Bricker - have you actually read Miskelly’s confession transcripts and listened to the tapes?
So much of what you claim he said in his confession is either incorrect or misleading at best.
Fat Chance, Wee Bairn, any others who wish to jump in here, please consider that this discussion is moving in skew lines that are just going to frustrate you unless you recognize what Bricker is actually arguing.
He was first lured into this thread on accusations of misconduct by the judge (and implications of misconduct by appellate courts). Your arguments to support those claims are based on your interpretations of the investigation and prosecution of the cases, but you have swung a wide net that has dragged in the behavior of the court, based on how you believe they should have “recognized” the errors of the investigation.
Bricker is responding to your broad brush tarring of the judge, the courts, and the system. As long as you hold out “evidence” that different actions should have been undertaken and interpretations as to the motives and qualities of the police and prosecutor, and then project those views onto the judge and court, you and Bricker will never come to an understanding of the points he is making.
You are attacking the whole process from a perspective of (your perception of) fairness and Bricker is defending the courts and the legal system against your emotional attacks.
I have no idea whether Bricker believes that the three accused are guilty or innocent, but you are not arguing the same points in this discussion.
I don’t have any emotion on this- I frankly don’t care if the three are being gang-raped each night in jail.
But I do see your point, **Bricker ** is arguing (I believe) that regardless of guilt or innocence, the court even allowing this to go to trial based on no real evidence was just (I say it was not, I say you need A LOT more evidence to take a case to trial, unless you know that in this case, other factors are going to get the verdict you want, facts be damned, becasue of the rube jury).
He is arguing that everything the judge allowed in or out could technically be justified- I say no- he showed either extreme bias or incompetence in allowing and diasallowing as he did. I ask any member here to re-read the confession, and tell me if you think any sane judge could call it “freely given testimony”. Or would view a bloody black guy is not relevant here.
He is also arguing that it is not remarkable that any jury would find there is not reasonable doubt in this case- I disagree. There is much resoanble doubt, IMO, as it was presented. With the excluded stuff, it wouldn’t even be close.
This is no different from the Boston Strangler, Wayne Williams, And Jeffrey Macdonald cases- high profile cases that were rushed to trial based on circumstantial and excluded evidence where people were found guilty without any real proof.
My summary of his confession is taken directly from the Supreme Court of Arkansas’ review of the trial record.
I suppose the justices of the Supreme Court of Arknasas are all biased and corrupt as well?
Again with the “no real evidence” claim. Put the confession aside, then.
Echols, in dirty clothes, was near the scene at a time close to the murders. How do we know this? Testimony of Anthony and Narlene Hollingsworth.
Echols said he killed the three boys. How do we know this? Testimony of Christy VanVickle and Jackie Medford. That was two independent witnesses, offering direct evidence of Echols’ admission of guilt.
Fibers on the victims were consistent with fiber on clothes belonging to Echols. Testimony of Lisa Sakevicius.
A knife found in a lake behind Baldwin’s parents’ house had a serrated pattern that was consistent with the wounds on the victim. Testimony of Dr. Frank Peretti. And Echols was seen carrying a similar knife, testimony of Deanna Holcomb.
What about that? Echols was heard by two indepedent witnesses admitting his own guilt. How is that not “evidence?”
OK. You tell me.
What makes the bloody black guy relevant? Legally speaking, what is the reason this piece of evidence MUST be allowed in for the trial to be fair? What is the justification that makes its exclusion an abuse of the judge’s discretion? Lay it out, specifically.
I’ll even help you start:
Relevant evidence is that which has any tendency to make any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more or less probable. The presence of the bloody black guy is relevant because it shows that _________________ was more probable. (or _____________ was less probable). It shows this in the following manner: __________________.
Go to it.
The crimelibary.com article takes each of your above points and casts more than reasonable doubt on all.
The sighting was by people who were involved in crimes or other activites where testimony of this type could possibly lessen their own troubles.
