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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

What If You Could Keep A Current Teenager From Landing On Death Row?

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Typical death row cell, Polunsky Unit, Texas
"I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile." -Tom Clark

Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas is accurately dubbed the state's "death row," and given the percentage of American executions that take place in the Lone Star State, it might be better described as America's Death Row. Polunsky is spartan and remote. It's located just more than an hour north of Houston, near the state's Piney Woods region, and across a large lake from Huntsville, where death row prisoners meet their match in the similarly notorious Walls Unit. In building 12 of Polunsky, death row inmates "enjoy" sixty-foot cells adorned with a bean slot just large enough for a daily transfer of meal-time slop. Each cell has a small window, a menacing reminder of the outside world that these prisoners, barring some miracle, will never enjoy again. According to Wikipedia, prisoners "receive individual recreation in a caged area." In reality, the prisoners are afforded one hour per day to walk around.

Polunsky has around 290 death row inmates, a figure that makes up almost the entirety of the state's condemned population. The vast majority of those are men, and while their individual markings might look different, these offenders quite often have something in common. Mental health issues abound on death row, of course, with some landing on death row because of them and others developing their issues after years of awaiting death in solitary confinement. Some are black, while many are white. All are there for murder of some kind or another, even though Texas's death penalty often fails to discriminate between those who were attendant to a murder and those who pulled the trigger multiple times. The tragic middle portion of a death penalty story is always the same. It revolves around the death of an innocent. Quite often, the first chapter of that death penalty story is the same for each man housed in Polunsky.

Texas death penalty lawyer David R. Dow has written in his books and argued in his talks that he could write the life story of every death row inmate without ever meeting that person, and he'd be right roughly nine times out of ten.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Daily Kos, July 14, 2014

Related: Click HERE to view 50 recent annotated pictures of the "living conditions" on Texas death row at Polunsky Unit. These photos were provided by the State of Texas in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by attorney Yolanda Torres. They were then posted on Thomas Whitaker's blog, "Minutes Before Six".
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