West Memphis Three

[Vincenzo]

I find it funny that everyone wants to pint to Hobbs ,3 years ago there was that "story" that new evidence and witness were found proving his guilt.. yet.. nothing came of that.. so much for evidence... Look, I think Hobbs is a creep (or I should say appears to be one.. I have never met the man so I can not be sure)...
Like I said before, I was one of the Free the WM3 folks for a long time..but if you just look at the facts, so much points to them as being guilty, of course I can't be sure of that, only they know for sure, But like RivkahChaya put on the first post, sites like http://www.westmemphisthreefacts.com/ and http://wm3truth.com/ will show documents and evidence you won’t find in any of the documentaries and will even point out errors in those films...granted just as documentaries are one sided.. web sites are as well... so again, judge for yourself.. but after many years of research ( and no not just watching movies and reading the web) my mind points towards guilt....and them accepting the plea clinched it for me....and I know some will say " they had to accept the plea".. well.. no they really did not "have" too.. Jason Baldwin did not want to and was talked into it...because I am sure he was told, yeah we will probably get another trial but chances are you will be found guilty there as well....better take the plea.. again that is just my opinion


Steadmund Brand

One of them was on death row, that is why they took that plea.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

I've been interested in this case for almost 20 years.

I love the first Paradise Lost documentary. If you haven't seen it, you should. There is no dramatization. A documentary team stumbled in the area and decided to shoot the documentary. It's a rare case of "what you see actually happened".

I don't have a solid opinion. But god did the police botched this one.

[Graham]

I know zip about the West Memphis Three Case, but I do know that Mississippi Fred McDowel sang,

"Some folk say that the Greyhound bus don't run.
"Yeh, some folk say that that old Greyhound bus don't run.
"But jus' go down to West Memphis, baby,
"An' look along Highway 51".

You can't argue with that.

Graham

[RivkahChaya]

Even if they didn't do it, I can still understand it.

[jason_c]

I think they took the Alford plea because they wanted to be free immediately, and it allowed for that. They were probably very tired of not knowing what was going to happen to them, and the Alford offered finality. Echols had been on death row for 18 years, where he was never even touched by another person, and he had very little daylight, so he had problems with vitamin D deficiency, and vision problems from being in a restricted area for so many hours a day. That's based on general studies of long-term death row inmates, not on Echols specifically, although his wife commented that he was having "vitamin deficiency and vision problems" in West of Memphis. In the face of that, preserving the right to vote, something Echols had never done anyway, and other rights denied to convicted felons, probably didn't seem terribly important. Owning property is another thing that is denied felons in some jurisdiction, but for people who grew up in trailer parks, that may be so far out of their experience, losing that right may not be a big deal either. Misskelley's intellectual deficiencies are probably such that he never gave a thought to things like voting.

Jason Baldwin was probably the only one thoughtful enough to care about the rights he was losing, and not on death row, so not feeling the descending pendulum, and therefore, he was the one who balked at the Alford plea. But the deal was for all three, or none, and so Baldwin went along. It did, after all, mean immediate freedom, as opposed to remand to prison while waiting for a new trial (they'd never get bail). The new trial would probably have a lengthy prep time, since they waived their right to a speedy trial the first time, and that might have stood, and all in all, even if they won at a new trial, they might have spent a couple more years in prison, and the whole time, not knowing if it would ever end-- they might lose, after all. Not to mention the difficulty of finding an impartial jury, but they wouldn't want a bench trial, either.

I can see them just wanting it to be over.

I generally agree. I think they probably did the crime, but having spent so long behind bars I cant entirely blame them for wanting free very quickly. Having not spent 18 years behind bars it's hard for any of us to put ourselves in that position.

[RivkahChaya]

I think they took the Alford plea because they wanted to be free immediately, and it allowed for that. They were probably very tired of not knowing what was going to happen to them, and the Alford offered finality. Echols had been on death row for 18 years, where he was never even touched by another person, and he had very little daylight, so he had problems with vitamin D deficiency, and vision problems from being in a restricted area for so many hours a day. That's based on general studies of long-term death row inmates, not on Echols specifically, although his wife commented that he was having "vitamin deficiency and vision problems" in West of Memphis. In the face of that, preserving the right to vote, something Echols had never done anyway, and other rights denied to convicted felons, probably didn't seem terribly important. Owning property is another thing that is denied felons in some jurisdiction, but for people who grew up in trailer parks, that may be so far out of their experience, losing that right may not be a big deal either. Misskelley's intellectual deficiencies are probably such that he never gave a thought to things like voting.