The girls who heard the confession could not give any specifics, who he was with, what he was wearing, what else he said, what day. etc. One day they said it happened, he was already in jail.
Again, the fiber expert herself admitted that in the case, with how common the fibers are, it was meaningless.
How often does a Supreme Court overrule a lower court? Once a decade?
Experts, even police experts all agree they were killed elsewhere and dropped there. If this is true, how would Echoles et. al have brought them there, sans auto?
You are just restating facts. Please re-read actual transcripts, as well as the actual Misskelley confession, and tell me, regardless of what legalese is at work, if you, as an intelligent adult, feel it was coerced or not.
I know as much about law as Lionel Hutz, but are you saying there is no way that something like a bloody guy could be admitted in a trial- any trial, to show if nothing else, incompetence of the police dept. for not checking it out?
You say put the confession aside- again crimelibrary- without the confession everyone pretty much admits they would not have gone to trial with hearsay from criminals and confused little girls.
Bloody black guy is relevant to show reasonable doubt, that there was a real person out there who could have done it- that’s not admissable?
Oh yes - God forbid we should base any discussion on facts.
I don’t think there was ever any doubt that there were people who could have committed these crimes - after all, someone seems to have done. But we have the confessions, fiber and knife evidence, and so forth, to link the defendants to the crime. What is your link between this alleged “bloody black man” and the murders that shows him to be a more probable suspect than the ones convicted?
Regards,
Shodan
A bit of an aside, but one reason I’ve been reluctant to jump on the ‘Save the West Memphis 3’ bandwagon is because of a book titled May God Have Mercy.
It details the rape and murder of a coal miner’s wife from Grundy, Virginia. It follows the investigation of the murder, the facts at the crime scene, the arrest of Roger Keith Coleman, his trial, conviction, multiple appeals and eventual executiion.
The book is written in a manner clearly supportive of Coleman’s supporters. The book paints a picture of an inept or possibly corrupt U.S. District Court judge derailing the appeals process based on missing the filing date for a key appeal. It highlight corruption within the office of the prosecuting attorney, it casts severe doubt on all of the forensic evidence, and even establishes clear alternate theories of the crime.
I bought every bit of it hook, line, and sinker. In 1992 when Coleman was executed, I’d read the Time magazine article as well as a ton of local articles about the killing (being from Southwest Virginia myself, I had some local interest in the case.) I was fully convinced Coleman was innocent, that Virginia had executed the wrong man.
Last year, conclusive DNA evidence proved that hey, guess what, Roger Keith Coleman almost certainly committed the rape and thus we can assume he committed the murder. It’s made me really aware that when you take a case, and continually paint it in a manner favorable to one side, you can paint just about whatever impression you want. I’m not a lawyer or trained in the law, but I like to think I understand the legal system better than most average persons who have no professional legal qualifications. There’s so much these “debunking” of conviction books, magazine articles, websites et cetera can leave out about the actual legal process and other arguments for guilt that it’s very easy even for smart people to “buy” into someone’s innocence even when ultimately the evidence shows the “rube jury” actually got it right.
Hear, hear. It’s like what a trial would be like, if the prosecution were not allowed to present a case.
Same problem I have with a lot of death penalty discussions. Anti-DPers take anything the defense says without question, and dismiss everything else automatically, and call it “reasonable doubt”.
Which is why I have consistently asked the same question - what happened to the DNA? If it shows that these people are innocent, what the hell are they waiting for to say so?
Regards,
Shodan
Another point is (that I forgot to add above), it’s easy to paint a jury as stupid after the fact. But by and large when sensationalist documentary makers or authors want to sell people on an “unfair conviction” you’re not likely to really know everything the jury heard. Unless you actually read a full transcript of the trial in its entirety. It’s easy to sit back on the internet and call the jury stupid. However, juries hear evidence based on clearly established legal principles. They in general hear a ton of stuff a documentary maker won’t share with you, either because he doesn’t think it is interesting or because it hurts the message of his documentary. A documentary filmmaker will also tell you a lot of stuff a jury never heard. Just because a filmmaker can present “other evidence” as significant, doesn’t mean that legally speaking, it was actually appropriate to share said evidence.
