Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row (46 page)

All of the evidence and testimony recounted above strongly supports the claims of innocence of the West Memphis Three, and strongly points to a possible suspect for further investigation. But none of this new information would be presented at the evidentiary hearing scheduled for December 2011. Before the evidence and testimony could be heard, the State agreed to release the West Memphis Three, and on August 19, 2011, the three men walked free under highly unusual and controversial circumstances.

The Alford Plea and the Release of the West Memphis Three

S
hortly after the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered the circuit court to hold an evidentiary hearing, Stephen L. Braga took over Riordan’s position as the defense team’s lead attorney. Braga asked Little Rock attorney Patrick Benca, another new member of the defense team, to meet with Arkansas attorney general Dustin McDaniel and ask the State to agree to skip the evidentiary hearing and hold new trials instead. Braga and Benca believed it was virtually a foregone conclusion that Judge Laser would order new trials on the basis of juror misconduct alone, and they believed the prosecution, like the defense, would prefer to avoid presenting the same evidence once for Judge Laser at the evidentiary hearing and again for jurors at new trials. Benca met with McDaniel on August 3, and although McDaniel had always staunchly defended the convictions and vehemently opposed the motion for new trials, he agreed to raise the issue with David Raupp, the deputy attorney general, and Scott Ellington, the prosecuting attorney for Arkansas’s Second Judicial District, who had been assigned to argue the State’s case at the evidentiary hearing. At a second meeting two days later, Benca suggested that they avoid not only the hearing but the trials as well and, through negotiation, simply resolve the case. McDaniel said, “If you’re interested in resolving it, I can make arrangements for you guys to present your argument to Mr. Ellington.”
²²²

On August 9, Braga, Benca, and Blake Hendrix and Jeff Rosenzweig, the Little Rock attorneys for Baldwin and Misskelley, respectively, met with McDaniel and Ellington and their teams. Braga and Benca proposed that “the state and three defense teams not only agree to new trials, thereby avoiding the hearing, but that they also avoid the risks of new trials . . . by negotiating a plea agreement to be entered as soon as the new trials were ordered.”
²²³
New trials posed serious risks to both sides. The defense was worried that jurors might once again be swayed by Misskelley’s false confession, and the prosecution feared that the men would be acquitted
²²⁴
and the State would become liable for wrongful-conviction suits that could cost it as much as $60 million.
²²⁵
What Braga and Benca proposed, specifically, was “an Alford plea with time served.”
²²⁶

The term “Alford plea” derives from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1970 ruling in the case
North Carolina v. Alford
, which involved a man who, in order to avoid the possibility of a death sentence, pled guilty even though he insisted that he was innocent. The Supreme Court ruled that a defendant could plead guilty while maintaining innocence if that plea was in his best interest.
²²⁷
Hence the Alford plea is also known as a “best-interest plea.” It allows a defendant who has reason to believe he might be convicted despite his innocence to register “a formal claim neither of guilt nor innocence” while accepting “the ramifications of a guilty verdict,” all in order to avoid the possibility of receiving a more severe punishment if he pled innocent and were convicted.
²²⁸
As Riordan has said, an Alford plea is by its very nature oxymoronic: before it can be accepted, the judge must decide that there is sufficient evidence both to acquit and to convict the defendants.
²²⁹
Because of its oxymoronic nature, an Alford guilty plea doesn’t resolve the question of guilt or innocence. In the words of Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson, “Alford pleas resolve things legally but leave a huge question mark in the air about what really happened.”
²³⁰