Jason Baldwin was probably the only one thoughtful enough to care about the rights he was losing, and not on death row, so not feeling the descending pendulum, and therefore, he was the one who balked at the Alford plea. But the deal was for all three, or none, and so Baldwin went along. It did, after all, mean immediate freedom, as opposed to remand to prison while waiting for a new trial (they'd never get bail). The new trial would probably have a lengthy prep time, since they waived their right to a speedy trial the first time, and that might have stood, and all in all, even if they won at a new trial, they might have spent a couple more years in prison, and the whole time, not knowing if it would ever end-- they might lose, after all. Not to mention the difficulty of finding an impartial jury, but they wouldn't want a bench trial, either.

I can see them just wanting it to be over.

[Ginger]

I've been following this case pretty closely for a long time now.

People relatively new to it will get a lot of mileage out of the following links:

Trial Transcripts:

http://callahan.8k.com/trial_transcripts.html

Case Documents:

http://callahan.8k.com/docs_index.html

Some interesting if not very flattering information about a drug squad, featuring prominent names from the murder case (apparently they handled homicides as well, or something)

http://www.jivepuppi.com/west_memphis_confidential.html

Oh, my! Thanks for posting that!

[Ginger]

But if someone can come up with why they took the Alford when they were given the ability to be retried with new evidence, that is something I'd like to hear. Because that I don't know. It might be for a very good reason, I just haven't heard what that is.

Their previous experience with the justice system wasn't such as would be likely to give them confidence in its workings.

[Steadmund Brand]

I find it funny that everyone wants to pint to Hobbs ,3 years ago there was that "story" that new evidence and witness were found proving his guilt.. yet.. nothing came of that.. so much for evidence... Look, I think Hobbs is a creep (or I should say appears to be one.. I have never met the man so I can not be sure)...
Like I said before, I was one of the Free the WM3 folks for a long time..but if you just look at the facts, so much points to them as being guilty, of course I can't be sure of that, only they know for sure, But like RivkahChaya put on the first post, sites like http://www.westmemphisthreefacts.com/ and http://wm3truth.com/ will show documents and evidence you won’t find in any of the documentaries and will even point out errors in those films...granted just as documentaries are one sided.. web sites are as well... so again, judge for yourself.. but after many years of research ( and no not just watching movies and reading the web) my mind points towards guilt....and them accepting the plea clinched it for me....and I know some will say " they had to accept the plea".. well.. no they really did not "have" too.. Jason Baldwin did not want to and was talked into it...because I am sure he was told, yeah we will probably get another trial but chances are you will be found guilty there as well....better take the plea.. again that is just my opinion


Steadmund Brand

[Errata]

Is the total **** show of trial evidence of innocence?

They were wrongfully convicted, even if they were the right guys.

So are we talking about the murders or the trial? Usually on here we talk about the case. The murders. Because there was no trial for the Ripper. But if we are talking about the trial, it seems like we all agree that was a travesty of justice. Our system isn't supposed to do that.

But if someone can come up with why they took the Alford when they were given the ability to be retried with new evidence, that is something I'd like to hear. Because that I don't know. It might be for a very good reason, I just haven't heard what that is.

[jason_c]

I've been following this case pretty closely for a long time now.

People relatively new to it will get a lot of mileage out of the following links:

Trial Transcripts:

http://callahan.8k.com/trial_transcripts.html

Case Documents:

http://callahan.8k.com/docs_index.html

Some interesting if not very flattering information about a drug squad, featuring prominent names from the murder case (apparently they handled homicides as well, or something)

http://www.jivepuppi.com/west_memphis_confidential.html

After much back and forth, and reading ALL the documents, and blahblahinterminableblah, I have concluded these things:

1. Jerry Driver (the driving force behind Echols and by extension, Baldwin & Misskelley being viewed as suspects) was a special sort of psycho. Who should probably never have been allowed to work with kids, in any position that gave him authority over them. Like, ever.

2. The WMPD royally mucked this entire case up -- from beginning to end. In almost every way that's possible to muck a case up. I'm not being unkind here, either. This is just fact. Included in this muck up is the interrogation/s and coercion that lef to Misskelley's ludicrously inaccurate confessions -- which (by magic? or not..) got increasingly more accurate, the longer he spent in the company of West Memphis police officers.

