THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE ARE FREE

August 19th, 2011

Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were freed today from prison after serving eighteen years in the wrongful conviction murder of three children in 1993. Their freedom was based upon a plea agreement with prosecutors, in which, while maintaining their innocence, the three agreed to an Alford plea to the original charges. The three men appeared before Judge David N. Laser, in Craighead County Court in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where their original trials took place and were immediately released As part of the plea agreement, Damien Echols capital murder conviction was vacated.

The Arkansas Supreme Court had recently reopened the case in a unanimous decision that directed the lower court to review all new DNA and other evidence of their innocence in establishing whether or not there should be a new trial. That hearing was scheduled to begin in December.

Damien Echols said, “I cannot believe that this day has come. Despite my innocence, I doubted whether the system would ever actually set me free. I have spent half my life behind bars as Prisoner No. SK 931. Today, I can start to live the rest of it as Damien Wayne Echols. While this plea agreement is imperfect, to be able to walk through the doors of death row is something I have dreamed about since the day we were wrongfully convicted.

“To my wife Lorri Davis, my attorneys, friends and supporters from Little Rock to Seattle to New Zealand, thanks to all of you who have stood by us and helped make this day a reality.”

Jason Baldwin said, “As an innocent man, this is not what I thought justice would look like. But I am incredibly grateful for our freedom, and for all those countless people who worked so tirelessly to help us obtain it.”

“This is a compromise resolution which brings an end to eighteen years of litigation and, most importantly, frees the West Memphis 3 to reclaim their lives. Damien, Jason and Jessie maintain their innocence, but recognize that it was in their ‘best interests’ to accept a certain resolution like this before another eighteen years passed while they were fighting for their freedom in an imperfect criminal justice system,” said Echols’s attorney Stephen Braga, of the law firm of Ropes & Gray.

“We could not have gotten to this point without the support of so many of our good friends and family, the incredible legal work, and all those who have stood behind us throughout this entire ordeal. I would not have been able to do this without the strength, tenacity, discipline and intelligence that Damien has exhibited over all these years. That is the man who he is.” said Lorri Davis, Echols’s wife.

Eddie Vedder said, “We are so grateful for the release of these three innocent men through the ‘Alford plea,’ a plea which essentially exists to right the wrongs of an imperfect system of justice. While we are celebratory today for their freedom, we are also mindful that justice has been only half served with their release. In our hearts remains a special place for the three young boys who were tragically murdered 18 years ago, and the never ending hope that one day their real killers will be brought to justice.”

An Alford plea is a rarely used agreement that recognizes the imperfection in the legal system and allows there to be some measure of justice in a case. The defendants plead to the charges, but maintain their innocence. It is similar to a sentence commutation in many ways. The plea deal does not preclude new evidence of their innocence from being presented to authorities leading to a full pardon. The agreement does not include any parole and it completely removes the death sentence. There are some stipulations that the men must not commit a felony during a certain period following the deal or they could be returned to prison.

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Hair DNA Found with WM3 Crime Scene Evidence Excludes Echols, Baldwin & Misskelley

July 26th, 2011

In a final report on DNA testing filed in the court of Second Judicial District Judge David N. Laser, mitochondrial DNA testing of hair found with crime scene evidence conclusively excludes Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley.

Most of the hairs tested were from the victims. However, one hair found with one of  the victim’s blue jeans and wallet has a DNA profile that remains unidentified.  In a DNA report filed last week, it was revealed that human DNA found on the shoes of murder victim Chris Byers also conclusively excluded the three men, but was linked to two unidentified male individuals.

According to the report, “Bode’s (Bode Technology) further comparative testing analysis also (once again) excludes Echols, Baldwin or Misskelley as the source of this new, non-victim hair.” A scientific analysis of the shoelaces used to bind the three children is expected shortly. 

It was previously established that a hair found in the ligatures that bound one of the victims is linked to Terry Hobbs, stepfather of victim Stevie Branch. According to three new eyewitnesses who have come forward, Terry Hobbs was with the three children at his home at approximately 6:30 p.m., shortly before the boys disappeared and were murdered. Hobbs has denied under oath that he was with the children at any time on the day of their murders.

Capi Peck, co-founder of Arkansas Take Action, said, “This newly discovered DNA evidence that excludes Damien, Jason and Jessie, combined with all other evidence of their innocence, will hopefully lead to a new trial for the three young men who have now served close to 18 years in prison for a crime many Arkansans believe they did not commit.”

