0:00 In more than seventy percent of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence, the primary cause was a mistaken eyewitness.0:10 Last week, we spoke about the journey of holding onto belief when all seems lost.0:17 This is a story about what happens when that belief is the only thing left.0:23 It’s 1984.0:24 A former Marine named Kirk Bloodsworth is sitting at the defendant’s table.0:30 One by one, five different people take the witness stand.0:35 And one by one, they point their finger at him.0:38 They testify that they saw him with a nine-year-old girl, just before she was brutally murdered.0:46 Their testimony is confident.0:49 It is unwavering.0:50 And to the jury, it is convincing.0:53 The gavel falls.0:54 Kirk Bloodsworth is convicted and sentenced to death.0:59 The state built its entire case on those five identifications.1:04 There was no physical evidence.1:06 No confession.1:08 Just the memory of five people.1:10 And as U.S.1:11 Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once said, “There is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant, and says, ‘That’s the one.’” We now know that eyewitness confidence is a terrible indicator of accuracy.1:34 We know that memory is not a recording, but a reconstruction, easily warped by stress, suggestion, and the simple difficulty of identifying a stranger.1:46 The police procedures at the time were flawed, relying on methods we now know produce unreliable results.1:55 But the jury didn’t know that.1:57 They saw five certain witnesses, and they delivered a certain verdict.2:03 For eight years, Kirk Bloodsworth sat in a prison cell.2:08 Two of those years were spent on death row.2:11 Appeals were filed.2:13 Hearings were held.2:14 But the five unshakable eyewitnesses were a wall that could not be breached.2:21 Hope...2:21 was running out.2:23 Then, a new word entered the legal vocabulary.2:26 A new science.2:28 DNA.2:28 At the time of Bloodsworth’s trial, it wasn’t a tool available for forensic testing.2:35 But now, it was.2:36 The evidence from the crime scene—evidence that had been preserved for almost a decade—still existed.2:45 A long-shot motion was filed.2:47 A judge agreed to allow the test.2:50 It was a flicker of light in a very dark room.2:54 The wait for the results was agonizing.2:57 Everything, an entire life, hinged on what the lab would find in a microscopic sample.3:04 The results came back.3:06 The DNA found on the victim’s clothing did not belong to Kirk Bloodsworth.3:12 It belonged to another man, the actual perpetrator.3:16 Every single one of the five eyewitnesses was wrong.3:20 Their confidence, their certainty, the very foundation of the state’s case… was an illusion.3:28 In 1993, after eight years, seven months, and nineteen days in prison, Kirk Bloodsworth’s conviction was reversed.3:37 He walked out of the courthouse a free man, the first American death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA.3:46 But his freedom leaves us with a chilling question.3:50 Eyewitness testimony is still one of the most common forms of evidence used in courtrooms today.3:58 And you have to wonder… how many other walls of certainty are built on sand?
