West Memphis Three

[Mitch Rowe]

My understanding was that only one of the kids confessed, and that was the retard who was grilled for several hours straight without counsel or parents present and got so many facts about the crimes wrong that the police had to "help" him with the details.

Jessie Misskelley seems to me to be the smartest of the bunch! This retarded thing isnt gonna fly. What it is is a big ole smoke screen. In every confession police make mistakes. Police make mistakes every day with many things. That dont mean the innocent are being convicted.

Remember this..They got a conviction with Jason and Damien without the confession. Why? Because that idiot Jessie refused to make a deal. And because Damien and Jason did nothing but screw themselves by acting guilty.

They will get their convictions all over again. If it ever happens I bet this time Jessie is willing to play ball.

You see.. This is where others screw themselves. Jessie made the confession. So later on he is all righteous and refuses to testify. Hello! If he did lie then he better keep lying or he is screwed. He didnt do that. He will never get out.

[Mitch Rowe]

Oh.. And heres a clue in case anyone is ever accused of anything they didnt do. Or even if they did!

The very first trial is your only chance! It all needs to be done then. The chances for a new trial are slim to none. The chances a second trial will vindicate are slim to none.

If these guys get a new trial its because of the publicity. They are very lucky. There are tens of thousands in their same shoes who will never be heard.

[Ally]

[QUOTE=Mitch Rowe;82100]

Sorry Ally.. That seems perfectly logical I know. But thats not how the system works.

Actually that's exactly how the system works. The prosecution is required to prove guilt. The defense is not required to prove innocence. If the "confession" did not have any detail in it that wasn't widely reported in the press, then that is not evidence of anything.

Damien said who ever done it enjoyed it. The innocent dont say that. The innocent dont even think that far.

Bollocks. People say that all the time. It's in every movie. It's in every book. Grizzled old cops sstanding over a bloody crime scene shaking their head and going, the sick bastard really enjoyed himself.

When experienced investigators and Judges look a Damiens confession they see the guilty party not because of any of the facts. Its because Damiens mind is the mind of a criminal.

Bollocks squared. The mind of a criminal. Psychobabble BS. Cops and tv always think that there's a way to tell if someone is guilty by how they react. And if they don't react how they think you should react, then it's the mind of a criminal. Every teenager has the mind of a criminal. They are all trying to get away with smoking, drinking, shagging and skipping school. They are all anarchists, non-homework doing, finger to authority, sneaky little brats. That doesn't make them criminals.

Here is an example. Jason Baldwin was supposed to be Damiens best friend. When his lawyer asked him if Damien could have done it Jason had no words. Even he wouldnt defend Damien.

And..this is evidence of what? Nothing that I can see at all. It's nice everyone thinks the guy was a whack job, but if being a whack job were illegal, half of this board would be incarcerated.

Also can you provide a link to the above statement? Without context it's hard to make a reasoned evaluation about the validity of the statement.

The bottom line is this: The teeth marks alone that do not match any of the three boys convicted are sufficient reason for them to get a new trial.

[Magpie]

The bottom line is this: The teeth marks alone that do not match any of the three boys convicted are sufficient reason for them to get a new trial.

Also, according the prosecution's case, based on Miskelly's confession, Echols sodomized the victims during the ritual. Yet none of Echols's DNA was found on the bodies or at the scene. None.


This isn't just a case of the prosecution having no forensic evidence to back up their case, but that every piece of forensic evidence that has surfaced in the intervening years undermines their case.

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

This does reek to high heaven's , IMHO.

WM3 REVELATION
April 16, 2009



Written By: The Arkansas Times Staff

In its final review of the trial of Damien Echols, one of the men known as the West Memphis Three, the Arkansas Supreme Court last week agreed to consider an affidavit filed under seal last year by a Little Rock attorney.

Echols was found guilty and sentenced to death for the murders of three eight-year-old children. Lawyers for the Arkansas attorney general's office had argued that the affidavit, which alleges juror misconduct, was irrelevant and should not be considered.

Lloyd Warford, an attorney with the Arkansas Public Defenders Commission, filed the affidavit in May 2008 in the circuit court in Jonesboro where Echols and co-defendant Jason Baldwin were tried in March 1994. Baldwin was sentenced to life in prison.

Sources familiar with the case say that, in it, Warford states that Kent Arnold, the foreman for the Echols-Baldwin jury, telephoned him repeatedly while the trial was in progress and talked about what was happening.

Judge David Burnett, who officiated at the trial, expressly forbade such discussions. Lawyers for Echols argue that Arnold's conversations with Warford compromised the integrity of the jury process and that Echols deserves a new trial.

Documents submitted to the Supreme Court by Echols' lawyers describe the content of the men's conversations, without identifying either of them by name. According to those filings, Arnold told Warford that he had prejudged Echols' guilt, based on news reports he'd seen from the trial of Jessie Misskelley Jr., a third defendant in the case whose trial was held a month earlier.