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New DNA Found on Victim in West Memphis 3 Case Excludes Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley

July 18th, 2011

A DNA report  filed today with Craighead County Court Judge David Laser in the West Memphis 3 case reveals that new DNA material found on the shoes of murder victim Chris Byers conclusively excludes Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley. The human DNA came from two separate male individuals who remain unidentified.

“Bode’s testing revealed that the DNA samples from Nos. 1 and 2 are from the same male source, while the DNA sample from No. 3 is from a different male source. Bode’s further comparative analysis then also conclusively excluded Echols, Baldwin or Misskelley as the source of any of these new DNA samples.”

Bode Technology’s laboratory in Lorton, Virginia, one of the country’s leading DNA testing facilities, is still testing hairs found at the crime scene and will soon report its findings. A fiber analysis of shoelaces is still in progress, but green vegetable-like material found in the stomach of Stevie Branch was not preserved. Paper sheets used to dry the victims’ clothes which was requested by the defense was not found in the West Memphis Police Department files.

Lorri Davis, wife of Echols and co-founder of Arkansas Take Action, said, “This is further proof that Damien, Jason and Jessie are innocent. They were not at the crime scene and have no connection to these terrible murders. We have now tested a large amount of material and there is no evidence that points to them and much evidence that points to their innocence”

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Echols Judge to Rule on Jury Misconduct

May 26th, 2011

Attorneys for Damien Echols  filed a reply brief on May 26, 2011 challenging the Arkansas Attorney General’s view that the blatant juror misconduct at the original trial was not relevant in a hearing for a new trial. “Evidence of jury misconduct at the Echols-Baldwin trial is germane to the Court’s present inquiry because it eliminates not only a presumption that the verdicts were valid but also any inference that the substantive evidence adduced at the trial was deemed reliable or credible by the Echols-Baldwin jury.”

Attorneys  for Echols asked presiding  Judge David Laser to admit evidence of juror misconduct into this proceeding and to conduct oral arguments and allow witness testimony. They also asked the judge to conduct a separate hearing on the juror misconduct prior to the December 5, 2001 court date to ensure that there be ample time to present all the evidence.

The office of the Arkansas Attorney General had submitted a brief to the Craighead County Court of Judge David Laser agreeing to the admission of juror misconduct evidence in evidentiary hearings in the West Memphis 3 case. According to the Attorney General’s filing, “The State does not resist admission of the juror misconduct evidence, although the State does not believe it will aid the Court’ resolution of the question on remand – whether a new trial would result in acquittal.”

Judge David Laser is expected to rule shortly.

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Damien Echols Asks Judge to Admit Evidence of Juror Misconduct

May 2nd, 2011

In his motion for a new trial, Damien Echols submitted a “Brief on The Admissibility of Evidence of Juror Misconduct,” in which he asks presiding Judge David Laser to admit evidence of juror misconduct at his first trial in this proceeding. He also asks the judge to conduct oral arguments and allow testimony at the hearing scheduled to begin December 5, 2011.

The filing goes into detail about how police obtained Misskelley’s so-called confession during his interrogation, how the prosecution introduced it via news reports prior to the trials, and how the jury came to consider the inadmissible “confession” during its deliberations.

The filing includes shocking evidence that the jury foreman at the Echols/Baldwin trial, Kent Arnold, allegedly lied to the court during jury selection so that he would be sure to be selected and that he allegedly introduced Misskelley’s false confession into jury deliberations although it was constitutionally barred from consideration because Misskelley refused to testify.

Lloyd Warford, a prominent Arkansas attorney, former prosecutor, and state official, submitted a sworn affidavit detailing a dozen improper conversations that Kent Arnold held with him while the original trial was in progress, clearly violating the law and the rights of Echols and Baldwin to a fair and impartial trial. In those conversations, juror Arnold indicates that he had prejudged Echols’s guilt and was trying to convince other jurors to convict them based upon news reports of the false confession of Misskelley, portions of which had even been published in newspapers before the trial.

During one conversation, Arnold informed attorney Warford that the prosecution had presented a weak case and that the prosecution had better present something powerful the next day (the end of the prosecution’s case) or it would be up to him to secure a conviction.

In a separate filing, attorneys for Baldwin, state, “Baldwin has tendered ample evidence of misconduct by his original jury as part of his Petition/Motion for New Trial, including the record of the jury selection, affidavits, juror notes, and other evidence demonstrating that the original verdict was tainted by misconduct.”

Lorri Davis, wife of Echols and co-founder of Arkansas Take Action, said, “We ask the court to consider the seriousness of the juror misconduct in Jason and Damien’s trial, as well as the evidence that Jessie Misskelley’s confession was just plain false.”

