Ignorance, Bigotry, and Apathy May Kill a (Presumedly) Innocent Man

[Skywatcher]

OK, so HBO may not be impartial here. How about Court TV?

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/memphis/epilogue_12.html?sect=7
In their zeal to “get their man” and satisfy the community’s demand for “justice” the investigating police, knowing that their case was weak, used many questionable tactics to obtain the corroborative evidence they needed. Many witnesses were enticed to testify with the promise of reward money or leniency in other criminal matters, while others were bullied and intimidated into providing the information the police needed to support their own theories.

Once the arrests were made the adversarial legal system, which sets two opposing sides against each other in a quest to win rather than reveal the truth, worked to reinforce the view of the crime as perceived by the police in the first instance. It was the defense team’s job to refute their case and cast doubt in the minds of the jury. Whichever side could tell the best story would win.

In this case, the prosecution’s job was made easier by the amount of media coverage, supporting the police view of the crime, which the jury had been subjected to before the trials. The information that the jurors read in their newspapers and saw on their television, originating from police sources, reinforced the belief that three young boys had been brutally murdered as a part of some Satanic ritual. The media assumed no responsibility to investigate the truth of the information they received, it was presumed that the police information was based on real evidence and made good copy. The media “reports” confirmed an already widely held belief in the community that Satanic cults were a real threat to its safety and few would have questioned the conclusions drawn by the police.

A guilty verdict was the only course that could be taken to allow this community to feel safe again, to feel that they had the power to overcome an evil and, until Jessie, Jason and Damien were arrested, nameless enemy.

The fight to have the guilty verdict reversed would require that the judicial system, intrinsically bureaucratic in nature, look within itself and acknowledge its own weaknesses and shortcomings. Any admission of its own failure will only occur under extreme public pressure and outrage at the injustice which has occurred. It takes time for such a process to occur, statistically at least ten years. Jessie and Jason have a lifetime, but whether Damien’s time will run out before this slow process is complete is yet to be seen.

[Leaper]

Um, I’m not sure what to think about this case (although unlike Bricker and Shodan, I don’t have complete faith in the criminal justice system’s guilty verdicts), but not even I’m gonna take Court friggin’-TV as an “impartial source.” They strike me as somewhat, ah, sensationalistic. Perhaps I haven’t been watching it enough, but that’s certainly the vibe I get.

Am I the only one?

[Skywatcher]

I don’t know about what they show on TV but their websites have been reliable.

[joyfool]

Just wanted to drop in and let Diane know that, although I’ve followed this case for a couple of years now and have been outspoken on behalf of the WM3, this thread just now reminded me to make another donation.

So, you’ve reached several people. Thank you. I hope some small amount helps.

[Skywatcher]

Y’all really should read what the Court TV site has.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/memphis/suspect_4.html?sect=7
Damien was seen as different by his peers, a view he shared and deliberately cultivated. By this time the black clothing he wore had become his trademark and included a long black overcoat which he wore no matter what the weather. His clothing reflected his emotional state of isolation and depression which increased dramatically over the next couple of years. His search for spiritual truth and meaning, although present at an early age, became a focus of his life at this time. He had attempted for many years to find meaning in Jack Echols’s Pentecostal-style church but with no success. He explored a number of other religions including Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam before he discovered Catholicism. For a time he felt that he had found what he was looking for and was baptized and received Communion, but no matter how devoutly he studied, the emptiness continued. It was during this time that he changed his name to Damien, after Father Damien a 19th-century Catholic priest who cared for lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The rumor mill in West Memphis would report that he had named himself after Damien in the series of “Omen” movies!

With his depression deepening, Damien still found no comfort in religion or girlfriends. Catholicism was soon discarded and replaced with Paganism, which he had discovered after studying Stonehenge and the Druids. Here Damien finally found something which made sense to him. The worship of nature and the belief in karma seemed logical and real to Damien, although it would not help his depressed emotional state. Between 1991 and 1993 he attempted to commit suicide a number of times by a variety of methods including hanging, an overdose and even drowning.