The State agreed to the deal Braga and Benca proposed, provided Judge Laser and all three of the imprisoned men approved the deal. Ellington approached Laser
ex parte
—i.e., outside a formal hearing—and Laser accepted the plan. Both Echols and Misskelley also immediately accepted it. Baldwin, however, initially refused.
²³¹
When Blake Hendrix approached him with the deal on August 10, he “turned it down flat, saying he didn’t want to be saddled with convictions for crimes he didn’t commit.” Hendrix has noted that Baldwin’s refusal was a clear sign of his innocence. “Rejecting an offer that let him immediately get out of jail? That’s one of the for-surest signs that he’s innocent,” he said.
²³²
On August 16, however, Baldwin agreed to abandon his principled stand after he learned that Echols’s health was deteriorating because of “the conditions and abuse he suffered on death row.” As he said, “Once I realized that this could save Damien’s life, it was a no-brainer.”
²³³
But he continued to be angry about having to accept the Alford plea as a condition for release, as did Echols and Misskelley. On the day the three men were released, he said, “This was not justice. In the beginning we told nothing but the truth—that we were innocent—and they sent us to prison for the rest of our lives for it. We had to come here and the only thing the state would do for us is to say ‘Hey, we will let you go only if you admit guilt,’ and that is not justice any way you look at it. They’re not out there trying to figure out who really murdered those boys, and I did not want to take the deal from the get-go. However, they are trying to kill Damien, and sometimes you just got to bite the gun to save somebody.”
²³⁴

After Baldwin approved the deal, the legal teams for both the defense and the prosecution spent the next two days preparing the complex Alford plea agreement that would allow the three men to be released in exchange for pleading guilty to reduced charges (while legally maintaining their innocence) and agreeing not to sue the State for false arrest and imprisonment. Echols and Baldwin, who had been convicted of capital murder, would plead guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, and Misskelley, who had been convicted of one count of capital murder and two counts of first-degree murder, would plead guilty to one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
²³⁵

On August 17, Judge Laser announced that he would “take up certain matters pertaining to the cases of defendants Baldwin, Echols and Misskelley” at a special hearing on August 19.
²³⁶
On August 18, Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were transported from their respective prisons to the Craighead County Jail.
²³⁷
When the morning of August 19 dawned, the parking lot surrounding the Craighead County Courthouse, where the hearing would be held at eleven a.m., was already filling up with satellite trucks, media representatives, and people who hoped to attend the public hearing or at least learn if the rumor that the men would be released was true. By seven a.m. there were hundreds of people outside the building, far more than the fifty or so that could fit in the small courtroom; by nine a.m. there were “easily a thousand” and “the parking lot was a circus.”
²³⁸

Meanwhile, inside the courthouse, the three prisoners and their attorneys met with Judge Laser for a “dry run” of the hearing that was to follow.
²³⁹
After Laser was assured that everyone was in agreement with the plea as written, the public hearing began. The judge vacated the previous convictions, ordered new trials, then accepted the prearranged plea agreement that allowed both the prisoners and the State to avoid those trials. He then sentenced Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley to eighteen years and seventy-eight days, the amount of time they’d already served; imposed and suspended an additional ten-year sentence; and warned them that if they reoffended they could be sent back to prison for twenty-one years.
²⁴⁰
In a few minutes, it was all over, and the West Memphis Three were free men.

Although their case had reached a legal conclusion, the controversy surrounding it was far from over. In an article in
The New York Times
, Campbell Robertson noted that “the circumstances of the release were bizarre, divisive and bewildering even to some of those who were directly involved,” and he pointed out the irony that the West Memphis Three left prison “as men who maintain their innocence yet who pleaded guilty to murder” and “as men whom the state still considers to be child killers but whom the state deemed safe enough to set free.”
²⁴¹
Leveritt noted the additional irony that “they remain convicted felons, but they are not even on parole.”
²⁴²

Neither those who thought the West Memphis Three were innocent nor those who thought they were guilty were satisfied by the plea agreement. Most of the criticism of the agreement came from supporters of the West Memphis Three, who have long wanted them to be exonerated. Fran Walsh said, “The Alford plea was the out for the state. They’d get the case to go away and they didn’t have to pay a cent.”
²⁴³
John Mark Byers said, “There’s certainly no justice for the three men that’s been in prison or my son and his two friends. To me, this is just a cop-out from the state for not wanting to admit that they made a mistake.”
²⁴⁴
Stephen Braga defended the resolution while acknowledging its imperfect nature. “This is a compromise resolution,” he said. “Damien, Jason and Jessie maintain their innocence, but recognize that it was in their ‘best interests’ to accept a certain resolution like this before another eighteen years passed while they were fighting for their freedom in an imperfect criminal justice system.”
²⁴⁵

After the hearing, there was a brief press conference and then the men were released. In 1994, when they exited the same courthouse after their convictions, a huge crowd of people was waiting outside to curse and vilify them. But this time they were greeted with cheers and applause from the throng of spectators.