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Damien Echols Asks for DNA Testing and FBI Files

March 31st, 2011

ECHOLS REQUESTS DNA TESTING OF HAIRS FROM CRIME SCENE

Asks Judge Laser to Allow DNA Analysis of Crime Scene Material Never Tested and All Information Held by the FBI

(Little Rock, Arkansas—March 30, 2011)  In a brief filed today in the court of Second Judicial District Circuit Judge David N. Laser, Damien Echols’s defense team asked for permission to conduct DNA, fiber, and fingerprint tests on certain materials found at the crime scene and elsewhere, some of which could not be tested in 1993 because the testing technology was unavailable.

The attorneys requested all material held by the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory and certain forensic evidence possibly in the possession of the West Memphis Police Department, LabCorp (formerly known as Genetic Design), the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, the University of North Texas Health Science Center, and the FBI. The requested material includes:

  • All hair retrieved from the crime scene.
  • All remaining biological material, including “skin cuticles” from the ligatures.
  • All of the victims’ clothing, including shoes and shoelaces.
  • The non-ligature portion of the one black shoelace that was apparently cut in half.
  • All other physical evidence from the crime scene, including sheriff’s badge, bike reflector lights, bicycles, ice pick, cigarette packets and cigarette butts, child’s wallet, hook and rope, and all wooden sticks.
  • The wooden planks removed from the tree fort near the crime scene.
  • The white sheets in which the victims’ bodies were transported to the Medical Examiner’s Office, and the white paper on which the victims’ clothing was dried before being examined.

In addition, the brief requests that the court agree to the testing of  “… green vegetable-like material from Steve Branch’s stomach.” The defense has developed new evidence indicating that Pam Hobbs, Stevie’s mother and Terry’s wife at the time, prepared “Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and green beans for dinner for Stevie on the night of May 5th before she went to work at 4:30 that day. Terry Hobbs drove Pam to work and then returned home approximately fifteen minutes later. If the green vegetable-like material found in Stevie’s stomach turns out to be green beans, then that fact would tend to help prove that Stevie was in his home sometime after 4:30 P.M. on the day he disappeared, which would likewise provide some corroboration for the new witnesses‘ testimony that Stevie went to his house around 6:30 P.M. that day.”

Three eyewitnesses have provided sworn statements to the court that place Terry Hobbs with the three children at his home at approximately 6:30 p.m., immediately before they disappeared and were murdered.

Capi Peck, co-founder of Arkansas Take Action, said, “We hope that Judge David Laser will grant Damien Echols’s request for DNA, fiber, and fingerprint testing of all material in this case that might provide additional information. The defendants have all requested—and offered to pay for—such additional DNA and scientific testing, thus revealing their lack of fear about what those results might show. It seems to me that the Attorney General’s opposition to additional testing is exactly backwards of what it should be on this issue.  It is precisely the truth of these testing results that the State should be looking for—not hiding from.”

New evidence confidential tip line – 501-256-1775

For more information about this case see:

www.freewestmemphis3.org

www.wm3.org

http://www,falseconfessions.org

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WM3 Judge Sets December Date for Hearing

March 17th, 2011

In the Court’s First Scheduling Order, issued by Second Judicial District Circuit Judge David N. Laser, the Judge ordered an evidentiary hearing for up to three weeks (continuous) to begin December 5, 2011. He further ordered that requests for DNA testing be made by motion within 15 days of the order issued March 14, 2011. He asks that all DNA and forensic testing ordered by the court to be completed and back in the court within 90 days. Concerning the juror misconduct issue, Laser asks attorneys and prosecutors to submit briefs by May 1, 2011.

Lorri Davis, Echols’s wife and co-founder of Arkansas Take Action, said, “We are very pleased that Judge David Laser has ordered a three-week continuous evidentiary hearing to review evidence of the innocence of Damien, Jason and Jessie. He clearly wants this case to move as expeditiously as possible. I am hopeful that upon a full review of the evidence there will finally be justice by years end. Every day in solitary confinement for Damien, and maximum-security imprisonment for Jason and Jessie, is a day in hell.”

Among the issues the court will be asked to review in establishing whether Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley deserve a new trial include DNA evidence, both existing and new material to be tested, alibi evidence, false confession evidence, juror misconduct evidence, forensic evidence covering cause of death and cause of injuries (animal predation), new witness statements, motive evidence, night of murder evidence, etc.

Damien Echols is on death row and Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley are serving life sentences in Arkansas.  New DNA and forensic evidence as well as blatant juror misconduct involving Jessie Misskeley’s false confession are key issues in determining their innocence. These young men have already served 17 years in prison for a crime others committed.