How significant is a bloody man in a bathroom? If someone gets murdered and we find clear evidence linking it to one person, do we have to allow evidence that is in no way clearly linked to the situation to be admitted?
Juries aren’t perfect by any means, but I’m willing to, in general, trust a jury of twelve people who have become intimately familiar with the case and have had evidence presented to them in accordance with the law and the supervision of a professional jurist over the postulations of random people on the internet who base their assertions on CrimeLibrary.com (articles are individually written by authors with all kinds of different, clear biases in their writing) and documentary filmmakers.
In the Coleman case, even if the jury did get it wrong, a less biased overview of the case IMO shows that considering the evidence before them they got it right. Coleman’s original defense attorney wasn’t that great, the case he presented was weak and didn’t establish reasonable doubt. Even if subsequent DNA evidence had exonerated Coleman, the jury in the original case was entirely correct to convict, based on the evidence they saw and the facts they saw, there just wasn’t reasonable doubt. I wouldn’t be so quick to assume the jury in the WM3 case saw anything justifying reasonable doubt.
I sometimes think these kind of cases aren’t complete until they come up with someone else, usually conveniently dead, who the defense can pin the murders on.
Dead people can’t defend themselves. They are, therefore, the perfect patsies.
Regards,
Shodan
By facts I meant “it is a fact, judge found confession not coerced, therefore admissable”. THAT is a fact. He did those those things. But he should not have.
By your other comments, it appears you don’t know the case. I ask you yourself, as an intellignet adult, go back and read the actual confession and tell me if it was freely given. And if so, why you would have to be lead and corrected many times, and even then get things wrong, and not proivde ONE THING the cops didn’t already know, if not coereced.
As stated thrice above, the fiber evidence was by the admission of the fiber expert, meaningless because of how common the fiber was.
There is no knife evidence proving anything at all. No link to the defendants at all, except a coerced confession that gets all the facts wrong, questionable sighting, and questionable admission.
Also add, this is a small town. You are telling me the fact that on the night of a bloody murder in a small town with few murders, there was a bloody guy found near the scene, and that isn’t at least of interest?
Again, I am not a supporter of the three. If DNA proved their guilt, I would neither care nor be surprised. My beef is with ignorant people who can’t understand legal procedure, who could not possibly have come up with a guilty verdict here without bias or extreme stupidity, neither of which should be in the jury system.
I haven’t read that summary, but I have read the actual confession and autopsy reports and much of what you mentioned is wrong. Maybe you were mistaken, maybe the summary you read contained errors, I don’t know.
Besides specifics, and posting long parts of the confession, the primary basis for feeling that your summary paragraph is misleading is that Miskelley actually “said” very few of those things. The interogators “said” all of those things and Miskelley agreed. Miskelley didn’t give a narrative of the crime, he nodded along with the police’s narrative.
The few things Miskelley did actually “say” on his own were completely inconsistent with the crime (location, timing, etc.).
If I have some time later, I’ll dig up a few of the things I Burnett was wrong or biased about. I know I don’t have a technical understanding with the law, like you do, but I hope you can be open minded enough to understand why many half way intelligent people can see why some of his actions disturb us.
Thanks, and I know. I guess sometimes I just keep holding out hope that Bricker will someday stop acting like a lawyer on a message board, treating the discussion as a trial, picking out every little technical mistake someone says and just relax and have a normal conversation expressing his real views.
Like his summary of the confession. Sure, he sourced it from the courts, and didn’t really say anything technically wrong, but I’m pretty sure he knows more of the background about how much BS that confession was. But he can’t step outside of his Mr. Lawyer persona, always trying win every “case”.
If he wants to correct peoples misunderstanding of the law, that’s fine, but does it have to be your only role in any discussion?
You are more or less missing the point.
