Kirk Bloodsworth's Five Eyewitness Testimony

In 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was accused of raping and murdering nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton. Two young boys were fishing in a small pond behind the apartment that Dawn had lived at and witnessed her walk into the wood with a man described as 6-foot five, with a bushy mustache and blonde hair. Hours later, Dawn was found face down in the woods by a Baltimore detective. At the time Bloodsworth did not live in the area. He was a 6 feet, redhead who wore glasses. Detectives should’ve taken that as intimations that Bloodsworth was the wrong man. Whether he was guilty or innocent depended on five eyewitness testimonies. The two young boys and three other eyewitnesses stated that he was the man that they saw take Dawn into the woods. After he spent

In 2015, Smalarz found that a misidentification testimony by very confident eyewitnesses has happened in about seventy-two percent of cases where innocent people have been accused and were later found innocent by DNA testing. Someone can tell you a story with details, confidence, and passion yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true. In correspondence with Smalarz, in 1977, Randall Adams was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in Dallas, Texas. An alleged eyewitness, who in fact was the actual killer, framed Mr. Adams; he received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Mr. Adams was in fact not involved in the crime. Errol Morris took interest in the film and produced the famous documentary: The Thin Blue Line. In total, it took detectives twelve years and four months for them to figure out that Mr. Adams was the wrong suspect (Martin, 2011). Therefore, proving that Smalarz’s theory was correct; the actual killer appeared confident and passionate that Mr. Adams was the killer and got away with the crime. Martin shows bias in his article by stating that eyewitness testimonies are not reliable; he favors the idea that eyewitness testimonies should not be used in court cases and doesn’t not provide different perceptions in the