West Memphis Three Go Free

The trio known as the West Memphis Three has been freed - justice prevailed. Then again, maybe not.

What started out as a mess has now ended as a mess. In 1993, three teenagers - Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley - were arrested for the murder of three West Memphis eight-year-old boys.

The whole thing was a farce of epic proportions. West Memphis was a small community understandably upset and scared by this gruesome crime. Citizens wanted to find the killer or killers and bring them to justice. But, the community and police department seemed to go about it the wrong way. At the time, the West Memphis Three were petty juvenile delinquents who looked and acted different. Echols had dark hair and was into heavy metal and Wicca, so that naturally meant he was a murderer, right? In the way only a 19-year-old can, he boldly mugged for the media while entering and leaving the trial, perhaps not realizing that he was guilty until proven guilty.

The murder conviction was based on little hard evidence. Vicki Hutcheson testified that she heard a drunken Echols bragging about the murders at a Wiccan meeting. But, she couldn't remember where the meeting was held or anyone else that was in attendance. After the conviction, she said she was coerced by the police to give the confession under the threat of having her own son taken away.

Misskelley, 17 at the time, was questioned by the police for 12 hours without his parents or a lawyer present. It was later determined he has an IQ of 75, which is representative of borderline mental retardation. His confession was highly inaccurate yet he implicated Echols and Baldwin. It was eventually deemed inadmissible.

Then, there was the mysterious Mr. Bojangles. The night of the murders, a black male entered a Bojangles restaurant about a mile from the scene of the crime. It was reported he entered the bathroom bloody and covered in mud. Police were called, but the officer showed up 45 minutes later and asked about the man only by going through the drive-thru window. He was told the man had left, so the officer himself left without ever leaving his car. The Bojangles manager called the police again and they finally entered the bathroom wearing the shoes they had on at the crime scene, which could have contaminated any possible evidence there. A detective did take a blood sampling but it was lost.

In 1994, Echols was sentenced to death, Misskelley was sentenced to life plus forty years and Baldwin was sentenced to life. But, the West Memphis Three controversy was far from over. Over the next 18 years, many would question if the three teens were actually guilty. That list grew to include the parents of two of the three murdered boys, documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (who brought the case to light in Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations), musicians Natalie Maines and Eddie Vedder, and actor Johnny Depp.

In 2008, it was learned that the jury foreman on the Echols/Baldwin case (Misskelley was tried separately due to his implicating the others) knew of Misskelley's confession and talked to lawyer about it before the deliberations.

It was the celebrities that helped the three get high powered lawyers who set out to tear the conviction to pieces. The case was getting a lot of media coverage and last November, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered a lower court to examine the juror misconduct claim. As the whole thing started to unravel, a surprise hearing was called on August 19 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. In a little over an hour, it was all over and the three were freed.

The West Memphis Three accepted an Alford plea. This meant they pled guilty to lesser charges, in essence saying that they understood that the prosecution probably had enough evidence to keep them locked up. But, they could still publically claim their innocence.

However, the district attorney all but said in his statement that the state accepted the plea deal to keep the three from suing Arkansas for wrongful imprisonment. With everything seemingly going their way, why would the three cop the deal? Misskelley and Baldwin, now in their thirties, said they did it to keep Arkansas from killing Echols, the only one of the three on death row. What touched me most was Baldwin. He was only 16-years-old when he was convicted. He is now a 33-year-old man losing his hair. If the three weren't guilty, they paid for someone else's crime with their youth.

The community still remains divided. Some think the West Memphis Three were railroaded and not only deserved to be freed, but also receive retribution. Some are angry because they feel the killers were released and some are angry because they think the real killers were never brought to justice. In the end, three young lives were taken and three young lives were ruined and there is a good chance that a killer got away with murder.