WM3: Were they guilty as charged?

[Aractus]

Okay, so I recently thought about the West Memphis Three cases. When I first saw PL1 (Paradise Lost) I had two minds of it, I didn't think it provided clear answers at all - but I thought it was very well made. PL2 I was very unimpressed by, especially after the second viewing. Now if you don't know anything about the sequel, let's just say that everything presented in it is one-sided, and almost all of the "new facts" are or were false facts/red herrings. Some of the information presented, such as claiming that Jessie was interviewed for 12 hours, and denied access to his family or a lawyer, before the confession were outright false.


So let's talk about the evidence. You can find pretty much all the case evidence archived at http://callahan.8k.com (and that website is linked to even from wm3.org).

Early in the film Damien says that "he was set up because he looked different and the police couldn't identify the real killer". This is refuted by several facts, including the fact that rumours were circulating that Damien boasted about killing the kids, and that information eventually found its way to police. A 500-page document was entered into evidence that detailed Damien's mental health problems. As an example, this is one page that was filled in by Damien:



He said himself that he was homicidal, suicidal, manic depressive, schizophrenic, and sociopathic. He was 18 and receiving a full disability pension. His parents were scared of him, he had assaulted classmates (including one incident where he had tried to gouge out a classmate's eyes) and other patients when he was held in a mental hospital. So that's some of the things prior to his arrest - he certainly wasn't targeted simply for "being different".

During the course of the documentary, Jessie's father says to his partner that he thinks Jessie might have done it.

The cornerstone of the defence was that Jessie's confession was false. Now a false-confession is a difficult thing to prove in court, even more difficult in 1993 when we didn't know anywhere near as much as we now do about false confessions. Well then, a reliable alibi would certainly help. So why didn't Jessie have a believable alibi? The alibi Jessie and his family provided to his lawyer Dan Stidham was that a. he was at his home at the Highland trailer park, and then in the evening he went with two of his friends to go wrestling. The first part of the alibi fell apart when the prosecution established that police had been called out to the trailer park that day, and all three police officers that attended testified in court that they did not see Jessie there on that occasion. The second part of the alibi fell apart when the prosecution produced the wrestling receipt with Jessie's two friend's names on it for $300 (the exact amount they said they'd paid that evening) and it was dated April 27, not May 5.

On 3 June 1993 Jessie was picked up by police around 9AM from his father's workplace. He was interviewed. His father then signed a release allowing the police to polygraph him (at 11:15). At 2:20 that day Jessie gave his first taped confession. On 11 June 1993 he confesses to his lawyer, Dan Stidham. In September he changes his story and tells his lawyer that he's innocent. On Feburary 5 1994 he's convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He then immediately confesses in the police vehicle to the officers transporting him to the prison. On 8 February he talks to his lawyer, Dan Stidham, and confesses again. Stidham is not happy - he asks why he lied and Jessie says that he lied whenever he wasn't told to swear on a Bible and because he was asked to swear on a Bible that's why he confessed the first time. So Stidham gets a Bible and has Jessie put his hand on it, and Jessie confesses. This time the details match up much better than the pre-trial confessions. This time he tells Stidham that he was so drunk he was sick, and that he'd been drinking an Evan Williams brand Whisky bottle and smashed it under a specific overpass on the same day of the murders. Dan Stidham and prosecutor Brent Davis then go to the overpass together and find the smashed bottle exactly where Jessie said it was. They then go to the liquor store and confirm that it is an Evan Williams brand Whisky bottle, which it is. According to Davis, before they went out Stidham said he'd believe the confession if they found the bottle. On February 17 Jessie made another taped confession, this time to the prosecutors Joe Calvin and Brent Davis with both of his lawyers present. Stidham was outraged and claimed that the interview was a violation of his client's rights. So the question remains - if Jessie made a false confession and was innocent why did he feel the need to confess immediately after the trial to the police officers transporting him, and then to his lawyer, and then to the prosecutors?

Now onto the second trial, all three of the WM3 had been given polygraphs. Jessie and Damien both failed there, but Jason passed his. Not that that's reliable evidence of guilt or innocence, but it is worth noting. Especially since John Mark Byers seems to think the polygraph he took in PL2 has vindicated him.

