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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. 

Georgia: Ray Jefferson Cromartie set to be executed on Nov. 13

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Ray Jefferson Cromartie
Death row inmate's brother hoping for another stay of execution

Oct. 30 was the day Ray Jefferson Cromartie was originally set to be executed. That morning, Georgia's Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of execution - all due to a technicality.

"It had to all do about the legal filing, and that legal filing is all about a technicality. You can't file an order for execution until such time as all appeals are done," 11Alive Legal Analyst Latonia Hines said.

The appeal - a push from Cromartie's attorney for DNA testing. They claim DNA testing on some of the evidence in the case could prove the death row inmate didn't shoot and kill store clerk Richard Slysz in Thomasville, Georgia in 1994.

Georgia's supreme court declined to hear about it.

Anthoney Cromartie, Ray Cromartie's brother, said the back-and-forth in the case has been hard on his family but adds that hearing about the new execution date - just 2 days after the stay - felt rushed to him.

“And everything has changed back. They gave him a new death date, you know what I’m saying," he said. "So, to me, it’s like no one really ever looked at it, it’s like, just do the paperwork, it was a formality, we know what it was and get it over with."

Anthoney Cromartie said he hopes his brother is granted another stay.

"Right now, my family just taking it in stride, one day at a time seeing what happens, hope that he gets another stay, but this time that we go back to court," he added.

Hines said it seems as though every legal avenue has already been explored at this time.

"It looks like, right now, that there are no other legal roadblocks, but you never know what could happen," she said.

Source: WXIA TV, Staff, November 3, 2019


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Georgia, USA
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