…Let”s Hope the Arkansas Supreme Court Does Too
On Saturday evening in Little Rock, 2,500 Arkansans gathered to hear Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maines, Johnny Depp, Patti Smith, Ben Harper and some of their friends play music and talk about the case of the West Memphis 3. The artists, and many who came to seem them, are convinced that a terrible crime has been committed, not only in the tragic deaths of the three children found in a drainage ditch in West Memphis, Arkansas, in May 1993, but also in the wrongful convictions of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley.
Vedder and his colleagues have been involved in efforts to free Damien Echols and the others for years. They have dedicated their time and money after having thoroughly reviewed the evidence that led to the convictions. Like many—including the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law and the 13,000-member National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, whose amicus brief is part of the court record under review—they are convinced that, based upon new evidence uncovered in the case, any reasonable person today would vote to acquit, which is the legal standard for granting a new trial.
The West Memphis 3 have been imprisoned for 17 years, with Echols on death row, for a crime in which there was no credible physical evidence, no weapon found, no motive, and no connection between the suspects and the victims. Instead, a terrified, inflamed, and shell-shocked community was sold the false confession of Jessie Misskelley, a mentally disabled 16-year old with an IQ of 67. A panicked community, desperate police, and a rush to judgment resulted in the wrong men being convicted.
The Arkansas Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on September 30th in Damien Echols’s appeal for a new trial. The court will consider new DNA and forensic evidence, as well as allegations of shocking juror misconduct. Court-authorized DNA tests have excluded Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley as the source of any and all DNA recovered from the crime scene. DNA testing, however, links Terry Hobbs, stepfather of one of the murdered children, to the crime, as his DNA was found in the knot in shoelaces used to tie up one of the murdered children.
The court will also consider evidence that the original jury foreman engaged in blatant misconduct that led to the conviction of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin for murder, by introducing Jessie Misskelley’s coerced confession into jury deliberations when it was explicitly barred from consideration because Jessie had recanted and refused to testify against the other two. In fact, Misskelly’s statements to police that linked him and his friends to the crime, in which he says he was with the children at 9:00 a.m. the morning of their murder, were clearly false, as the children were safe at school that day until late afternoon. After being lied to by police that he failed a polygraph test that he actually had passed, Miskelley finally told them what they wanted to hear.
As last weekend’s concert demonstrated, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley may have been convicted, but they have not been forgotten. And the world will be watching when the Arkansas Supreme Court hears arguments in the West Memphis 3 case on September 30th.