Do not even get me started on the whole Vicki Hutchison debacle.

3. Judge Barnett conducted a farce of a trial. From allowing the jury to be tainted, refusing qualified defense witnesses the stand, while allowing apparently any loony with 2c to spend to speak for the prosecution... his curmudgeonly and clearly biased ways continued in appeal refusal, after refusal.. If I could punt his bony old ass off a bridge, I believe I might be tempted to give it a college try.

Just disgusting, the lot of it. And I am no fan of Echols, here, I think he's a right creeper. And not because of the occult/metal stuff, hey, I was a fan of all that myself. I mean, just that he comes across as a pathological liar. Because of, you know... all the lies. Quite manipualtive, that one.

Misskelley was a bit of a playground thug, who was known to thump smaller kiddies if they smarted off to him. I could see him thumping Chris Byers, for a start, who was known to smart off to people pretty regularly. Yup, I could see Misskelley hurting a child badly, given his strength and temper.

Baldwin -- just, nuh. Nope, he didn't do it. The end. I see nothing, not one thing, at all, in his character or behaviour or habits to suggest he could have.

So what I'm saying is, these men were herded up, with a crap investigation, into a crap court with a crap judge, and the trial was crap.

But did they do it? Collectively, or individually?

I .. dunno. I think they're actually pretty weak suspects, compared to some that are far better suspects, for far more compelling reasons.

Like the latest bulls-eye, Terry Hobbs. Or hey, what about James Kenney Martin, the convicted child rapist who was screwing a cop's wife who lived near the victims, worked construction a 4-minute drive from the murder scene, had a history of domestic violence and molesting his own kids, and is on record describing his own crimes in brain-bleachworthy detail to the cops, clearly enjoying himself, as well as offering them tips & theories about how someone might do such a crime. Including describing laces (and not ropes, as Misskelley said) as useful binding material. Oh - and he's also on record boasting his rapes in chatrooms. Oh - and, he spent time hanging out at the crime scene, to help him think the crime through, he said.

I could go onnnnn. But I won't, that's a good summary of the type of suspect (and JKM is is not the only one, outside of the circle of pitchforks currently surrounding Hobbs) the WMPD passed by in favour of the WM3. Because fellow god-botherer Jerry Driver said so, and by golly, that was good enough.

An interesting post, thanks. I enjoyed reading even if I disagree with some of it.

I really am wary of armchair psychologists. We rarely know what any individual is truly capable of. Our knowledge of Baldwin is less than our knowledge of Echols or Misskelley. You can point to Baldwin as being less likely to commit murder, but I think it's completely wrong to rule him out when we know relatively little about him. I mean if Dylan Klebold was capable of Columbine then its almost impossible to rule out any individual as potentially committing such crimes . Remove some of Klebold's tapes and writings found afterwards and Klebold is not your typical mass murderer. If we were to inspect his life before Columbine there would be few tell tale signs. The same goes for Baldwin imo, particularly when we have a group dynamic going on.

[Ausgirl]

I've been following this case pretty closely for a long time now.

People relatively new to it will get a lot of mileage out of the following links:

Trial Transcripts:

http://callahan.8k.com/trial_transcripts.html

Case Documents:

http://callahan.8k.com/docs_index.html

Some interesting if not very flattering information about a drug squad, featuring prominent names from the murder case (apparently they handled homicides as well, or something)

http://www.jivepuppi.com/west_memphis_confidential.html

After much back and forth, and reading ALL the documents, and blahblahinterminableblah, I have concluded these things:

1. Jerry Driver (the driving force behind Echols and by extension, Baldwin & Misskelley being viewed as suspects) was a special sort of psycho. Who should probably never have been allowed to work with kids, in any position that gave him authority over them. Like, ever.

2. The WMPD royally mucked this entire case up -- from beginning to end. In almost every way that's possible to muck a case up. I'm not being unkind here, either. This is just fact. Included in this muck up is the interrogation/s and coercion that lef to Misskelley's ludicrously inaccurate confessions -- which (by magic? or not..) got increasingly more accurate, the longer he spent in the company of West Memphis police officers.

Do not even get me started on the whole Vicki Hutchison debacle.

3. Judge Barnett conducted a farce of a trial. From allowing the jury to be tainted, refusing qualified defense witnesses the stand, while allowing apparently any loony with 2c to spend to speak for the prosecution... his curmudgeonly and clearly biased ways continued in appeal refusal, after refusal.. If I could punt his bony old ass off a bridge, I believe I might be tempted to give it a college try.

