Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (48 page)

250. Bob Lancaster, in the
Arkansas Times,
April 7, 1994.

251. Stidham said Jessie had reached the decision the night before, after meeting with his father and stepmother, his attorneys, and Phillip Wells, the lawyer appointed by Burnett to ascertain Jessie’s true wishes. When reporters checked with Wells, he reported that the prosecutors had offered Jessie a deal, though he did not divulge its terms.

252. In a memo dated February 23, 1994, Ron Lax wrote that Jessie’s stepmother had described the meeting to him. She said Jessie had told her and his father that he was not present at the time of the murders and that he knew nothing about them. He said he’d admitted to the crimes a second time, after his conviction, because he was afraid of the “men with guns” and of what would happen to him at prison. Lax noted that Mrs. Misskelley also said that “Jessie was laboring under the impression the prosecution would reduce his time significantly. Jessie stated he realized now none of this was true and said he would not testify.”

253. Author interview with Stidham and Misskelley, February 2001.

254. During that same interview, Stidham recalled the moment, right before Damien and Jason’s trial began, when he advised the prosecution, for the last time, to leave his client alone and that Jessie would not testify against his codefendants. “I said, ‘If you bother my client one more time, I’m going to hold a press conference, and I’ll tell the world what you have been doing to my client, how the prosecutors in this district met with my client without me ever knowing about it, about the promises to bring Susie to him for sex, and that someone brought him beer.’ I said I’d tell how they put him through an interrogation once, and then they put him through it all again—because they were afraid they couldn’t make their case if they didn’t have him.”

255. “Voir dire” means “to speak the truth.” It refers to the legal process by which lawyers question potential jurors to determine their suitability to serve in a particular trial.

256. “I remember the news conference that the West Memphis police detective held,” one excused juror said upon leaving the courthouse, “and the statement that Jessie Misskelley made has been well rooted in my memory.” Another noted only that he had formed a “strong opinion” about the case. A third admitted, “The way they were talking about the evidence, I just didn’t want to see it.” Two women who were excused said that even being questioned for the jury had been emotionally taxing. “I have small children,” one said. Another reported having been “close to tears” during the questioning. Another prospective juror was excused because she could not impose a death sentence. “I would have trouble with it,” Kathy Cravens of Jonesboro told a reporter. “I think because of their age, I would have a problem with it.”

257.
Commercial Appeal,
February 26, 1994.

258. “Simply put, jury selection is part of the trial proceeding, and must be held in the open,” a lawyer for the paper argued. The paper’s managing editor, Henry Stokes, said, “We believe that an open judicial process is the fairest for everyone. The
Commercial Appeal
has asked for no more than Arkansas law already demands: that jury selection takes place behind no shadow.”

259. Burnett said the matter fell to the discretion of the trial judge and that he would continue to conduct the voir dire in his chambers. “To ask laypeople to come in from their work, their homes, their normal pursuits and to be bombarded by very sensitive questions, to where they have to verbalize their innermost feelings in front of a few hundred people, the eyes of the cameras, the eyes of the world—to me that’s unreasonable,” he said.

260. “Was the court’s order excluding the public and press from the voir dire valid?” the high court asked rhetorically at the end of its opinion. “It is clear by what has been said that we have answered with an emphatic ‘No!’” The court offered no opinion, however, as to how—or even if—the invalid process should be corrected.

261. Report of Jonesboro patrol officer C. Gellert.

262. Despite the lurid opening, reporter Marc Perrusquia’s piece took an unusual turn for reporting at the time, in that it also offered less sensational descriptions of the defendants. It quoted Dian Teer, Domini’s mother, as saying, “He liked vampire movies and vampire books, but I do too—so what? What really scares me is the one who really [killed the boys] is still out there, and the cops are sitting there, patting themselves on the back.” Similarly, Perrusquia portrayed Jason as a boy who was “largely known as a polite and courteous youngster.” Speaking of Jason, one neighbor said, “He never struck me to be no mean kind of kid.”

263. Fogleman never did directly explain why the state had had to rely on “negative evidence” in the case, other than to suggest that almost all other evidence that might have existed, including fingerprints, blood, and possible DNA, had been washed away by the water.

