The West Memphis Three (continued)
	Free the West Memphis 3? Saturday, July 23, is International West Memphis Three Awareness Day. All over America and Europe, people will tell the horrible story of what happened to six boys from West Memphis, and many bands inspired by those same early Metallica albums will play benefit shows, raising money toward getting the Three retried. Locally, Hell Within, Poys, Sinaria, Unscarred, Blue Collar Product, the End of Everything, Stalk the Ground, Tomorrow’s Tragedy, and Disaster Complex will be playing the Station, in Portland. The show starts at 6 pm, has a $15 cover, and you can get more information by checking out www.wm3.org. If you choose to go, think about this while you’re watching the bands: Justice should be blind, not hysterical. When educated men who should have known better can use non-existent evidence and the easily stoked fears of the ignorant to throw innocents in jail, then none of us are safe. _RW

On June 2, 1993, Hutcheson made a statement to police claiming that Echols had driven her and Miskelley to a cult meeting in Turrell, Arkansas, two weeks after the murders, but not only did Echols not have a driver’s license or a car, he didn’t even know how to drive. Eventually, after Miskelley’s trial, Hutcheson would admit in a recorded statement to defense attorney Dan Stidham that she might have been influenced by the media frenzy surrounding the killings, and that on the night that she claimed to have attended the meeting with Echols and Miskelley she consumed almost two bottles of Wild Turkey, waking up the next morning on her lawn.

Police used Hutcheson’s statement to pick up Miskelley for questioning. Miskelley, who has an IQ of 72 and was once diagnosed as mentally retarded, joked with the officers about "winning" the reward money, although he had no information about a witches meeting, Damien Echols, or the killings. After the police sweated him for several hours and denied his requests to see his father, Miskelley told police that he wanted out. Shortly thereafter, he started confessing. Miskelley eventually claimed to have seen Echols and another 17-year-old local named James Baldwin murder the three boys. He also made himself an accomplice to the murders by saying that when Michael Moore had tried to flee, Miskelley caught Moore and then returned him to Echols and Baldwin. The confession (illegally obtained because Arkansas law prevents police from questioning a minor without a written waiver of Miranda rights signed by a parent or guardian; no such document was ever presented to Miskelley) contained numerous large inconsistencies with the known facts of the case.

Miskelley claimed that he, Baldwin, and Echols had skipped school the day of the murders, but Baldwin had been in school. Miskelley claimed that the killings took place at noon, but the victims were also in school until 3 pm that day, and last seen on their bikes at 6 pm. He said that Baldwin and Echols had sodomized the victims, but contrary to the many sanguine rumors floating around, there was no evidence of rape. Miskelley told the police that the victims had been tied up with brown rope, but they had been bound with shoelaces. Those are only a few of the most glaring inconsistencies with the "confession."

Miskelley recanted immediately upon realizing that confessing would not secure his release, but neither that, nor the plethora of contradictions in his statement, stopped police from arresting Echols and Baldwin and charging them with the murders.

Miskelley was tried separately due to his "confession." He refused to testify against Echols and Baldwin, even when promised a reduced sentence. The police had very little against any of them except the illegally obtained confession of a retarded boy. There was some fiber evidence, but the prosecution admitted that they couldn’t say for certain that it came from the defendants because the fibers were too common, found in every Wal-Mart (and this is Arkansas we’re talking about, the home of Wal-Mart).

Some local children testified to having heard Echols and Baldwin admit to the murder, but that was probably the result of all the crazy rumors that were abounding in West Memphis. The star witness, a kid who was in the juvenile correctional facility with Baldwin, and who claimed to have heard him admit to the killings, was never proven to have actually met Baldwin. Even more incredibly, when this witness’s counselor from the correctional facility informed both the prosecution and defense that the witness was going to perjure himself because all the info that this kid had on the case had been gleaned from him, the counselor, in the course of conversations, the judge still allowed the testimony.

Again, like my description of Miskelley’s "confession," those are just the glaring lowlights of Arkansas’ shameful case against Echols, Baldwin and Miskelley, who have come to be known as the West Memphis Three (check out the Web site, www.wm3.org).

The West Memphis Three were all convicted of murder. Miskelley received a sentence of life plus 40 years; Baldwin got life without parole, and Damien Echols is sitting on Arkansas’s death row, awaiting lethal injection.

Perhaps craziest of all, the prosecution, with a straight face, used the fact that they listened to Metallica against them. If listening to Metallica indicated that you were a murderer, then I guess me and all my buddies from high school are killers. (I mean, hell, Metallica’s last three records are crimes in their own right, perpetrated against the brilliance of their early career, but that’s another story for another day.) What was it that Dylan called Hurricane Carter’s trial in that famous song, a pig circus? I think that about gets it right.

In the years since the convictions, a remarkable documentary about the case called Paradise Lost was shown extensively on HBO, as well as a follow up called Paradise Lost II: Revelations. Through those productions, a compelling alternate suspect, one of the murdered boys’ stepfather, has emerged, but the Arkansas authorities have done nothing. They consider the case closed.

Rick Wormwood can be reached at rickwormwood@excite.com. Material for this story was culled from the HBO documentaries and numerous legal briefs that can be found at www.wm3.org