Just disgusting, the lot of it. And I am no fan of Echols, here, I think he's a right creeper. And not because of the occult/metal stuff, hey, I was a fan of all that myself. I mean, just that he comes across as a pathological liar. Because of, you know... all the lies. Quite manipualtive, that one.

Misskelley was a bit of a playground thug, who was known to thump smaller kiddies if they smarted off to him. I could see him thumping Chris Byers, for a start, who was known to smart off to people pretty regularly. Yup, I could see Misskelley hurting a child badly, given his strength and temper.

Baldwin -- just, nuh. Nope, he didn't do it. The end. I see nothing, not one thing, at all, in his character or behaviour or habits to suggest he could have.

So what I'm saying is, these men were herded up, with a crap investigation, into a crap court with a crap judge, and the trial was crap.

But did they do it? Collectively, or individually?

I .. dunno. I think they're actually pretty weak suspects, compared to some that are far better suspects, for far more compelling reasons.

Like the latest bulls-eye, Terry Hobbs. Or hey, what about James Kenney Martin, the convicted child rapist who was screwing a cop's wife who lived near the victims, worked construction a 4-minute drive from the murder scene, had a history of domestic violence and molesting his own kids, and is on record describing his own crimes in brain-bleachworthy detail to the cops, clearly enjoying himself, as well as offering them tips & theories about how someone might do such a crime. Including describing laces (and not ropes, as Misskelley said) as useful binding material. Oh - and he's also on record boasting his rapes in chatrooms. Oh - and, he spent time hanging out at the crime scene, to help him think the crime through, he said.

I could go onnnnn. But I won't, that's a good summary of the type of suspect (and JKM is is not the only one, outside of the circle of pitchforks currently surrounding Hobbs) the WMPD passed by in favour of the WM3. Because fellow god-botherer Jerry Driver said so, and by golly, that was good enough.

[RivkahChaya]

The nun apparently fell asleep at the wheel, and wanted a plea bargain with no prison time, but the prosecutor insisted on a bottom count of vehicular manslaughter, or something with mandatory prison time. So they went to trial.

The Catholic church has since done something I didn't realize they could do, and removed support from the order, which continues to exist, but as an unchartered, or unacredited order, or something. It sounds like a cult to me. They make the nuns put in long hours in a bakery to support the order, which is how she happened to fall asleep behind the wheel in the first place.

[Errata]

Don't mention nuns to my cousin Alex. The first, and still one of very few trials he's lost was a nun who ran a red light and killed a pedestrian in the crosswalk. He had eyewitnesses, forensics, and it should have been open and shut, but he lost a motion to prevent her from wearing her habit during the trial, and the jury voted not guilty. They didn't want any repercussions from the deity if they convicted a nun, apparently.

Personally, I don't think that even guilty people should be convicted in a trial that essentially amounts to the prosecution slandering them around the court, and not presenting any actual evidence.

Yikes. And she didn't plead guilty? Bad nun.

I agree. I think it never should have gone to trial. But I separate legal guilt and actual guilt. They should not have been tried, they should not have been found guilty on THAT evidence. I just still think they did it.

We jail, even execute innocent people, we free guilty people, we free innocent people for the wrong reasons, we convict guilty people for the wrong reasons. Trials are based almost solely on human behavior and psychology. Not so much evidence as we would like. That's the system. So it fails. quite a bit. The system is not the truth. Usually it reflects the truth. But that's not the same thing. So I don't see it as the same thing.

[RivkahChaya]

So should the WM3 have been convicted based on that trial? Absolutely not. But the legal finding has nothing to do with actual guilt. One is based on what the suspects did or did not do. The other is based on what a lawyer can prove and 12 average Americans from the community in which the crime occurred. It's possible a nun would have been convicted if the prosecution could prove she was in town that day and had some speeding tickets.

Don't mention nuns to my cousin Alex. The first, and still one of very few trials he's lost was a nun who ran a red light and killed a pedestrian in the crosswalk. He had eyewitnesses, forensics, and it should have been open and shut, but he lost a motion to prevent her from wearing her habit during the trial, and the jury voted not guilty. They didn't want any repercussions from the deity if they convicted a nun, apparently.

Personally, I don't think that even guilty people should be convicted in a trial that essentially amounts to the prosecution slandering them around the court, and not presenting any actual evidence.