My assumption is that the jury in the case is better qualified than either you or I to determine whether or not the confession was coerced. They heard the testimony under oath (as well as the other evidence), and found no evidence of coercion. Upon review, the appellate court also found no evidence of coercion. Simply assuming that there was, is not evidence.
Yes, you have stated this several times. Could you please provide a cite from the sworn testimony of the fiber expert in which that person states, specifically, that the fiber evidence was “meaningless”? Please note, if you will, the bolded portions of my questions, which are important.
Again, you are (IMO) misstating the evidence. A knife, similar in edge to the one used in the murders, was found in the lake behind the house of one of the suspects. The testimony of Deanna Holcomb established that one of the suspects carried a knife similar in edge.
Please provide your evidence that the testimony of Deanna Holcomb was "coerced’, as you allege.
Again (addressed to Wee Bairn), please provide the evidence that the testimony of Christy Van Vickle and Jackie Medford was “coerced”.
Again, please provide the evidence that links this alleged bloody black guy to the murders, which is more credible than the sworn testimony and other evidence produced at trial.
I decline to accept at face value whatever dust the defense wants to throw in my eyes. If any new evidence is available - like DNA testing - then by all means let’s consider it, and if it establishes guilt or innocence with greater reliability than is currently possible, then well and good. But if no new evidence is available, we have to go by what we have. And simply dismissing everything as “questionable” merely because the defense is sticking to its guns, is not new evidence.
As I mentioned before, one possible theory is that the DNA evidence is inconclusive, because too much time has elapsed since the murders, and the defense is trying to lay the groundwork to argue that this means “innocent”. Or perhaps the testing is continuing, and the defense is whistling past the graveyard. But I repeat, if the DNA tests have shown that the defendants are innocent, I do not understand why this has not been publicly stated.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, first you say a jury of 12 hicks who believe in Satan is better equipped to understand something than you, and intelligent adult? Come on now.
The jury did not read the transcript and decide and as a group it was not coeerced. They were told by a judge it was not coerced, and had to take that as fact. Judge says something is admissible, jury therefore is led to believe that it is so. Another problem if you have an biased or incompentent judge- I have seen many court cases where jurors say after the fact “well, if we had known that…”
I have read the entire transcript, but not in years, and couldn’t tell you where to find it now. But my quotes aboves were from crimelibrary.com, which is not known to be biased.
The two people who saw Echols near the scene, IIRC one was a police informant with a case over her head, the other also had a current charge against them. I do not have the time or ability to track it down now. You don’t seem to be debating this is true, only that I can’t show you point blank in the transcript- this probably is not in the transcript- it was disallowed I’m sure. And again he LIVED near the scene- they all did. Would it be odd if I saw you one night two blocks from your house? Again, the background of the witnessed could not be brought up in court, ruled inadmissible.
The small girls part is in the transcript- the attorney asked them what else he said, what day, who he is with, etc.- the only thing they could say for sure was that he said he killed them- they remember nothing else. They even said it was in May- he was in jail before then. But of all this, I don’t doubt he said it, guilty or innocent- types like that would want someone to think they did it, even if they did not- up to a point.
Fiber evidence was also from crimelibary.com, similar knife found in a lake- I’m sure most everyone in town had a similar knife. The deranged stepfather gave a similar knife to the HBO crew, remember.
If your argument against my points is not that they are false, but that I can’t cite exact passages from thousands of pages of testimony and documents, well you got me there. But nothing I’ve said is false- crimelibrary summarizes it nicely.
If your saying a freely given confession to cops, other confession to third party and witness putting at the scene are strong evidence in any case, I agree. But you have a coerced confession, dubious confession to third party (guy kills someone, tells no one except two preteens he does not Know- dubious), nothing at all tying the defendants to the crime. IMO you should have more to convict someone of murder, that is all.
Here are some opinions on the case by an unbiased third party. None of which can be be debunked.
Why was the confession of a thrid party discarded?
Why was evidence colelcted on bloddy black guy lost?
WHy was stepfather coddled by the cops?