A jury found Misskelley guilty, largely due to a confession he made to police that implicated Echols and Baldwin. Those two were tried separately from Misskelley because they did not confess, and information about the Misskelley trial was not supposed to enter their trial.

Nevertheless, the affidavit reportedly states, Arnold told Warford that he was growing frustrated by the “weak, circumstantial” case prosecutors were presenting against Echols and Baldwin, and that if they did not present something powerful soon, it would be up to him to secure a conviction.

A large chart used by jurors during their deliberations and a smaller one kept by one juror support the claim that jurors for Echols and Baldwin discussed the Misskelley confession.

Until filing his affidavit, Warford, a former prosecuting attorney who was once an assistant director of the Arkansas Division of Youth Services, had no role in the case. Arnold knew Warford because he'd represented his brother on a charge of child rape, eventually resolved by a guilty plea to first-degree sexual abuse.

Warford did not come forward with the information about his contact with the jury foreman until May 2008, after a co-worker recalled hearing him mention the improper conversations and passed that information to Echols' lawyers.

Warford did not return a phone message seeking comment.

In 2004, two lawyers representing Echols interviewed Kent Arnold. According to affidavits they filed, Arnold said that Misskelley's confession had been “a primary deciding factor” in the jury's conviction of Echols.

[Magpie]

Remember this..They got a conviction with Jason and Damien without the confession. Why? .

Wrong, because Miskelley's confession did make an appearance in Baldwin and Echols' trial, contrary to all the rules of evidence.

[Magpie]

Oh.. And dont worry. Im sure there are a whole bunch of new witnesses who heard them confess.

.

In the twenty odd years that this case has divided the community in which it happened, not a single new witness has confirmed the "confession" story. And if someone did come forward, they would have zero credibility even if they were allowed to testify in a new trial, which I sincerely doubt.

[Magpie]

Also, according the prosecution's case, based on Miskelly's confession, Echols sodomized the victims during the ritual. Yet none of Echols's DNA was found on the bodies or at the scene. None.

Oh, and did I mention the coincidence that Miskelley "confessed" that he saw Echols sodomize the boys conveniently echoes the police belief at that time that the boys had been sodomized, even though there was no subsequent forensic evidence that they had?

Doesn't sound like a coerced confession at all, does it?

[Magpie]

Thats right. They should bring up the fact that Damien and his former girlfriend claimed they were going to have a baby and sacrifice it to the devil.

Aside from the fact that it's no "fact" that Damian ever claimed this (his wingnut ex-girlfriend's-emphasis on the "ex"- uncorroborated word is the only source for this claim), so what? What does that have to do with the prosecution using a thoroughly discredited "expert" to provide wholly unsupported "evidence" of a satanic or occult motive to the crime?

[Mitch Rowe]

Soo... Are they out yet??
Hell no.. They will never see the light of day. Find the "real" killer and they may have a chance.

[Ally]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/19/arkansas.child.killings/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

[Errata]

This is justice served. I worked briefly on this case in 2002, and while my involvement was extremely limited, and my boss ended up pulling us out of the job because of "extreme shadiness", I had enough of a look at the police files to know that something was seriously wrong with the case. Despite many statements referring to polygraphs, confessions, recording of conversations, none of those pieces of evidence existed. Report on them existed, but not the tapes, not the polygraph, not the notes... all of it had been "lost".

Never mind the fact that the police were shopping around for experts in cults who would be willing to say that Satanists and other Non-traditional religions mentioned in the books owned by one of the suspects were perfectly capable of these kinds of murders, if not eager for blood. Which they aren't. And this was well after the convictions, so why bother calling in experts?

I saw the crime scene photos. I do not want anyone who could do such a thing out on the streets. And I imagine the cops don't either. I think they're wrong. I think these guys didn't do it. They deserve a new trial. I think the guilty parties are still out there. But I could be wrong. I think it would certainly be a tragedy if guilty people went free because the police broke a whole bunch of rules in order to present a seemingly airtight case that they tainted all of their legitimate evidence. Of course, they also had the option of not doing that, which is a route they clearly chose not to take.

Although you kind of have to ask yourself, if three teenage satanists got together and killed three boys as a sacrifice, why are there no ritualistic aspects to the murders at all?

[Ally]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/19/arkansas.child.killings/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

They go free. They did an alford plea and pled guilty and were sentenced to time served. The father of one of the boys who was killed called it an outrage that they were forced to plead to guilt to release them as he has been convinced of their innocence for a long time and felt they should have been completely exonerated. Another father of the boys said it's an outrage they are released. It was this man's son whose stepfather had DNA evidence linked to the ligature used on the boys.

[Magpie]

Hi Ally!

The sad part about the plea-bargain is that the police get to say "we got it right" and file the case away as "solved" while the real killer(s) dances away free and clear.

[Ally]

Yep. Wouldn't want to actually do the job and find a killer, not when it's so much easier to just dust it off your hands.