Now again, if Damien and Jason had provided reliable alibis. But Damien kept changing his alibi even before the trial. He claimed at one point to have spoken to four girls on the phone during the time-frame of the murders, they all denied that. The pre-trial alibis provided by Jason and Damien contradicted each other.

Now the jury did however misconduct themselves by discussing Jessie's confession. So there's that, I'm not claiming the case was fair - because it wasn't. The original trials were very disordered - they didn't build a convincing case for innocence; instead they blamed Byers, "Mr. Bojangles", and during the sentencing part of the trial, the defence team produced Damien's 500-page mental health record - hoping to convince the Judge that he was mentally ill and not to sentence him to death.

Damien participated in acts of animal cruelty:

On 10-27-92 I was at Lakeshore Trailer Park with Damien Echols when he killed a Black Great Dane. The dog was already sick and he hit the dog in the back of the head. He pulled the intestines out of the dog and started stomping the dog until blood came out of his mouth. He was going to come back later with battery acid so that he could burn the hair and skin off of the dog’s head. He had two cat skulls, a dog skull and a rat skull that I already knew about. He kept these skulls in his bedroom at Jack Echols house in Lakeshore. He was trying to make the eyeballs of the dog he killed pop out when he was stomping. Damien had a camoflouge survival knife to cut the guts out of the dog with. - Statement by Joe Bartoush (about 13 years old), Jason's cousin.

There were also other accounts give to police by friends and relatives of the accused.

Furthermore, in 1992 a rumour had circulated that Damien wanted to sacrifice a baby:





Remember, those documents was entered into evidence by the defence in the sentencing phase of the trial, not by the prosecution.

Towards the end of PL1, Paul Ford (Jason's lawyer) asks Jason if he thinks that Damien could have done it. Then he re-frames the question "if you were on that jury would you have a hard time letting him go?" Jason replies "yes", and then Paul says "I would too". Jason's own defence lawyer says that he thinks Damien is guilty! So does Judge Barnett, so do the prosecutors, and so do all the families of the victims. Although now two of the victims families believe that Terry Hobbs is the real killer, the rest do not.

Now I'm not trying to say one way or the other where the guilt is, just looking at the facts.

Additional:

Blood at the crime scene? In PL1 the defence team argues that for a crime scene to be "that clean" that someone more organised had to have planned the crime in advance and then worked very hard to wash the blood away. The fact is they didn't. The police investigators put Luminol on the area and found the murders had clearly taken place in the ditch. Apparently the prosecution couldn't enter the photos into evidence at the original trial, however I believe it would be allowed now. In PL2 Stidham is talking to criminal profiler Brent Turvey who claims that it's a dump site and not the primary crime scene, while acknowledging that two of the boys did die there because they drowned. It's a little strange to think that they'd be dumped there alive, don't you think? In any case the Luminol photos establish that it is the primary crime scene.

Next in PL2 they establish a "bite mark". Well there's no mention of it in the autopsy and the medical examiner testified that he had considered bite marks at the time of the autopsy and had ruled them out.

They continue to cast suspicion on Byers despite the fact that he has a solid alibi.

Fast-forward to PL3. This time they're casting blame onto Terry Hobbs. Now it's possible that a parent committed the crime, however it raises more problems. Hobbs probably molested his daughter, and he beat his son and wife (of course Byers also beat his son), however that doesn't automatically make him a murderer. Nevertheless they claim a hair consistent with Hobbs' DNA was found on one of the shoelaces used to die the boys. Okay, well where's the hair? And why can't it be tested to a better level of forensic accuracy? And could the hair have been there because at some point Hobbs tied his step-son's shoelaces? It's just not very convincing if that's all they have against Hobbs. In WOM they establish that some of the injuries look like turtle bite marks - including the one the defence thought came from a human back in PL2; and turtle scratches.

So the fact that they suffered post-mortem injuries from turtles and/or other large animals actually helps to explain the disparity between Jessie's confessions and the forensic evidence.

