Damien Echols: New Day in Court for The West Memphis Three

 A little over a year ago I published an article about a young man, name Damien Echols, who was sitting on death row for a crime that he likely did not commit while two other young men who were convicted of the same crime were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. The case, initially caught my interest when I saw a report of it on 48 hours mysteries. Being the kind of person who wants both sides of an argument before making up my mind which side to believe I spent the next several days reading everything I could get my hands on and what I discovered was the basis of that first article.

Since that time I have followed the case closely, and over time have become more and more convinced that this is was one of the worst cases of injustice I had ever heard about. Now it seems that Mr. Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelly will soon get a new day in court. This time an evidentiary hearing that could result in these three men getting a new trial for the murder of three young boys they were convicted of killing during their 1994 trials.

• The evidence that the three young men want to be taken into consideration is the DNA tests that have been done on two hair samples found at the scene of the crime.

• They are also asking that other DNA tests be allowed to be done on sames taken from the victims bodies and on their clothes.

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  They are also asking that the court review the complaint of jury misconduct and the jury foreman’s own statement that he used an inadmissible confession as basis of his decision of quilt and that he shared that information with other members of the jury as basis for ordering a new trial.

In this case it is the duty of the judge to look at all the evidence both new and what was offered at trial and decide if it was likely that these men would not have been convicted if the evidence was offered correctly. In doing that the judge should be considering several additional pieces of evidence as well. These should include:

• Whether or not the confession given by Jessie Misskelly should have been admissible during his trial as evidence against him. This confession was taken after questioning this young man for several hours without having a waiver by his father which is mandatory when questioning a minor. This alone should have gotten the confession dismissed but, the prosecutor and the judge in the case ignored the law and let the confession in.

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