And on and on.
But best of all, the actual closing statement by the prosecutor, one of the most idiotic on record- he ADMITS there is no evidence, but Echols is a “Scary guy”? He and the judge should be disbarred. Can you imagine this closing statement by a real lawyer? Its like a Simpsons Lionel Hutz joke:
Prosecutor John Fogleman offered his closing statement to the jury. He outlined the crux of his case–the books, the music, the clothes, and Damien’s interest in paganism, and then he acknowledged–as he had to–that none of these pieces of “evidence” proved that the accused were killers. “But,” he continued, “you look at it together, and you get-you begin to see inside Damien Echols. You see inside that person, and you look inside there, and there’s not a soul in there… Scary. That’s what he is-scary.”
A real lawyer talking about a SOUL in a closing argument? Are you kidding me?
It seems like, though, if you’re having a discussion a criminal case, and whether or not people were convicted in error and whether or not the conviction should be overturned, then you need to “act like a laywer”. If you want to argue a conviction should be reversed, you need to show reversable error, and you need to know what errors are reversable and what errors aren’t.
BWAHAHAHA!!! What the hell are you talking about??
Excuse me. I have to wipe tears from my eyes.
Appellate courts are not at all reluctant to overrule lower courts.
In the same MONTH that Miskelley’s appeal was heard, the Arkansas Supreme Court overruled at least four criminal case verdicts from below. I stopped counting at four. And that doesn’t even include civil cases, which are overturned with equal alacrity.
In Eichelberger v. State , Moore v. State, Norman v. State, and State v. Phillipe, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed the decisions made by the lower court. In the SAME FREAKIN MONTH.
Yes, I feel it was coerced.
That’s not the question. The question is, “Do I feel that no reasonabel person could believe anything except that it was coerced?”
No, I don’t.
While I believe it was a bad confession, I don’t believe that this conclusion is so blatantly clear that all reasonable people must agree with me. Analogy: I believe abortion is a moral wrong, but I recognize that people of good faith and intelligence who have confronted the issue may reach a different conclusion. Get it? It’s the difference between: “I believe I’m right,” and “I’m so right that only a moron would disagree.”
It depends on the facts. To admit evidence of the bloody guy, you must have some sort of foundation, some sort of reason to show it’s relevant, so sort of good-faith belief that it’s relevant. ON TV, sometimes you’ll hear lawyers say, “Objection - no foundation.” Very rarely, you might hear a lwyer instructed to make an offer of proof or a proffer. These refer to how the side wishing to admit evidence must show some baseline connection between the facts at issue in trial and the evidence he seeks to admit.
The defense in this trial had no such foundation. They could not make an offer of proof. They are not permitted to toss up random suspects and say “Well, he mighta done it!” There must be some nexus, some link, between the crime and the evidence.
And YOU say, “There was no real evidence!” and then proceed to wave away every piece of evidence I list.
Your objection boils down to the fact that you, personally (or the authors you’re reading) are not personally swayed by the evidence. That’s not the same as saying there was no evidence. There WAS evidence. It included the hearsay confession of Echols (legally admissible, even though hearsay, as an admission against penal interest) and the testimony about the knife and fibers.
You wish to take each piece of evidence and say why it’s not convincing. That was the job of the defense. They had a jury in front of them, They had the chance to explain away each of these things. They had a chance to tell the jury, “Don’t believe these two kids; they’re just little girls!” just as you are telling me now.
You say the jury got it wrong. I happen to agree with you: if I were on that jury I’d have voted to acquit.
But you take it farther: the jury are idiots, the judge was an idiot, the judge and the lawyers should be disbarred.
THAT’S the claim that fails here.
You know nothing of how to judge the conduct of a judge or lawyers during a trial. You don’t understand the rules of evidence. You don’t know when hearsay is admissible. You don’t know any of the basic facts; you admit your knowledge is on par with Lionel Hutz – and yet you confidently opine that the judges and lawyers should have been disbarred?
Please.