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. He had been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of the 1984 rape and first-degree murder of a nine-year-old girl in Rosedale, Maryland. By the time an appeal based on the DNA evidence was underway, his sentence had been commuted to two consecutive life sentences. He gained release from prison in 1993 and a full exoneration in 1993. Wrongful Conviction and sentence to death Bloodsworth served in the Marines, and was honorably discharged at the end of his term. He lived in coastal Maryland, where he worked as a waterman, harvesting shellfish and fish. 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. Five eyewitnesses stated that he had been with the victim, but he continued to maintain his innocence throughout his trial and subsequent incarceration. Two of the witnesses had not been able to identify Bloodsworth during the lineup but in fact saw him on television after the crime was committed. 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. This resulted in the use of DNA to gain the exoneration of an earlier suspect in the case, who had falsely confessed to Ashworth's murder. Hoping to prove his innocence, Bloodsworth pushed to have the biological evidence against him tested by this new forensic technique. 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. Testing proved that the semen did not match Bloodsworth's DNA profile. In 1993 Bloodsworth was released after more than nine years in prison. In 1993, the Maryland Governor, William Donald Schaefer, granted Bloodsworth a full pardon. 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. A month after the 1984 murder, Ruffner had been sentenced to 45 years for an unrelated burglary, attempted rape and assault with intent to murder. He had been incarcerated in