A Conclusion in Progress

T
he release of the West Memphis Three is not the end of the story. Their supporters have vowed to continue working for their exoneration. The website wm3.org has established an Exonerate the West Memphis Three Support Fund, and Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have promised to continue to fund efforts to prove the convicted men’s innocence, including more scientific “evidence testing and further investigation which will hopefully lead to the unmasking of the actual killer.”
²⁴⁶
Because the West Memphis Three were released before the evidentiary hearing could be held, the new evidence already gathered was never given its day in court. This evidence, in addition to the evidence that Misskelley’s confession was false, now constitutes the bulk of the West Memphis Three’s case for exoneration.

Despite all of the new scientific evidence, which wholly discredits the Salem Witch Trial–like “evidence” used to convict them, Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley remain convicted murderers today. They are free of their prison cells, yet they remain imprisoned by their legal status as convicted murderers. Jason Baldwin once said, “I know one thing, and that is how long is too long to keep an innocent person in prison: one minute! One minute is too long to deny an innocent person his freedom.”
²⁴⁷
When they were finally released, on August 19, 2011, eighteen years and seventy-eight days after they were arrested, Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley had each spent 9,573,120 minutes too long in prison. How much longer they will have to endure the burden of being falsely convicted before they are exonerated and the true killer or killers are brought to justice remains to be seen.

Endnotes

1.
Mara Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three
(New York: Atria Books, 2003), pp. 94, 215–216.

2.
Ibid., pp. 295–297.

3.
Ibid., p. 236.

4.
Ibid., p. 32.

5.
Ibid., p. 82.

6.
Ibid., pp. 212, 381.

7.
Arkansas Times staff, “WM3 Revelation,”
Arkansas Times
, Apr. 16, 2009, http://arktimes.com/arkansas/wm3-revelation/Content?oid=948533.

8.
Damien Echols Defense Team press conference, William H. Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Nov. 1, 2007, http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/press_conference.html.

9.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 390.

10.
Marc Perrusquia, “Hollywood Directed Defense, Challenged Old Case Against ‘West Memphis Three,’”
The Commercial Appeal
, Aug. 28, 2011, http://commercialappeal.com/news/2011/aug/28/hollywood-directed-defense-of-three/celebrities’-deep-pockets-funded-new-probe-in-1993-slayings-of-three-boys.

11.
Mara Leveritt, “The Architect and the Inmate,”
Arkansas Times
, Jan. 9, 2004, http://arktimes.com/gyrobased/the-architect-and-the-inmate/Content?oid=1886039. For more information about Davis, her relationship with Echols, and her role in the effort to free the West Memphis Three, see Geoffrey Gray, “A Death-Row Love Story,”
New York
, Oct. 13, 2011, http://nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/a-death-row-love-story.html?_r=2.

12.
Arkansas Take Action press release, “New Eyewitnesses: Three Boys Last Seen with Terry Hobbs,” Oct. 12, 2009, http://freewestmemphis3.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77:new-eyewitnesses-three-boys-last-seen-alive-with-terry-hobbs-&catid=37:press-releases&Itemid=83.

13.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 14.

14.
Martin D. Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/enter_satan_2.html.

15.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 64.

16.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/enter_satan_2.html.

17.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/ricky_climer.html.

18.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/echols_vs_ridge_2.html.

19.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 40, 45.

20.
Ibid., p. 43.

21.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/damien_echols_2.html.

22.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/damien_echols.html.

23.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/enter_satan_2.html and http://jivepuppi.com/jivepuppi_the_discovery.html.