His first contact with police came about when he was seventeen. He and his girlfriend at the time, decided to run away from home together. On their first night they broke into an abandoned house for shelter. Within an hour police were there. Damien was arrested and was subjected to a number of psychological tests. From there he was sent to Charter Hospital in Maumelle. During his stay there he was diagnosed as manic-depressive and was prescribed the anti-depressant drug Trofanil, which he continued to take until he arrived on death row. It was after this arrest that Damien first met Jerry Driver, chief Juvenile Probation Officer for Crittenden County and partner of Steve Jones. According to Damien, in a later interview, Driver had been convinced that Satanic cults were behind many criminal activities in the area and was determined to prove his theories. Damien and Driver’s paths would cross many more times in the future as Driver would investigate Damien in regard to a variety of unsolved crimes in the area, none of which he was able to pin on Damien.

Something definately wrong was going on there.

[Skywatcher]

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/memphis/question_8.html?sect=7
With almost no evidence to link Jason, Damien and Jessie to the murder scene or the victims, apart from Jessie’s questionable confession, police continued to interrogate any acquaintances of the three teenagers they could find. Of all the people interviewed none could testify to having seen Damien, Jason and Jessie together at any time in the past. This hole was soon filled by Jerry Driver who testified under oath that he had once seen Damien, Jason and Jessie walking together wearing long black robes and carrying staffs. During the trial this may have been convincing testimony for the jury but in light of Driver’s own admission that he had often interrogated Damien for unsolved crimes in the area over the previous twelve months, its credibility is highly questionable. The fact that Driver faced embezzlement charges in 1997 and resigned from the probation office further diminishes his credibility.

[The_Peyote_Coyote]

Diane, I signed the petition referred to on one of Strainger’s sites, but I must tell you that I am not convinced of the WM3’s innocence. To me, a lot depends on whether Misskelly’s statement was coerced or suggested. If it was not, then, were I serving on the jury, I probably would vote to convict him at least.

[Skywatcher]

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/memphis/suspects_10.html?sect=7
It is interesting to note that John Mark Byers was on very friendly terms with the investigating officers and was a drug informant for the WMPD at the time of the murders. Could bias in favor of Byers and against Echols on the part of the investigating police have blinded them to any evidence which might have led the investigation away from Damien and toward Byers?

Finally, the tennis shoe imprint which was found on the creek bank near the bodies, did not match with any footwear owned by Damien, Jessie or Jason. This fact would again suggest that police should have been concentrating their investigations in another direction.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

*Originally posted by Bricker *
You mentioned accusingly that the police questioned Jessie “without a lawyer,” suggesting that this was an improper or unusual tactic. In fact, as long as a suspect does not request a lawyer, it is perfectly legal to question him without one – especially when he waives his rights both verbally and in writing. You failed to mention that he had done that, on multiple occasions, during the questioning.

Bricker, the Court TV web site says this:

Jessie was later taken into WMPD for questioning despite the fact that they did not have a written waiver of his Miranda Rights signed by Jessie’s father, a legal requirement when police interview minors. Normally this breach of a minor’s constitutional rights would be sufficient to have the subsequent confession quashed. For some reason in this case Judge Burnett chose to allow it.

Is that not true?

[Blalron]

*Originally posted by Shodan *
**

You are repeatedly overstating your case, which leads the objective observer to conclude that your case is remarkably weak. If you have evidence that the reasonable mind would conclude established reasonable doubt, you have not produced it.
**

What about this little tidbid that Diane posted earlier:

soon after it was ruled out that the bite marks on one of the victim did NOT match any of the three accused, Mark Byers had all of his teeth pulled

[emphasis added]

Would you still feel comfortable strapping Damien to the gurney and pulling the switch?

