Under a plea bargain, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were being freed immediately. The families of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore were notified about the pact ahead of time but were not asked to approve it.
The defendants, known by their supporters as the West Memphis Three, agreed to a legal maneuver that lets them maintain their innocence while acknowledging prosecutors have enough evidence against them. They were credited with time served, and Echols is being freed from Arkansas' death row. They were placed on 10 years' probation and if they re-offend they could be sent back to prison for 21 years, Prosecutor Scott Ellington said.
"I believe this case is closed," Ellington said.
The May 5, 1993, killings were particularly gruesome. The three boys were found nude, and hogtied, and rumors of Satanism roiled the community in the weeks following their deaths. Branch and Moore drowned in about 2 feet of water; Byers bled to death and his genitals were mutilated and partially removed.
Police had few leads until receiving a tip that Echols had been seen mud-covered the night the boys disappeared. The big break came when Misskelley unexpectedly confessed and implicated Baldwin and Echols in the killings.
"Then they tied them up, tied their hands up," Misskelley said in the statement to police, parts of which were tape-recorded. After describing sodomizing and other violence, he went on: "And I saw it and turned around and looked, and then I took off running. I went home, then they called me and asked me, 'How come I didn't stay? I told them, I just couldn't.'"
Misskelley later recanted, and defense lawyers said the then-17-year-old got several parts of the story incorrect. An autopsy said there was no definite evidence of sexual assault. Miskelley had said the older boys abducted the Scouts in the morning, when they had actually been in school all day.
Source: AP, August 19, 2011
Damien Echols' statement on plea deal
Damien Echols, freed from Death Row in today's West Memphis Three plea bargain, released the following statement today:
To all my friends and family, my attorneys and advocates, and to those of you from every corner of this earth who have stood beside us these long years, please know that I will forever be indebted to all of you for helping me to become a free man. Each and every day I was the beneficiary of acts of kindness and humanity from people of all walks of life, of all ages, nationalities, religions and political persuasions. The enormity of the support Lorri and I received throughout this struggle is humbling.
I have now spent half my life on death row. It is a torturous environment that no human being should have to endure, and it needed to end. I am innocent, as are Jason and Jessie, but I made this decision because I did not want to spend another day of my life behind those bars. I want to live and to continue to fight for our innocence. Sometimes justice is neither pretty nor is it perfect, but it was important to take this opportunity to be free.
I am not alone as there are tens of thousand of men and woman in this country who have been wrongfully convicted, forced into a false confession, sentenced to death or a lifetime in prison. I am hopeful that one day they too will be able stand with their friends and family to declare their innocence.
This whole experience has taught me much about life, human nature, American justice, survival and transcendence.
I will hopefully take those lessons with me as I embark on the next chapter in my journey and along the way look forward to enjoying some of those simple things in life like spending Christmastime, Halloween and my birthday with those I love.
At a news conference afterward, Echols paid tribute to his wife Lorri Davis for her work in seeking his freedom. They met and married while he was in prison and, until recently, all meetings with Death Row inmates, by family members or not, had to be conducted with participants on either side of a glass window. At the news conference, Echols embraced Jason Baldwin, who refused a deal to testify against Echols in their 1994 trial and who joined the plea deal on Echols' behalf though he objected to being forced to plead guilty.
Source: Arkansas Times, August 20, 2011
Damien Echols' statement on plea deal
Damien Echols, freed from Death Row in today's West Memphis Three plea bargain, released the following statement today:
To all my friends and family, my attorneys and advocates, and to those of you from every corner of this earth who have stood beside us these long years, please know that I will forever be indebted to all of you for helping me to become a free man. Each and every day I was the beneficiary of acts of kindness and humanity from people of all walks of life, of all ages, nationalities, religions and political persuasions. The enormity of the support Lorri and I received throughout this struggle is humbling.
I have now spent half my life on death row. It is a torturous environment that no human being should have to endure, and it needed to end. I am innocent, as are Jason and Jessie, but I made this decision because I did not want to spend another day of my life behind those bars. I want to live and to continue to fight for our innocence. Sometimes justice is neither pretty nor is it perfect, but it was important to take this opportunity to be free.