But here are the problems with the theory that Hobbs did... 1. Why were the boys all stripped naked and hog-tied; 2. There were three distinct knots used to tie the victims - suggesting three different individuals tied them; 3. Hobbs has a reasonably solid alibi, and the attacks made against it by the documentaries are not convincing enough to discredit his alibi, unlike the alibis for Jason, Damien, and Jessie; 4. The boys are seen entering the woods on their bikes by Brian Woody at about 6:30-6:45. This is the last time they are seen alive. Woody said he saw a fourth boy - could this have been Jason, for instance? Who was the fourth boy?? If Hobbs killed the boys then he did it in the woods - he entered the woods and killed them and then left, so who was the fourth boy? If it wasn't Jason or Jessie then who could it have been and why haven't they come forward?

[Rev. Rye]

Here are some points to mention:

• Most of the evidence you have presented was circumstantial and likely colored by the case itself.
  
• And about JEssie Misskelley's confession, here's an annotated transcript of his first confession.
  
• Also, you said that in the original trials, the defense "didn't build a convincing case for innocence," the problem is that defense lawyers aren't so much meant to prove innocence, more lack of evidence of guilt. This is why verdicts are given in terms of "Guilty" or "Not Guilty," not "Guilty" and "Innocent." Remember, one can't prove a negative.
  
• About the fact that the WM3 defense attorneys didn't have much faith in them, remember, they had public defenders, and, from what I understand, Damien Echols' lawyers were so out of their depths that they almost failed to grant him a stay of execution because they assumed it would be automatic. Plus, the way the question was phrased: "if you were on that jury would you have a hard time letting him go?" Bear in mind that juries aren't always impartial. At the end of the day, the adversarial system of law is not so much about finding the truth, but about which side can present their facts in such a way that appeals to a jury better; the way I see it, that's why O.J. Simpson got off and it's why the West Memphis 3 didn't.
  
• The forensic evidence was DNA tested, and found no forensic evidence of the WM3 at the crime scene, just the victims' and some other person they couldn't identify.
  
• I don't particularly care for the Paradise Lost crew casting their own aspersions on who could have done it. Sometimes there are cases (like the Black Dahlia) where dozens of people have some damning evidence against them, but also some significant evidence that would likely exonerate them, and I am heavily inclined to think this is one of them.
  

[Aractus]

The evidence against the three is circumstantial, yes. Aside from Jessie's five confessions - including the three post-trial confessions. If he was innocent why would he abandon maintaining his innocence the second he was sentenced?

There's always a lack of forensic evidence when bodies are dumped in water. Always. Except the possible Hobbs hair - although like I said I didn't even see any evidence that showed that the shoelace used to tie Christopher couldn't have been Stevie's shoelace, so it's really a wafer-thin piece of evidence. And furthermore as I already told you, Luminol was sprayed all over the ditch to establish that it was the crime scene. Luminol contaminates the crime scene and in 1993 prevented any blood or organic matter that was located from being DNA tested. Had the original investigators been more careful they may have been able to find additional forensic evidence that since became contaminated, lost, or never located in the first place.

The circumstantial evidence: 1; no believable alibis for any of the three, 2; FOUR children were seen entering the woods together at about 6:30-6:45 on 5 May 1993, 3; Echols had talked about sacrificing a baby in 1992 as testified to by his therapist and his girlfriend of the time; 4. Echols had committed acts of animal cruelty; 5. Echols was a violent young man, his family were afraid of him, and he had a mental health record showing he was homicidal and sociopathic, and Echols himself agreed with that diagnosis; 6. Instead of presenting their evidence in a new trial with the possibility of being found not guilty, the trio instead plead guilty to the charges in deal that they themselves (/their lawyers) had come up with.