[Shodan]

What about this little tidbid that Diane posted earlier:

quote:

soon after it was ruled out that the bite marks on one of the victim did NOT match any of the three accused, Mark Byers had all of his teeth pulled

[emphasis added]

---

Would you still feel comfortable strapping Damien to the gurney and pulling the switch?

Blalron -

It would seem that this, too, has been over-stated in a minor but significant way.

According to the website, Byers did not have his teeth pulled out, but they fell out (or at least, he “lost” them).

As well focusing on the trio in their for a new trial, “Revelations…” will also follow John Mark Byers - whose wife Melissa, mother of young Chris, also died several years ago. Byers Sr has also since lost his teeth.

As it was phrased, it sounds as if Byers deliberately got rid of his teeth. As the website puts it, the loss was involuntary. Cite.

Again, it appears that the evidence in the case has been exaggerated. Perhaps minor - but I think we see the distinction between legal testimony, given under oath and subject to cross-examination, and what some movie-maker thought would sell.

My grandmother wore a complete set of dentures for the last thirty years of her life, and she never killed anyone.

Regards,
Shodan

[Gary_Kumquat]

Shodan, you appear to have cited their searchpage?

[Nightime]

I have to say that Shodan is severely hurting his credibility in this thread. After several posts saying that he knows enough about the case to make the very confident statements that he is making, he is still spouting some extremely important and blatant lies. For instance, he says that all three of the boys confessed. Were that true, it would certainly be extremely damaging. But it is a LIE. A lie that he refuses to even acknowledge. Just on that alone, I have no choice but to give Shodan no credibility on this subject. His further lies, such as saying that all three of the boys were wiccan despite numerous posts stating otherwise, only serve to make his ignorance of this case more obvious. I am amazed that Shodan can continue to call others liars simply because he disagrees, while he himself is guilty of such blatant lies. Even if his statements were made in ignorance, that only means he is lying when he says he knows enough to make even a casual comment on this case.

That the stepfather nearly confessed, that his teeth were lost when bite marks were found to not match the boys, that he produced a knife with the victim’s blood on it, that the only “confession” was that of a mentally disabled boy who had to be helped by the police to make up anything resembling a consistent story, that he only came forward because he was manipulated by thoughts of a reward, that much of the case rested on the urban legend of satanic human sacrifice being widespread, are all reasons to believe that the boys are innocent, but even so, I do not just assume they are innocent. What this information does do, is prove that they did not get a fair trial.

[Greywolf73]

*Originally posted by Shodan *
**
As it was phrased, it sounds as if Byers deliberately got rid of his teeth. As the website puts it, the loss was involuntary. Cite.

**

In the documentary, Paradise 2: Revelations, Byers is on tape giving two different reasons at two different times for his teeth being gone. At first he mentions that they were knocked out in a fight, then later he says that they all fell out due to a side-effect of a medication he was on.

The following quote is from the article, “Injustice in West Memphis” by Amanda H. Morgan. It appears on the WM3.org site but I was unable to link directly to it through their search function.

Also of interest is that John Mark Byers, stepfather of victim Chris Byers, no longer has his teeth. At the time of the October 1998 Rule 37 hearing for Echols, another Free The West Memphis Three Support Fund co-founder, Kathy Bakken, asked John Mark Byers about the loss of his teeth. Byers answered that the Tegretol, also called Carbamazepine, that he had to take for a brain tumor had caused his teeth to fall out (Sauls 1). The Physician’s Desk Reference lists numerous adverse reactions to Tegretol, but the possibility of tooth loss is not among them (962-964). Previously Byers has said he lost his teeth in a bar fight, that he lost them before the murders, and also that he lost them after the murders