264. “Two of them were pushing bikes, one was carrying a skateboard, and one was just walking,” witness Bryan Woody said. When one of the defense lawyers asked Woody if the West Memphis police had ever shown him pictures of other children, or asked him to help identify the fourth boy, Woody said that they had not.

265. Reporters also noted the significance of the move to call Bryan Woody, who testified that he saw four boys enter the woods. “If Woody’s testimony is accurate,” the
Jonesboro Sun
explained, “it would support a statement that Aaron Hutcheson…gave to West Memphis police…. While attorneys in the case refuse to discuss Hutcheson’s claim, speculation has grown that the child could be an eyewitness to the crime.” The paper noted that Aaron had not testified at Jessie’s trial, and citing unattributed “reports,” it added that it was “unclear” whether he would take the stand in the current trial “because of his mental state from recurring nightmares about the boys’ murders.”

266. Price told Burnett, “It’s our position, Judge, that within two or three days after the murders, the West Memphis Police Department was alleging that this is a cult-related killing. That is the reason they went after my client, Damien Echols. They’re trying to link him in what they thought was a cult-related killing.”

267. Peretti’s reference to Christopher’s “neck injuries” in the same breath as his mention of the horrendous injuries Christopher had suffered to his head and genital area appeared to exaggerate the findings Peretti had noted in his own autopsy report, which had listed “no fractures” and “no hemorrhages” and only “a few scattered abrasions” on the left side of his neck. The reference may have carried weight with the jury, however, in light of Jessie’s statement that the children had been strangled.

268. Author interview, April 2001.

269. Jason’s attorney Paul Ford confirmed that the offers were made, though he said he could not remember the exact terms. “I know they [the prosecutors] made some offers,” Ford said. “And I know they got better. My most specific recollection is that Jason wasn’t interested.”

270. The attorney was state senator Mike Everett of Marked Tree, Arkansas.

271. Author interview, April 2001.

272. Jason’s lawyer raised yet another issue, regarding the prior juvenile history of the prosecution witness Michael Carson, which Burnett had ruled inadmissible and which the jury did not get to hear. “It is the opinion of Jason Baldwin that if they are going to be able to use the juvenile file of Damien Echols to show that he had a belief and that he acted in conformity with that belief,” Ford said, “we should have been able to inquire as to the LSD dependence of Michael Carson, which is contained in his juvenile file, to question his credibility because he has a drug dependence on a hallucinogenic.”

273. The prosecutors’ decision to introduce books, fashions, and beliefs into the proceedings provoked a smattering of opposition. The
Jonesboro Sun
also reported that “a group of teenagers” had shown up at the trial “wearing mostly black,” and that “one of the males wore a necklace with a pentagram attached to it.”

274. This witness was Christy Van Vickle.

275. This witness was Jody Medford.

276. Bob Lancaster of the
Arkansas Times.

277. The quotation, while from Shakespeare, is in fact from
Macbeth.

278. Bob Lancaster.

279. Gitchell explained that his detectives had “talked with several hundred people in regards to this investigation” and that “it was not possible to do a recording of everyone.” Gitchell acknowledged that detectives’ notes were the only record police produced from their interviews with Damien—even though they had video and tape-recorded interviews with many other subjects, and despite the fact that Damien had been a prime suspect from the start.

280. As reported by Stan Mitchell in the
Jonesboro Sun,
March 12, 1994.

281. Because the public and the press were barred from this unusual hearing
in camera
, and Judge Burnett placed a gag order on the participants, what transpired was never reported. It was not carried by newspapers or television news and the jury did not get to hear about it.

282. From the 1923 decision in
U.S. v. Murdock.

283. From the 1920 case of
Locking v. State,
145 Arkansas 415, 224 Southwest 952.

284. Burnett told the lawyers that any probative value Morgan’s testimony might have in the case was “substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and by confusion of the issues.”

