B-mores—for “be more careful.” There were only a handful of cons from the Eastern Shore. One was named Richard Stillman, who'd killed his girlfriend's parents with a shotgun while they were sleeping. This happened in Cambridge when Kirk was twelve. Stillman, according to the press accounts, had then had sex with the daughter in the same room with her murdered parents. It had been in all the papers. In the prison, Stillman wore bib overalls and a straw hat. He never shaved. With a very long scraggily beard and hooded eyes, he claimed to worship the devil. He kept an altar in his cell. Stillman was called a nighttimer, or a shorteyes, as word in the prison was that the stronger inmates raped him at will. He also was supposed to be a snitch. Half advised Kirk to stay far away from Stillman. Kirk did. Kirk realized, though, that he needed friends. Unexpectedly, he gained a few. Friends like Half, like Big Nick—a very large and fierce-looking ex-Pagan who spotted weights in the gym.