Another troublesome aspect of the case having to do with Byers is the knife he gave as a gift to the HBO film crew during the filming of the documentary. Dried blood was found on the knife and was tested, revealing the same blood type as Byers and also his son, Chris Byers, one of the murder victims.
Quoted below is an excerpt from the same article as above:

the defense introduced an exhibit labeled for identification purposes as the “John Mark Byers Knife.” John Mark Byers gave this Kershaw knife to filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky as a Christmas gift. They in turn gave the knife to police in early January after they observed what appeared to be dried blood in the knife’s hinging mechanism (Berlinger and Sinofsky). Tests determined that the material on the knife was human blood, matching the type of both John Mark and Chris Byers. In “Transcript of 1994 Police Interview with John Mark Byers,” Byers first claimed he had never used the knife, and then recalled having used it on several occasions to trim his toenails and once in an attempt to cut deer meat. He vehemently denied that there was any reason whatsoever for the existence of human blood on the knife (1). However, as documented in Paradise Lost, when Byers took the stand in Baldwin and Echols’ trial, Byers claimed the reason there was blood on the knife was that he had cut his thumb on it. He claimed that he must not have remembered having cut himself at the time of his interview with police (Berlinger and Sinofsky). Because of the blood on the knife being of the type belonging to both John Mark and Chris Byers, the results were inconclusive. Police and prosecutors were concerned enough about the blood on the knife to postpone Miskelley’s trial pending the test results

I urge anyone who is still convinced that justice was served in this case to at least take a look at the two documentaries and consider reading Mara Leveritt’s excellent book on the subject, Devil’s Knot. I’d be surprised if you came away from that not even slightly unchanged in your opinion.

[Skywatcher]

*Originally posted by Shodan *
According to the website, Byers did not have his teeth pulled out, but they fell out (or at least, he “lost” them).
As it was phrased, it sounds as if Byers deliberately got rid of his teeth. As the website puts it, the loss was involuntary.

John Mark Byers interview
In 1990, when I was starting to have seizures and realized something was going wrong in my body, for 18 months they treated me for epilepsy. And the medication for seizures was Tegretol and Tegretol causes the [unintelligible] disease which eats your gums away from your teeth. I had been in a car wreck a year or so after that, my teeth were just, they were terrible. I couldn’t live with ’em and I had to have them all surgically removed.

Tegretol causes periodontitis? :dubious:

[Bricker]

*Originally posted by Arnold Winkelried *
Bricker, the Court TV web site says this:

Jessie was later taken into WMPD for questioning despite the fact that they did not have a written waiver of his Miranda Rights signed by Jessie’s father, a legal requirement when police interview minors. Normally this breach of a minor’s constitutional rights would be sufficient to have the subsequent confession quashed. For some reason in this case Judge Burnett chose to allow it.

Is that not true?

No, it’s not true. But it is an excellent example of telling only the facts you want heard.

It IS true that “for some reason” Judge Burnett chose to allow the confession. But listen to how that statement sounds. It suggests that for some UNKNOWN reason, Judge Burnett permitted this evidence. Some mysterious rationale, never spoken or even alluded to, resulted in the travesty of justice in which a confession of a juvenile was used as evidence without the legal requirement of a waiver of rights by the juvenile’s
parents.

An impartial reporter would have told you that Arkansas law provides that when a juvenile is tried as an adult, that requirement no longer applies. In other words, had Jessie been tried in the juvenile system his confession, lacking a parental waiver, would have been inadmissible. But tried as an adult, it’s permitted.

At the time Jessie was interrogated he was seventeen years old, and just thirty-seven days away from his eighteenth birthday. This was one of factors - not the only one - that the court relied upon to try him as an adult, and one of the factors the court relied upon to find his confession voluntary.

Now, of course, there is certainly an argument to still be made here: maybe the tactics the police used WERE overbearing; maybe the law about trying juveniles as adults is unwise. An honest reporter could hightlight those concerns without resorting to the shady tactic of saying, “…for some unknown reason…” The reason, you see now, is clear, well-known, and perfectly legal.

In case it’s not obvious by now, I have serious reservations about the way this case was handled. But I have outright disdain for the advocates who, in an effort to secure support for their view, resort to half-truths, phony implications, and outright lies.

