West Memphis Three

The West Memphis Three is a label, promulgated by print and television news media as well as Internet bloggers, used to identify three Arkansas teenagers who, in 1993, were arrested and ultimately convicted of the brutal murders of three eight-years-olds in West Memphis, Arkansas. Following a highly publicized trial, two of the teens were sentenced to death, the other to life imprisonment without the chance of parole. Within sixteen years of the convictions, however—in response to international pressure brought by news outlets and supporters certain that the convictions had been flawed and that the three teenagers were innocent, as well as further evidence—the Arkansas Supreme Court demanded the lower court review its proceedings through a new evidentiary hearing.

In quick order, the district attorney’s office brokered a deal that released the three teenagers without admitting the state had erred in the original trial. In 2011, the three boys, now men, were released from prison amid a storm of controversy over the decision—no other persons were ever arrested in connection with the killings. The trial and eventual dismissal of all charges against the West Memphis Three have been the subject of both film and print; both sides of the issue of capital punishment use the West Memphis Three to point out what is wrong and what is right with a justice system that maintains the right to execute convicted capital offenders.

Background

In the late afternoon of May 5, 1993, in West Memphis, Arkansas, three second-graders—Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore—friends who attended the same elementary school and were members of the same Cub Scout pack, met to go bike riding before dinner. Witnesses later testified they saw the three biking off to a wooded section of the town known as Robin Hood Hills.

Police received reports around eight o’clock that evening from two of the parents concerned that their sons had not returned. The following day, search teams recovered the boys’ bodies from a shallow ditch near a car wash. The three had been hogtied using their own shoelaces, brutally beaten, and then sexually mutilated before being left in the ditch to die. The town was outraged, and immediately the police felt pressure to make an arrest. Given the mutilation involved, rumors in the town quickly focused on Satanic rituals and, in turn, on a small group of emotional and behavioral misfits in the local high school, among them three friends: eighteen-year-old Damien Echols, sixteen-year-old Jason Baldwin, and seventeen-year-old Jessie Misskelley.

On the word of a local juvenile offender case worker who had counseled Echols, an emotionally disturbed high school dropout with a long history of petty crimes who had been hospitalized for suicide ideations, the police focused on Echols and his two friends. Though the police had no DNA evidence from the crime scene, they profiled the teenagers, who wore black, had long hair, wrote disturbing poems in English class, read Stephen King novels, and listened to heavy metal music, as likely suspects. A woman named Victoria Hutcheson also came forward, the mother of another local boy who claimed to have been good friends with the victims, and testified that she had personal knowledge that the suspects had been involved with occult rituals.

Entirely on such witness testimony and on thin circumstantial evidence (Echols failed a lie detector test after he claimed to have been in his trailer with his mother the evening of the killings), the police arrested the three teenagers. Misskelley, who had a low IQ and possible intellectual disability, cooperated with the police and signed a confession that implicated Echols and Baldwin. Given the public outrage, the state decided to try the three as adults. On the strength of his confession (in which he said he watched the other two commit the killings), Misskelley was tried separately and ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment. Echols and Baldwin, however, were tried and, after a single day of jury deliberation, sentenced to death. The prosecution relied largely on the woman’s testimony and inflaming the jury by repeating the brutal nature of the killings.

Impact

The case drew international attention and outcries against sentencing teenagers to death. In 1996, documentary filmmakers working for HBO released Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, which highlighted how police investigators had been negligent in crime scene treatment and sloppy in their forensics reports; it also claimed that the police had not bothered to interview numerous witnesses. The documentary further suggested that Misskelley’s confession had been coerced, that the teenager had initially made many errors in his account of the crime and that the police had to provide him with the "right" answers to make his confession match the forensics they had gathered.

HBO continued its investigation, releasing two follow-up documentaries that poked more holes in the prosecution’s case. The three, it was argued, were arrested and convicted based largely on their lifestyle; the only physical evidence were fibers that had only microscopic similarities to objects in the homes of the arrested teenagers. The case received attention from organizations opposed to the death penalty as well as considerable celebrity support, most notably from actor Johnny Depp and singer Eddie Vedder. Further investigations revealed that Misskelley’s account of the killings would only hold up if the boys had been killed where their bodies had been found—but there had been no blood at the scene. Furthermore, Hutcheson, who had provided crucial testimony connecting the teens to Satanic practices, recanted. In 2007, new forensic tests of evidence had not revealed any trace of DNA from any of the men.

Three years later, the state supreme court ordered a review of the trial. The district attorney’s office, however, negotiated a settlement with the three convicted killers. Under the terms of what is known as an Alford Plea, the three entered a plea of innocent but in turn recognized the state had sufficient evidence to convict them beyond a reasonable doubt. The three were released on August 19, 2011. While Echols moved to New England to become a freelance artist and speak out against wrongful imprisonment, Baldwin moved to Washington State, where he took an active role in both films and books about the killings; only Misskelley remained in West Memphis, working in construction and refusing to speak to the press.

Bibliography

Echols, Damien. Life after Death. New York: Blue Rider, 2012. Print.

Feyerick, Deborah, and Stephanie Chen. "Echols of West Memphis Three Talks about Appeal, Death Row." CNN. Cable News Network, 29 Sept. 2010. Web. 1 Aug. 2016.

Leveritt, Mara. Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three. New York: Atria, 2002.

Linder, Douglas O. "The West Memphis Three Trials: An Account." University of Missouri–Kansas City. U of Missouri–Kansas City, 2013. Web. 1 Aug. 2016.

Robertson, Campbell. "Deal Frees ‘West Memphis Three’ in Arkansas." New York Times. New York Times, 19 Aug. 2011. Web. 1 Aug. 2016.

"West Memphis Three Cases to Receive Hearing, Possible New Trial." CNN. Cable News Network, 4 Nov. 2010. Web. 1 Aug. 2016.

"West Memphis Three’s Damien Echols: ‘Today Was My Original Execution Date.’" Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, 5 May 2015. Web. 1 Aug. 2016.

"Who Are the West Memphis Three?" Arkansas Times. Arkansas Times, 19 Aug. 2011. Web. 1 Aug. 2016.