Now on the point you have to ask yourself "since when does an innocent person plead guilty"? Well, it does happen let's be honest. But as I understand it they referenced a case in which an innocent man plead guilty at his original trial, and was subsequently proved innocent when the real guilty party had been found - he did this to avoid the death penalty. Yet in this case only Damien was facing the death penalty - so why would that case apply to the other two? Also, it happened in the original trial - in the original trials for the WM3 they all plead not guilty. So that part makes no sense either. Jason even went on record as saying that it wasn't justice any way you look at it - and he's right! Yet it his lawyers that came up with this unjust bastardisation of justice - not the State. The State wanted a retrial - but they agreed to the bizarre plea-deal offered. Damien claimed his health was failing and he couldn't have waited the last few months for the retrial. But he's said a lot of things, much of which has been untrue and outright lies - so how are we meant to take him at his word now? Jason certainly appeared sincere and he may very well have been - he may have been led to believe to Damien's health was as bad as Damien claimed.

7. The defence argued strongly that Jessie is very suggestible. In his original confession he claims to have given a pair of shoes to his friend Buddy Lucas the day after the murders (6 May 1993). Lucas confirmed this, and then went on to tell police that he did not think that it was like Jessie to commit such a crime but that Damien could have convinced him to do almost anything; see for yourself:



8. On October 24 1994 Jessie's cell-mate Michael Johnson wrote to prosecutor Brent Davis saying that Jessie had confessed to him. Unlike some of the witnesses in the original trials that came forward and gave false testimony that we now know about, there's nothing to suggest Johnson's account is false. In fact it's consistent with the three other post-trial confessions that we know about in 1994. So now we have Jessie confessing several times all through 1994 from the time he was sentenced instead of maintaining his innocence. Rumours suggest that he kept confessing to other counsellors and possibly other inmates after that time as well - but there's no evidence to establish that.

9. At the trial we now know that a number of witnesses lied on the stand. What we also know is that Damien lied on the stand, he lied before the trial, and he's lied dozens of times since the trial. Innocent people do not need to pathologically lie. He's been caught out on many of his lies, and has never tried to explain them. For instance he denied knowing Jessie Misskelley well, yet that fact is refuted by overwhelming evidence that shows the two were in fact good friends. He admitted to changing his alibi when cross-examined on the stand by the prosecution. He has lied about the eye-gouging incident claiming that he wasn't really trying to gouge-out the classmate's eyes; even though he admitted to it at the time. He denied being a troubled youth, despite his criminal and psychiatric records attesting otherwise. He made rape allegations in prison, retracted them, made them again, and changed the accounts; furthermore some of what he claimed could be proven to be impossible.

10. Damien claimed that the police were out to get him, that the prosecutors were out to get him, and even that his own lawyers were out to get him. Oh and also that the prison guards were out to get him as well. He claimed that his 500-page mental health record was invented, by Jason's lawyer in order to cast suspicion onto him. Yet as I mentioned before, the document wasn't submitted until AFTER the two of them had already been found guilty. This bizarre array of continued paranoia is consistent with someone with his mental health history, it is not consistent with someone who is (as he claimed in PL1) simply "targeted by the police".

The WM3 have now had 22 years to explain these discrepancies, but they never have. The alternate theories they've come up with have all turned out to be nothing more than smoke with no substance - aside from the post-mortem animal bites and scratches. The theory that Byers did it had no evidence, and Byers has a solid alibi. The theory that Hobbs did it has almost no evidence, and Hobbs has a reasonably robust alibi. The theory that the ditch was a secondary crime scene is refuted by the original investigation. The theory that there was a human bite mark was refuted by the original forensic examiner. The theory that a parent did the crime doesn't explain why the boys were stripped naked, hog-tied, and dumped in the water. Especially since the boys were still alive when they were stripped naked and hog-tied. So not only have they had 22 years to explain the discrepancies, but they've had 22 years to find a more believable suspect and as of yet have still failed to do so. The chief suspect they have has an alibi yet the WM3 have no alibis.

[Kitty Galore]

I remember watching the movie Paradise Lost when it came out, it creeped me out. It also cast so much doubt on their guilt, I personally thought they were innocent. I was younger and more emotional, I related to them.. I don't think I have the stomach to get into it all again. So very tragic. When I heard they were being released I was happy for them. If I did look back into it, I would like to think I would keep an open mind.

[Aractus]

Oh don't get me wrong, if they did do it I think 18 years each is way over the top anyway - only one of them was an adult. 18 years might be fair for the adult (the 18 year old), but it wasn't fair for the juveniles.