DNA Testing Could Save Rodney Reed's Life
Rodney Reed, a man on death row with a Nov. 20 execution date, could be proven innocent if DNA in his case is tested. Reed's attorneys argue that executing him without testing the DNA is unconstitutional, but the prosecution argues that the DNA has been contaminated. Time and again, untested DNA has been the piece of evidence that has led to the exoneration of an innocent person.
Kirk Bloodsworth knows first hand how important testing DNA is and he is sharing his support for Reed.
"Former Baltimore County prosecutor Ann Brobst first said the evidence in Kirk Bloodsworth’s case had been destroyed when he wrote to her requesting DNA testing in 1992. Bloodsworth’s attorney eventually located the evidence in the clerk’s office, and a test did not match Bloodworth’s DNA profile. He was released from prison in 1993, after nearly a decade behind bars—the first person sentenced to death to be exonerated with DNA testing.
Bobst did not accept that Bloodsworth was innocent until 2004, when investigators matched the DNA to the victim’s killer. “She refused to even think about my innocence at all,” Bloodsworth told The Appeal of Brobst, who died in 2012. "At the end of the day, 24 jurors, the police department, and the prosecutor’s office of Baltimore County were all dead wrong.""
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