Kirk Noble Bloodsworth (born October 31, 1960) is a former Maryland waterman and the first American sentenced to death to be exonerated post-conviction by DNA testing.
In 1985 he was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault, rape, and first-degree premeditated murder in the 1984 case of Dawn Hamilton, a nine-year-old girl in Rosedale, Maryland.
[3][4] In 1992, while in jail, Bloodsworth read an account of how DNA testing had led to the conviction, in England, of Colin Pitchfork in the killings of Dawn Ashworth and Lynda Mann.
[2] Initially, the available evidence in the case — traces of semen in the victim's underwear — was thought to have been destroyed; however, it was eventually located in a paper bag in the judge's chambers.
[3] In 2003, nearly a decade after Bloodsworth's release, prisoner DNA evidence added to state and federal databases resulted in a match to the real killer, Kimberly Shay Ruffner.