Updates Mailing List: January Newsletter: KIRK BLOODSWORTH, LEGISLATIVE ISSUES AND MORE!

[CBCDC (cbcdc]

 

The JANUARY 2013 CBCDC Newsletter is now available!

Click here for a link to a PDF file or scroll down to view images

 

 

       Next CBCDC meeting Tuesday, January 8. Our meetings will be held at the Democratic Party Headquarters at 301 Allegheny Ave. Towson, MD until further notice. (Entrance in the back.) Socializing begins at 6:30 and the meeting starts at 7 pm.

       Important Legislative Issues: Death Penalty, Hybrid School Board, Wind Energy

Special guest speaker: Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is the first American sentenced to death row who was exonerated by DNA fingerprinting.

An honorably discharged former Marine and Maryland resident, Bloodsworth was convicted in 1985 of sexual assault, rape, and first-degree premeditated murder for the 1984 rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in Rosedale. Even though five eyewitnesses had placed him with the victim, he continued to maintain his innocence throughout his trial and subsequent incarceration. In 1992, while in jail, Bloodsworth read an account of how DNA fingerprinting had led to the conviction of a killer; hoping to prove his innocence, he pushed to have the evidence against him tested by the then-novel method. In 1993, Bloodsworth was released; by that time, he had spent almost nine years in prison, two of them on death row.

 

Bloodsworth is the subject of the book Bloodsworth: the True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA by Tim Junkin.

 

Laurie Taylor-Mitchell and Julie Sugar are longtime members of CBCDC and founders of ABC Schools: Citizens for an Accountable Baltimore County School Board. They advocate for a hybrid elected-appointed school board. You can read more about them and their work at www.abcschoolsmd.org.

 

The Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) is the first grassroots, nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to fighting global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Their mission is to build and mobilize a powerful grassroots movement in this unique region that surrounds our nationâs capital to call for state, national and international policies that will put us on a path to climate stability.

Tom Carlson, CCANâs Maryland Campaign Director, will join us to talk about CCANâs initiatives in our state, including advocacy for offshore wind, opposition to fracking, and others.

 

       CBCDC Presidentâs Letter: Anne Neal

 

       A Crazy 24 Hours in Politics: Op-Ed by Jim Kehl