On May 6, 1993, in a small town named West Memphis, Ark., the bodies of three 8-year-old boys were found. Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore were found beaten, mutilated and tied with their own shoelaces. By an unfortunate coincidence, a juvenile probation officer was among those in the search party. He implied to authorities that one of his charges, Damien Echols, was the only person who could be capable of a thing like this. Echols had been seeing the probation officer after he ran away from home with his girlfriend and broke into an abandoned house for shelter. Due to his penchant for dark clothing and “satanic” music and books, the authorities didn’t question the validity of the claim. Although there was no forensic evidence, no murder weapon and no connection to either the crime scene or the victims, Damien Echols and his two friends, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were brought in after Misskelley was coerced into confessing. Misskelley, who has been deemed mildly retarded, was forced to endure a 12-hour interrogation without legal consultation or a legal guardian present, which should have been required due to Misskelley’s age of 17. More frighteningly, despite the lack of substantial evidence, Damien Echols was sentenced to death by lethal injection, Jason Baldwin was sentenced to a life sentence with no parole and Jessie Misskelley was sentenced to a life sentence plus 40 years.

This case is a great black mark on our judiciary system, one that to this day has not been corrected. Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were victims of a modern-day witch hunt. Due to their interest in paganism, black clothing and heavy metal music, they stuck out like sore thumbs in the predominately Baptist community. Furthermore, there was a strong belief among the officials running the case that all child murders and mutilations were satanic rituals of sacrifice. It was this belief alone that the prosecutors pushed to prove the three’s guilt. During the process of the investigation, there was an eyewitness report from a nearby restaurant owner that an African-American man covered in blood stumbled from the crime-scene area around the three boys’ time of death, but the blood evidence from the restaurant was lost.

You may be asking why this is relevant now. The truth of the matter is that injustice does not have an expiration date. As a nation, we cannot let oversights like this go uncorrected. It corrodes the very fabric of our justice system. No government, whether national or local, should have the power to convict someone just because they think, act or have different beliefs than the greater public. If those boys wore anything but black and listened to something besides heavy metal, they would never have gotten into this position.

If this sounds horrifying, there are actions that can be taken to support the West Memphis Three, as they have come to be called. Supporters have started a Web site to spread awareness and to give those who want to help the opportunity. The Web site is www.wm3.org. By not caring for this travesty, we show a lack of care in a working justice system and are therefore softening the foundation on which our country was founded. So, go out there, buy a T-shirt, write a letter or e-mail your friends; it really doesn’t matter how you choose to help – just as long as you try.

All information from this article came from www.wm3.org and www.crimelibrary.com.

Chelsea is a junior in the School of Art and a Forum Editor. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]

Popularity: 1% [?]

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.