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WM3
The West Memphis 3 were freed today. If anybody hasn't heard about it, it's a case in Arkansas from 1993. Three eight year old boys were brutally murdered. They arrested three teenagers for the murders. Jessie Miskelley has an IQ of 72. After being questioned for 12 hours and being shown crime scene photos, he confessed. Only 45 minutes of this confession were recorded. In it, he said it happened at 9:00 am and the boys were tied up with rope. The detective corrected him because the little boys were in school that day and didn't go missing until around 6:30 that night. They were also tied with their own shoe laces. They worked with him and fed him info until his confession matched the crime.
Basically, the cops found the freaks in town and decided they had committed murder as part of a satanic ritual and then went about trying to make up evidence to prove it instead of trying to find who really committed the murders.
Jessie Miskelley and Jason Baldwin were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Damien Echols was sentenced to death. Finally, last fall, the Arkansas Supreme Court remanded the case back to the circuit court for an evidentiary hearing. The prosecutor knew that the odds were a new trial would be ordered and the state would have a difficult time winning a new conviction. Over the past three weeks, they worked out a deal. They set aside the convictions in exchange for the three men taking an Alford plea. They pled guilty but maintain innocence. In exchange they were given a sentence of 18 years with credit for time served. They are free today.
It works for the state because now the state can't be sued. It works for these men because Damien is no longer on death row and they all can work towards finding the evidence that proves actual innocence. I think it stinks that prosecutors will not admit when a mistake is made. The only thing I'm happy about is that they are free.
Re: WM3
Yikes. I can't say that I'm familiar with this case at all, although I did hear about it on the news today. Was there ever any evidence connecting the three to the crime besides the confession that seems coerced?
The only physical evidence they had were some clothing fibers found on one of the victims that matched clothing fibers "found in the home" of one of the accused. Fibers that were from mass produced clothing and could also have come from the victims homes, except they didn't look for that. There was blue wax on the shirt of one victim and they found a blue candle in Damien Echols bedroom. They found a knife in a pond behind the home of one of the accused, but nothing linked it to the accused or to the crime.
There were a couple of young girls that testified they overheard Damien say at a ballpark that he killed the three boys and was planning to kill two more before he turned himself in.
The police knew Damien because he was the outsider in town and had been into some trouble He had been diagnosed with some mental problems. He always wore black and he had an interest in Wicca. Although Wicca is not satanism, it might as well be in rural Arkansas. Jason Baldwin was Damien's best friend. They shared an interest in heavy metal music, which of course is another sign of being a satanist. Jessie was an acquaintance, but not a good friend to them. The police picked him up and questioned him until they got him to say what they wanted.
Since the trial, DNA testing has advanced. A hair that was tied in one of the knots matches the stepfather of one of the boys. There was DNA found on a tree that matches the same stepfather's friend. There is other DNA that recently was tested and was shown to not match anybody known to the case, but two unidentified males. They did not find one drop of blood at the crime scene, yet one of the boys bled to death.
There was pretty blatant juror misconduct that the judge tried to cover up. The jury foreman had conversations with a family attorney while the trial was going on. He told his attorney that the state's case was very weak and if the prosecutor didn't come up with something soon, that he would have to make sure they were convicted. Jessie had recanted his confession and refused to testify against Jason and Damien even though it could have gotten him a lighter sentence. The jury foreman knew about the confession and made sure it was considered even though it was inadmissible. After the convictions, the lawyer wrote a letter to the judge informing him of all of this. The judge filed it away and tried to keep it from being released.
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If you read the book Devil's Knot, you'll be completely shocked. I read it today. It was way worse than I knew.