I am not alone as there are tens of thousand of men and woman in this country who have been wrongfully convicted, forced into a false confession, sentenced to death or a lifetime in prison. I am hopeful that one day they too will be able stand with their friends and family to declare their innocence.
This whole experience has taught me much about life, human nature, American justice, survival and transcendence.
I will hopefully take those lessons with me as I embark on the next chapter in my journey and along the way look forward to enjoying some of those simple things in life like spending Christmastime, Halloween and my birthday with those I love.
At a news conference afterward, Echols paid tribute to his wife Lorri Davis for her work in seeking his freedom. They met and married while he was in prison and, until recently, all meetings with Death Row inmates, by family members or not, had to be conducted with participants on either side of a glass window. At the news conference, Echols embraced Jason Baldwin, who refused a deal to testify against Echols in their 1994 trial and who joined the plea deal on Echols' behalf though he objected to being forced to plead guilty.
Source: Arkansas Times, August 20, 2011
West Memphis Three now must learn how to live as free men
Damien Echols, Jason Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin – the West Memphis Three – have spent half their lives in prison. Now, they must learn how to reenter society as free men.
The lives of the three men convicted of the 1993 brutal killings of three young Cub Scouts in Arkansas shifted dramatically this week.
On Monday, Damien Echols sat on death row while Jason Misskelley and Jason Baldwin each faced life without parole sentences. By Friday afternoon, they were free men with no restrictions on travel and undefined futures after 18 years behind bars.
At a hearing in Jonesboro, Ark., Friday morning, the trio agreed to a legal maneuver that allowed them to maintain their innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence against them to find guilt. Important questions had been raised about crime scene evidence and conduct of the trial. They were sentenced to time served and immediately released.
But such a startling change in circumstances could have dire effects on the three men locked up as teenagers and now in their mid-30s. They've spent half their lives in prison, missing out on the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the rise of Twitter and Facebook, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election of the first black president, and the creation of reality TV.
“It’s disconcerting when an inmate leaves the system so abruptly,” says Dr. Frederic G. Reamer, a professor at the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College in Providence “And it’s extraordinarily unusual. To go from zero to 75 within a matter of hours is likely to be overwhelming for anybody. There hasn’t been enough time to construct the scaffolding that an ex-offender absolutely needs after entering society.”
For the West Memphis Three, legal negotiations accelerated so quickly that this couldn't happen.
Shea Wilson, an Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman, says that no inmate has ever walked off death row like Echols.
Most inmates have some notice of impending release, Wilson says, in order to prepare for life on the outside. Typically, prison officials work with inmates on a parole plan that includes programs designed to help them transition to a new life.
The three men were teenagers when they were arrested. In prison, they grew up in a hostile environment surrounded by violent offenders, says Reamer, who also serves on the Rhode Island Parole Board. Echols has lived in solitary confinement for ten years, and now he has to learn daily human interaction.
While in prison, Echols married Lorri Davis, a long-time defender of the three men. One challenge will be learning how to maintain that relationship.
“Sudden liberation, while wonderful, can also be absolutely overwhelming,” Reamer says.
According to experts, recently released prisoners have three areas of concern. They must adapt to the practical side of an unstructured world – making life decisions for the first time and learning new skills like working a smart phone. Second, community support is a must. And third, they need psychological attention to understand their experience.
“In the end, it would be a deeply personal process, dealing with the pains of an 18-year imprisonment and a perception of betrayal by the criminal justice system,” says Dr. Michael Jenkins, a professor at the University of New Haven’s Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences in Connecticut.
After their release, Echols and Baldwin attended a lunch and later an evening party at a swanky Memphis, Tenn., hotel with supporters that included Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks.
While celebrity hoopla and international attention currently surrounds the West Memphis Three, reality will soon loom.
“My guess is that their heads are spinning,” Reamer says. “It will take a Herculean effort to cope with this traumatic set of challenges in everyday life.”
Source: Christian Science Monitor, August 20, 2011
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