24.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/west_memphis_confidential.html.

25.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 341.

26.
Ibid., p. 58.

27.
Ibid., pp. 58–59.

28.
Ibid., pp. 65, 171–172, and http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2221.

29.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/rumors.html.

30.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 65.

31.
Ibid., pp. 56–57.

32.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/victims.html.

33.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 26.

34.
Ibid., pp. 101–102.

35.
Tim Hackler, “‘They Messed with My Words,’”
Arkansas Times
, Oct. 7, 2004, http://arktimes.com/arkansas/they-messed-with-my-words/Content?oid=964537.

36.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 102.

37.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/search_for_the_cult.html.

38.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 204.

39.
Ibid., p. 165.

40.
Ibid., p. 66.

41.
Ibid., p. 72.

42.
Tim Hackler, “Complete Fabrication,”
Arkansas Times
, Oct 7, 2004, http://arktimes.com/arkansas/complete-fabrication/Content?oid=1886107.

43.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 72.

44.
Ibid., p. 286.

45.
Ibid., p. 68.

46.
Ibid., p. 132.

47.
Laura H. Nirider, Steven A. Drizin, and Barbara Bergman, “Brief of Amici Curiae,” Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Sept. 17, 2009, p. 14.

48.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/polygraph.html.

49.
Hill, “Identifying the Source of Critical Details in Confessions,”
Forensic Linguistics
10, no. 1 (2003), p. 24.

50.
Nirider, Drizin, and Bergman, “Brief of Amici Curiae,” p. 16.

51.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/polygraph.html.

52.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 82.

53.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_misskelley.html.

54.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 90.

55.
Ibid., p. 127.

56.
Ibid., p. 76.

57.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_misskelley.html.

58.
Hill, “Identifying the Source of Critical Details in Confessions,” p. 23.

59.
Ibid., p. 40.

60.
Ibid., p. 37.

61.
Ibid., p. 32.

62.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_misskelley.html.

63.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 187.

64.
James Morgan, “John Grisham, Meet Dan Stidham,”
Arkansas Times
, June 7, 1996, http://arktimes.com/arkansas/john-grisham-meet-dan-stidham/Content?oid=1886139.

65.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_misskelley.html.

66.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 187–189.

67.
Hill, “Identifying the Source of Critical Details in Confessions,” p. 32.

68.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 226–227.

69.
Hill, “Identifying the Source of Critical Details in Confessions,” p. 32.

70.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_misskelley.html.

71.
Hill, “Identifying the Source of Critical Details in Confessions,” p. 30.

72.
Ibid., p. 37.

73.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_misskelley.html.

74.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/exhibit_b.html.

75.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 90–91.

76.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/a_twilight_kill_part_twelve.html.

77.
Hill, “Identifying the Source of Critical Details in Confessions,” pp. 38–39.

78.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 86.

79.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/jivepuppi_jkm.html.

80.
Perhaps the most compelling suspect of all was one who was never identified or investigated, because of police ineptitude. The night of the murders, the manager of a Bojangles restaurant near the crime scene called police to report that a bloody, disoriented black man with mud on his pants had entered the women’s rest room and left “blood and feces on the floor, stall and walls,” and a roll of toilet paper “soaked to the core with blood.” Minutes after the man left, a police officer arrived and took a report, but even though the police were aware that the three boys were missing, the officer didn’t examine the rest room or investigate further. Instead, she left the restaurant to investigate a complaint about someone throwing eggs at a house. The rest room was not examined for evidence until the following evening, when the manager repeated his story to an off-duty police officer who happened to be eating at the restaurant. The officer found some blood that hadn’t been cleaned up and he called the police department, which sent Allen and Ridge to investigate. They took blood scrapings from the wall and a pair of sunglasses the bloody man had left in the toilet, but this evidence was lost and therefore never tested. In any case, once the police had Misskelley’s statement, they showed little interest in the so-called “Mr. Bojangles” or any other potential suspect. For more on this, see Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 6, 141, and 219, and Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/bojangles_man.html.

