West Memphis Three
Following a 2010 decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court regarding newly produced DNA evidence and potential juror misconduct, the West Memphis Three negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors.
[7] The boys were allegedly last seen together by three neighbors, who in affidavits told of seeing them playing together around 6:30 pm the evening they disappeared and seeing Terry Hobbs, Steve Branch's stepfather, calling them to come home.
[citation needed] Around 1:45 pm, juvenile Parole Officer Steve Jones spotted a boy's black shoe floating in a muddy creek that led to a major drainage canal in Robin Hood Hills.
[9] Echols and Baldwin were close friends, and bonded over their similar tastes in music and fiction, and over their shared distaste for the prevailing cultural climate of West Memphis, situated in the Bible Belt.
The man reportedly wore a "blue cast type brace on his arm that had white Velcro on it", which would have made it difficult to tie up and murder three young boys.
[9] On May 9, during a formal interview by Detective Bryn Ridge, Echols mentioned that one of the victims had wounds to the genitals; law enforcement viewed this knowledge as incriminating.
[35][36] Vicki Hutcheson, a new resident of West Memphis, would play an important role in the investigation, though she would later recant her testimony, claiming her statements were fabricated due in part to coercion from police.
[9][37] On May 6, 1993 (before the victims were found later the same day), Hutcheson took a polygraph exam by Detective Don Bray at the Marion Police Department, to determine whether or not she had stolen money from her West Memphis employer.
The prosecution called Dale W. Griffis, a graduate of the unaccredited Columbia Pacific University, as an expert in the occult to testify the murders were a Satanic ritual.
Mara Leveritt, an investigative journalist and the author of Devil's Knot, argues that Echols' information may have come from police leaks, such as Detective Gitchell's comments to Mark Byers, that circulated amongst the local public.
[9] Misskelley's former attorney Dan Stidham cites multiple substantial police errors at the crime scene, characterizing it as "literally trampled, especially the creek bed."
"[9] Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist and criminal profiler, stated in the film Paradise Lost 2 that human bite marks could have been left on at least one of the victims.
[53] In 2007, Echols petitioned for a retrial, based on a statute permitting post-conviction testing of DNA evidence due to technological advances made since 1994 which might provide exoneration for the wrongfully convicted.
[9] In October 2003, Vicki Hutcheson, who had played a part in the arrests of Misskelley, Echols, and Baldwin, gave an interview to the Arkansas Times in which she stated that every word she had given to the police was a fabrication.
Additionally, after the Murders my sister Jo Lynn McCauhey and I found in Terry's nightstand a knife that Stevie carried with him constantly and which I had believed was with him when he died.
Also presented in the filing was new expert testimony that the supposed knife marks on the victims, including the injuries to Byers' genitals, were in fact the result of animal predation after the bodies had been dumped.
[66] The justices also instructed the lower court to examine claims of misconduct by the jurors who sentenced Damien Echols to death and Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin to life in prison.
[67] After weeks of negotiations, on August 19, 2011, Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were released from prison as part of a plea deal, making the hearings ordered by the Arkansas Supreme Court unnecessary.
Stephen Braga, an attorney with Ropes & Gray who took up Echols's defense on a pro bono basis beginning in 2009, negotiated the plea agreement with prosecutors.
[74] Ellington said that, although he still considered the men guilty, the three would likely be acquitted if a new trial were held because of the powerful legal counsel representing them now, the loss of evidence over time, and the change of heart among some of the witnesses.
He stated in his report for Echols's legal team that there was no evidence the murders were linked to satanic rituals and that post-mortem animal predation could explain the alleged knife injuries.
[82] There have been a number of books about the case, also arguing that the suspects were wrongly convicted: Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Mara Leveritt, Blood of Innocents by Guy Reel, and The Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, edited by Brett Alexander Savory & M. W. Anderson, and featuring dark fiction and non-fiction by well-known writers of speculative fiction.
Organized by Eddie Spaghetti of the band Supersuckers, the album featured a number of original songs about the case and other recordings by artists such as Steve Earle, Tom Waits, L7, and Joe Strummer.
[87] In January 2010, the CBS television news journal 48 Hours aired "The Memphis 3", an in-depth coverage of the history of the case, including interviews with Echols and supporters.
[89] Atom Egoyan directed a feature film of the case based on Mara Leveritt's book, titled Devil's Knot, starring Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon, which was produced by Worldview Entertainment.
Under the terms of the Alford guilty plea, Echols and his co-defendants accepted the sufficiency of evidence supporting the three counts of first degree murder while maintaining their innocence.
To assist in the appeals process, Echols' appellate legal team retained a Berkeley, California-based forensic psychiatrist, Dr. George Woods, to make their case.
[102] Echols' lawyers claimed that his condition worsened during the trial, when he developed a "psychotic euphoria that caused him to believe he would evolve into a superior entity" and eventually be transported to a different world.
In August 2021, ten years after release from prison, Echols reiterated that he would not give up seeking any evidence that remained, so it could be retested to exonerate the three and lead to those actually responsible.
Echols attorneys filed a Motion for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief in the Circuit Court of Crittendon County First Division, and asked for an expedited hearing.