Lonnie Soury

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Arkansas DA Fights Echols’s Request for More DNA Tests

February 23rd, 2011

I first met Damien Echols when I visited him on death row at the Supermax Varner Unit in Grady, Arkansas, when I began to work on this case at the behest of his wife and co-founder of Arkansas Take Action, Lorri Davis. Lorri and Damien were aware that I had helped lead the public campaign to free Martin Tankleff in New York. Marty served 18 years of a 50 years to life sentence based upon a coerced, false confession. Sound familiar?

What is most familiar about the Marty Tankleff and West Memphis 3 cases, however, is the behavior of the prosecutors. When I first met Damien, he asked if police and prosecutors in New York were different from those in Arkansas, maybe more sensitive to the rule of law, concerned with common decency and honesty. Nothing could be worse, he reasoned, than what he has experienced at the hands of prosecutors over the past eighteen years.

I wish I could have had a better, more hopeful answer for him. “The only thing different about prosecutors in New York is their accents,” I told him.

Arkansas District Attorney Dustin McDaniel seems intent on doing anything he can to be uncooperative in the evidentiary hearings being briefed before Judge David Laser in Craighead County Court, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. In the District Attorney’s opposition brief filed on February 18, 2011, prosecutors have expressed their desire to fight the defense on additional DNA testing, as well as on the shocking juror misconduct which introduced Jessie’s patently false confession into deliberations in Damien and Jason’s trial.

The State put huge emphasis on the value of forensic evidence and the lack thereof at the crime scene and it should therefore welcome any additional information that could clear up any misgivings as to who may have committed this crime.

In 1993 DNA testing was in its infancy and many items of evidence in this case yielded no useful result or were deemed too small to test. Since that time DNA testing has taken exponential leaps forward. We are merely requesting the opportunity to test items that have not been tested or were not deemed worthy of testing in 1993.

The multitude of post-conviction DNA exonerations tells us that science can be a more reliable arbiter of justice than jurors, who, being human, like prosecutors, are subject to human error. We assume the State places far more value on finding out the truth than in protecting three possible wrongful convictions.

It’s all in the accents, Damien.

Lonnie Soury

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Briefs Filed: New DNA Testing Requested of Court

February 18th, 2011

The attorneys representing Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley filed legal briefs reviewing the breadth of evidence they wish to present in upcoming evidentiary hearings before Craighead County Court Judge David Laser. It is expected that Judge Laser will review the briefs and issue directions impacting the scope of new DNA testing, scheduling, and other matters raised by the defense and prosecution.

Among the issues the court will be asked to review in establishing whether Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley deserve a new trial include DNA evidence, both existing and new material to be tested, alibi evidence, false confession evidence, juror misconduct evidence, forensic evidence covering cause of death and cause of injuries (animal predation), new witness statements, motive evidence, night of murder evidence, etc.

The attorneys also ask the court to review existing evidence already presented during the previous court proceedings including the Rule 37 hearings for all the men, as well as materials presented to the Arkansas Supreme Court. New expert forensic witnesses will likely be called.

Echols’s defense team also expects to call Terry Hobbs, his friend David Jacoby (who is the DNA-indicated likely source of another hair recovered at the crime scene and who was with Hobbs on the day the victims disappeared) and a fair number of other witnesses to testify about Hobbs’s and Jacoby’s actions on the night of May 5, 1993 and in the days that followed.

Lonnie Soury

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Illinois, a signature away from abolition of the death penalty

January 14th, 2011

Steve Drizin, one of the country’s leading experts on wrongful convictions and false confessions from the Center on Wrongful Convictions,  is asking people  to support the effort to abolish the death penalty in Illinois. Drizin and his colleague Laura Nirider submitted and an amicus brief to the Arkansas Supreme Court  in support of a new trial for the  West Memphis 3.

Wrongful convictions and false confessions have led to dozens of innocent men on death row in Illinois. 

Recently the Illinois House and Senate have both passed a bill to abolish the death penalty. All it will take is the signature of the current Governor to make it real. Abolition in Illinois could have a ripple effect in other states.

Please spread the word. Call Gov. Quinn today! Tell him you hope he’ll sign the death penalty repeal bill. They’re just one signature away from making history as the 16th state without the death penalty!
 
Call one of his offices: Springfield 217-782-0244, Chicago 312-814-2121
 
It was eight years ago that Governor George Ryan commuted the death sentences of all those on death row.  It’s time for Governor Quinn to make a historic decision of his own. 

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