The Court TV statement is, I hope you now see, in that category.

• Rick

[Arnold_Winkelried]

Doesn’t it matter that the decision to try him as an adult came after the police interview? Shouldn’t the policemen have received the written waiver from the parents before they interrogated him?
All I know from the courts is what I see in the media, but it seems to me that I read of evidence being thrown out of court for smaller infractions than that.

[Shodan]

*Originally posted by Nightime *
**I have to say that Shodan is severely hurting his credibility in this thread. After several posts saying that he knows enough about the case to make the very confident statements that he is making, he is still spouting some extremely important and blatant lies. For instance, he says that all three of the boys confessed. Were that true, it would certainly be extremely damaging. But it is a LIE. A lie that he refuses to even acknowledge.
**

You must have missed my correction. It was here -

Originally posted by Shodan -**
…one of them confessed and implicated the others…
**

*Originally posted by Nightime *
**
His further lies, such as saying that all three of the boys were wiccan despite numerous posts stating otherwise, only serve to make his ignorance of this case more obvious.
**

If it matters, I was discussing what I thought was implied both in the title of the OP (that “bigotry” was a primary motivator in convicting these three) and what was stated rather clearly in posts by Diogenes and others - that they were only arrested, charged, and convicted, because they wore black t-shirts, drank blood, or were otherwise weirdos. IOW, I did not claim that they were all Wiccans, I believed that was what was being claimed about the reasons for their conviction.

Sorry if I was unclear. Only one is or was apparently a Wiccan.

*Originally posted by Nightime *
**
I am amazed that Shodan can continue to call others liars simply because he disagrees, while he himself is guilty of such blatant lies. Even if his statements were made in ignorance, that only means he is lying when he says he knows enough to make even a casual comment on this case.
**

I thought I was being careful to qualify the extent to which I was prepared to go when I stated -

I am willing to say what I have said several times, Diogenes - that I have heard only one side of the case, and am not willing to commit that these three are obviously innocent and that this is a grotesque miscarriage of justice.

Nor have I called anyone a liar in this thread. Please retract that accusation. Since you are so concerned with false accusations of “liar”.

I do find it interesting that statements like “there is no physical evidence” or “they were only convicted because they wore black t-shirts” pass unchallenged by defenders of these three.

Regards,
Shodan

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

What IS the physical evidence, Shodan?

Fibers that are found in every household in town.

A knife that has not been proven to be the murder weapon nor has it been connected in anyway with any of the defendants.

And that’s it.

The fact that the kids wore black was an oft cited reason by the people of West Memphis that they were “weird” and “suspicious”

Damien’s drinking of blood is completely irrelevant to the case. It’s pecisely an example of saying he was weird so he must be a murderer.
The stepfather of one of the victims “lost” his teeth after bite marks were found on his stepson. He gave two explanations for this. The medication which he blamed in his second excuse does not cause teeth to fall out.

This same stepfather also gave a knife to HBO which matched the knife used in the murders and had human blood on it. The blood type matched one of the victims.

He virtually confessed in the second Paradise Lost movie. Watch it for yourself.

His wife also died under mysterious circumstances and Byers, in an apparant Freudian slip, refers to her “murder,” in the second Paradise Lost movie.

The only other “evidence” aginst the WM3 is a highly suspect confession from a mentally challenged teenager. Even on the taped part of the interview the police are clearly heard leading and “correcting” Jesse’s story as he tells it. The confession was immedately recanted. Neither of the other suspects have ever confessed.

There is enough reasonable doubt to drive a bus through. There is actually more evidence against Byers than there is against Echols. What would be the great harm in commuting this sentence so as to avoid the possibility of a travesty?

[Skywatcher]

*Originally posted by Diogenes the Cynic *
The only other “evidence” aginst the WM3 is a highly suspect confession from a mentally challenged teenager.

A confession which originally put him 40 miles away in another county at the time of the murder.