81.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 82, 84.

82.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/exhibit_b.html.

83.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 208.

84.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/exhibit_b.html.

85.
Damien Echols Defense Team press conference.

86.
Hill, “Identifying the Source of Critical Details in Confessions,” p. 35.

87.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/exhibit_b.html.

88.
Supreme Court of Arkansas opinion, delivered Feb. 19, 1996, regarding
Jessie Lloyd Misskelley, Jr. vs. State of Arkansas
,
CR 94-848, http://courts.state.ar.us/opinions/1996/cr94-848.txt.

89.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 95.

90.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_misskelley.html.

91.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 212, 381.

92.
Ibid., p. 106.

93.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/damien_echols_2.html.

94.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 175.

95.
Beth Warren, “No False Confessions? Science Has Found Dozens, Often Wrung from Coerced Young Suspects,”
The Commercial Appeal
, May 22, 2011, http://commercialappeal.com/news/2011/may/22/plea-pressure-hours-of-threats-and-promises/. For more on false confessions, see Steven A. Drizin and Richard A. Leo, “The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World,”
North Carolina Law Review
82, no. 3 (2004), pp. 891–1007, and http://innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php.

96.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 176–177.

97.
Misskelley trial transcript, http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/ofshe.html.

98.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/exhibit_b.html.

99.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/a_twilight_kill_part_five.html.

100.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/echols_vs_ridge_3.html.

101.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 161.

102.
Ibid., p. 163.

103.
Ibid., p. 167.

104.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/a_twilight_kill_part_eight.html.

105.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 120.

106.
Ibid., pp. 166–167.

107.
Ibid., p. 209.

108.
Ibid., p. 190.

109.
Ibid., p. 199.

110.
Ibid., pp. 212–213.

111.
Ibid., p. 195.

112.
Ibid., p. 218.

113.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/jivepuppi_the_sticks.html.

114.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/wax.html.

115.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 136–137.

116.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/recent_additions.html.

117.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/jivepuppi_knives_2.html.

118.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 137.

119.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/jivepuppi_the_injuries.html.

120.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 263.

121.
Damien Echols Defense Team press conference.

122.
Dennis P. Riordan and Donald M. Horgan, “Second Amended Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus,” Oct. 29, 2007, pp. 7–8.

123.
Damien Echols Defense Team press conference.

124.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 94, 215–216.

125.
Ibid., p. 208.

126.
Ibid., pp. 209, 228.

127.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_baldwin.html.

128.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, pp. 209–210.

129.
Ibid., p. 196.

130.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_baldwin.html.

131.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 240.

132.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/rumors.html.

133.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 240.

134.
Dan D. Davison and John E. Moore, “Statement of Facts in Support of Defendant Natalie Pasdar’s Motion for Summary Judgment,” p. 91, http://dpdlaw.com/pasdarfacts2009.pdf.

135.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/echols_vs_ridge_2.html.

136.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 349.

137.
Ibid., pp. 242–243.

138.
Ibid., pp. 232, 235, 239, 288.

139.
Ibid., p. 235.

140.
Ibid., pp. 232, 239.

141.
Ibid., p. 262.

142.
Ibid., p. 236.

143.
Ibid., p. 265.

144.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/a_twilight_kill_part_seven.html.

145.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/dale_griffis.html.

146.
Publishers Weekly
, quoted at http://amazon.com/Secret-Weapons-Sisters-Terrifying-Sabotage/dp/0882821962/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266264131&sr=1-2.

147.
Damien Echols Defense Team press conference.

148.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 239.

149.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/case_for_innocence_baldwin.html.

150.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/a_twilight_kill_part_seven.html.

151.
Hill, http://jivepuppi.com/dale_griffis.html.

152.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 237.

153.
Ibid.

154.
Ibid., p. 15.

155.
Ibid., pp. 237–238.

156.
http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/ebtrial/closefogleman.html.

157.
Leveritt,
Devil’s Knot
, p. 238.