285. Record of this argument and ruling exists only in the trial transcript, pages 2286–302.

286. Hicks said he was being paid $500, the cost of his expenses for coming to Arkansas to testify.

287. Hicks said his degree was from the University of Arizona. He testified that his book was titled
In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult.
At one point, Price asked Hicks to read a quotation he had included at the end of his book. It was attributed to Kenneth Lanning, an FBI agent who had researched alleged connections between crime and the occult. Hicks read: “Bizarre crime and evil can occur without organized Satanic activity. The law enforcement perspective requires that we distinguish between what we know and what we are not sure of.” Looking up from the book, Hicks volunteered, “I agree.”

288. Hicks said he grew particularly skeptical about the ideas, promulgated at many of the seminars, “that a belief in satanism or certain occult subjects was indicative of criminal behavior” and “that people found to be practicing these other religious behaviors might also be engaged in crime.” Price at first tried to question Hicks about documents prepared by the West Memphis Police Department that referred to satanism and the occult. But the prosecutors objected to the prospect of jurors hearing Hicks testify about “policies and procedures of the West Memphis Police Department,” and Burnett agreed that they shouldn’t. The judge ruled, “It doesn’t matter what policies, if any, they had.”

289. Jason appeared to some observers to sit through the trial with a somewhat dazed look on his face. That might have been because the boy was seriously nearsighted. Jason said that when Paul Ford found out how weak Jason’s vision was, and that he could not see clearly more than three feet in front of him, Ford had promised that as soon as the trial was over, he’d get Jason fitted for glasses.

290. Charles Linch identified himself as a trace evidence analyst from the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas.

291. Six years after the trial, in May 2000, the
Dallas Morning News
reported that Linch, a trace evidence analyst at Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas, had been released from the psychiatric unit of that city’s Doctors Hospital, where he was a patient, in order to testify. In a copyrighted article, Holly Becka and Howard Swindle reported: “Declared a danger to himself or others and prescribed powerful anti-depressive drugs, he had been temporarily released to testify in two of the southwest’s most infamous capital murder trials. Notwithstanding circumstance, he was an expert witness.” The paper reported that Linch acknowledged that he had been depressed and “drinking too much,” and that his commitment to the hospital had been involuntary. The paper quoted Paul Ford as saying he had no idea the forensic scientist had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, and that it “bothered” him that neither Linch nor his supervisors at SIFS reported that he would have to be released from a psychiatric hospital to testify.

292. Author interview, November 2001.

293. Author interview, November 2001.

294. Jason’s mother, Gail Grinnell, had lost her job over the trial. She’d asked her boss for time off to attend it, and he had refused. Rather than leave Jason alone while he was on trial for his life, she’d quit the job in order to be at the courthouse. However, because she had been listed as a potential witness, Grinnell was not allowed into the courtroom. When it became clear that she was not going to be called, Jason realized how much had been lost. His mother had given up her job to spend the entire three weeks waiting, sitting in a lobby outside the courtroom, where she could not even see, let alone try to encourage, her son.

295. Ford told Burnett, “Your Honor, we would like to be able to argue to the jury that the state of Arkansas does not even believe it has proven the charges of capital murder because they are requesting that you consider first-degree murder, which places less burden on them.”

296. The North Carolina lab, Genetic Design, identified the DQ Alpha type as “1.2,4.” The lab reportedly tried unsuccessfully to amplify the results.

297. Fogleman told the jury that because Jason had long hair, Hollingsworth had probably mistaken him for her niece.

298. Arkansas law requires that for circumstantial evidence to be deemed substantial enough to support a conviction it must “exclude all other reasonable hypotheses.”

299. After the verdicts were read, Burnett asked the clerk to poll the jurors, but foreman Kent Arnold interrupted. “Judge,” he asked, “do you have to use names?” So far, the identity of the jurors had not been made public, and Burnett had further instructed that they not be photographed. He now consented to allow the jurors to be polled by number. All affirmed that they had voted for the convictions. In addition to Arnold, the jurors were Peggy Roebuck, Joan Sprinkle, Vicki Stoll, Barbara White, Sharon French, Peggy Van Hoozer, Howard McNatt, William Billingsly, John Throgmorton, Jennifer Dacus, and Oma Dooley.