American Justice and the case of the West Memphis Three

Nearly two decades after being found guilty of the brutal murders of three young cub scouts in West Memphis Arkansas, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin, walked out of prison on August 19^th of this year as guilty but free men.  At the time of their arrests in 1993, Baldwin was 16. Misskelley was 17, and Echols was 18. Echols was sentenced to death, Misskelley was sentenced to life plus 40 years, and Baldwin was sentenced to life. If you are not familiar with the case at all you might be wondering how three child killers, one of whom was on death row, could just be set free… 

            It all started on May 6th, 1993, when the bodies of three eight-year-old boys were found in a ditch in a small patch of woods near West Memphis. Those little boys were Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch. The crime scene was handled poorly by officers who at best were not used to triple homicides, and at worst were inept. The crime scene was not properly secured resulting in loss of potential evidence and little physical evidence was found at all. Hairs were found at the scene under victim Michael Moore’s bindings and on a tree stump. There was no blood found at the scene, even though one of the victims had bled to death. The victims’ bodies were found naked, bound, and covered in wounds. All had substantial injuries to the head, and at least one had mutilation to the genital area. Initially the police decided those wounds meant it was sexual mutilation and some sort of satanic ritual they were looking at.

            With satanic panic in high gear the detectives started interviewing local kids who reported all sorts of wild stories and strange characters in hopes of scoring the $30,000 in reward money. Detectives already had a suspect in mind though; Damian Echols, a loner in black who listened to Metallica and read Stephen King books. They hit their jackpot after a woman cooperating in the case led them to Jessie Misskelly Jr, who would go on to implicate not only their target Mr. Echols but also himself and Damien’s best friend, Jason Baldwin. The police interrogated Jessie for 12 hours, despite the fact that they did not have a written waiver of his Miranda Rights signed by his father, a legal requirement when police interview a minor. Normally this breach of a minor's constitutional rights would be sufficient to have the confession quashed, but for some reason in this case the judge chose to allow it. It is also worth noting that Jessie Misskelley has an IQ of 70 which puts him in the moderately retarded category.

Out of the 12 hours of interrogation only 45 minutes were recorded and those minutes are filled with police coaching and glaring inconsistencies. Jessie tells detectives he went to Robin Hood Hills with the suspects at 9am arriving and murdering the boys at around noon. An unlikely scenario since the victims and one of the accused, Jason Baldwin, were absolutely in school all day on the day of the murders. Jessie tells the detectives that Baldwin and Echols sodomized the boys, an assertion the state medical examiner and numerous other experts have refuted. Jessie gives the wrong side when asked what side of the creek the three teens murdered the boys on, until a 20 second break in the tape when Jessie comes back on and tells the detectives the correct side. I have followed this case since around 1996, and only came across the police interrogation tape a few years ago. It was a shocker, even though I already knew MissKelley had a low IQ and that police seemed to have taken advantage of him.

Fast forward some 17 years later, these men were still fighting for their freedom, but with a few major differences. They weren’t poor uneducated teens without a voice anymore. Echols and Baldwin are bright articulate men with a massive support system that includes not only all of us “nobodies” who believe in their innocence but also giant names in the celebrity world like Johnny Depp, Peter Jackson, and Eddie Vedder, to name a few. It also doesn’t hurt that times have changed and the "satanic cult sacrifice" motive is now seen as an embarrassment that the police and prosecution no longer embrace. The biggest factor though has to be the science of course. DNA and other forensic technologies have progressed over the years and testing has shown that the hair found under the bindings of victim Christopher Byers belong to Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the other victims, Stevie Branch. DNA testing also shows that the hair on the tree stump is consistent with Terry’s friend, David Jacoby, who happens to be the same friend who gave Terry his alibi for the day of the murders.

A decision by the court on whether the men would be granted new hearings was going to be the next step in the process, and if it that had happened the West Memphis Three would have had another, much different, day in court to fight and prove their innocence. Arkansas decided to go another route though. They very recently (Aug 19) agreed to release the West Memphis Three through an obscure legality, an Alford plea, in which the men would plead guilty while maintaining their innocence, and most importantly, give up the right to sue the state. While that hardly seems like justice, Jason Baldwin was right when he said he didn’t want to plead guilty but he couldn’t let the state kill Damian, who after all was still on death row.

My decision to write about the WM3 here was not only because I already know the case but because I wonder what others think. Has anyone else followed this case, or anyone see them released recently and wondered why three “murderers” were set free? I am disgusted at Arkansas and how they have handled this case since 1993. Even though the WM3 are free, there is still a murderer or murderers out there, and when Arkansas prosecutors were asked if they would be pursuing the case they basically said they had no intentions of doing so and that as far as they were concerned they had had the right people in jail the whole time. REALLY! Really Arkansas, you think those men are BRUTAL child killers and yet you are releasing them out into the public? I understand broke states not wanting to make huge payouts to wrongly convicted prisoners but where is the justice for Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch?