He flip-flopped from being the leader of the “Fry the WM3!” camp to a “Free the WM3!” camp follower. I’m not sure what turned him around, and as he’s generally crazier than a shit house rat there’s no telling.
I would imagine that would be “cruel and unusual punishment”. Prisoners work for state agencies in Arkansas, and they are not undernourished.
Off Jackson/Wales, in the “little Mexico” area. Big fan of Midtown though. 
How is any guilty plea not “under duress,” then?
In law, a guilty plea waives all non-jurisdictional defects claims. You cannot plead guilty and then appeal your conviction, unless you’re appealing based on a jurisdictional problem or your plea gave you the right to appeal.
I doubt they needed a separate agreement not to sue. To sue, they’d have to show that the state’s conviction of them was so unreasonable that it went beyond simply an ordinary error. When they have admitted that there was a factual basis for the state to convict them, as they must have to enther a no contest or guilty plea, they skewer their claim that the state’s conviction of them was remarkably unreasonable.
I’d consider a guilty plea non-coerced in the case of a previously unsuspected person turning themselves in and then pleading guilty at trial. In the other 99.9% (made up number) I would consider a guilty plea to be made “under duress”.
That doesn’t mean that most people pleading guilty aren’t factually guilty; but I see no reason to pretend that the state isn’t essentially extorting confessions from defendants. Especially in death penalty cases.
(Yes I’m aware that this doesn’t constitute extortion in the legal sense.)
As I said upthread, the legal system isn’t about fairness or justice, it’s about winning. The state made a mistake, and wins despite that. Falsely convicted people should receive compensation.
I threw the Commercial Appeal on Wales, off Jackson, in the mid-70s. It certainly wasn’t “little Mexico” back then. It was solid middle-class white. French Village Apartments were a little low-class, but Wales was nice. Folks had new cars there.
excavating (for a mind)
The state was going to kill Echols (or at least try to. At the very least, they would have kept in the living hell of death row until a jury let him out) unless he agreed to their bullshit plea. That is the definition of duress - and no, it isn’t the same as a normal guilty plea because normal guilty pleas don’t offer a swing between unfettered freedom and death row The state knew it couldn’t win a new trial, and also knew that a lawsuit would take them to the cleaners since no reasonable person could conclude there was any factual basis to even charge these kids.
The state basically admitted they were innocent today. If they really thought these guys had murdered and mutilated three cub scouts, there is zero chance they would have offered a deal like this.
The plea also allows them to maintain their innocence, which is very unusal, and is also proof that the state knows they’re innocent.
This.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, IANAL, but aren’t most guilty pleas entered somewhere between arrest and a trial verdict rather than after you’ve been in prison for 18 years? And isn’t the result of pleading guilty to torturing and murdering three children usually going to prison and or death row rather than getting out of prison/death row and going free? If Jason Baldwin hadn’t plead guilty then he’d still be in prison while Echols, who was on death row and “admits” he [del]did sign his name in the Devil’s book[/del] tortured and murdered three children, is free. This is fucking Salem- confess you are in league with Lucifer and your sins will be forgiven and you shall be free, or deny them and be hanged. LITERALLY- they plead guilty to making a Satanic sacrifice (I think that was the prosecution’s argument wasn’t it?) and because they’ve confessed it publicly they’re out.
I would plead guilty to killing those three boys if the alternative were going to prison and spending my life in solitary confinement until I either die or I’m killed; people have confessed to everything from treason to fornication with the devil under less duress.
I’m happy too. I’ve been following this case for a very long time, and I’m shocked that they’re finally been released, even more than I’m saddened that they were jailed for this long after a trial that presented no evidence of their involvement.
::cues up “West Memphis Moon” by Chuck Prophet::
As broke as I ever get, I seem to always overspend myself on restaurants. I do this all the time and my only sentence was all the fucking overdraft fees. I’d say I’ve eaten out two thousand times since they got sentenced and we stopped our metal band practice to watch the news, and up until yesterday.
Now going to an Applebee’s in public with, you know, people…
Damien mentioned something about just being released from solitary just last week? Was he sentenced to partial solitary on his death row sentence?
Anyone remember Seinfeld when George’s prison pen pal got out? Scared the crap out of him. 
I bet Damien Echols’s prison pen pal wife Lorri Davis must be feeling a bit like that tonight. She fought like crazy to get this dude out. But, push comes to shove a guy from death row is sliding in between her sheets tonight. How well can anyone know someone from letters and visits behind thick glass? Do they have a thing in common? What’s he like after a few beers? Is he moody and easily angered? There’s a ton of stuff she’s going to learn in the next few weeks.
Glad it’s her and not me. She wanted this and now she’s got it.
Yes, this is a plea under duress.
I’m lucky I didn’t live in a podunk town thinking Satan possesses teenage kids. It almost seems like the “Satan Scare” of those days still lingers in this plea, no? The court may still have that fear that they are close to the dark one! 
But even if I grew up in a Mansion and somehow got in the same mess, I think I may have dove for the plea too.
Jason Baldwin said something about fighting to clear their names, but it’s much better to do it on the outside.
I hope they leave the state and never go back except for trial. They looked awful. Way better online or on CNN earlier.
I doubt they’ll stay married as that had ‘marriage of convenience’ written all over it. Being legally married to him entitled her to act and speak on his behalf more officially than if she’d just been a friend (e.g. having his wife attend events is more prestigious than just having his friend Lorri attend). He looks like he’s in terrible health and he’s been in solitary for years so I doubt there’s much slipping between her sheets just yet; in fact I wonder if he and the others were able to sleep at all last night being in a totally foreign surrounding for the first time in so long.
Echols also has an 18 year old son out there somewhere by Domini Teer, his girlfriend at the time of the murders. No idea if he’s ever had any contact with the kid.
It is also 2 minutes away from a large city with a population over 600,000. West Memphis has a nortorious police department (not that Memphis is much better) not being a white redneck is apparently criminal activity there.
@ Diogenes, they are stupid rednecks not hillbillies since it is the middle of the delta and about as flat as you can get.
If I were them I would move to Alaska. They will not live long in West Memphis nor remain out of jail long. They will be targeted by the police and other fine citizens who are determined these men committed the crime based on the fact they liked to wear black and listed to heavy metal. I don’t know if they are guilty or not. I have some of read the court transcripts and I know that there is evidence on both sides that is excluded or never comes to light or was ignored because it didn’t fit.
I don’t think justice was served here.
Uh…didn’t they plead guilty to some violent crime?
I believe that they were innocent, but, you *do *have all the cite you need.
hh
Not really, no. It was a weird deal where they were able to enter the plea as a technicality while maintaining their innocence. I don’t see how that’s a cite for them being “very dangerous” which is the claim that was being made.
The Germans have a word I wish we had in English: jein, a contraction of ja and nein that means, obviously, “Both yes and no”.
From wiki (and I’ve checked the cites it gives- it’s legit)
I’ll admit I wasn’t familiar with the term before yesterday. Apparently it’s rare; I’m wondering if most criminal lawyers ever use it in their careers. The wiki links to the history of the term, which involved a man accused of 1st degree murder and with a mountain of circumstantial evidence against him. His lawyer convinced him to plead guilty to 2nd degree to avoid the death penalty. His appeals went to the SCotUS.
Judges, understandably, don’t like accepting guilty pleas from people who won’t admit to committing the acts they’re accused of; they want defendants to come clean in open court. But there seemed to be a bit of a stalemate in this case. Let’s not forget, they had been convicted by juries. Today, of course, numerous holes have been poked in the prosecution’s case, but even though it looked like a new trial was likely to be ordered, they had already won once before, and there are still plenty of people in the community convinced of their guilt.
From the perspective of the WM3, they could have chosen to stick it out through another trial and try for a verdict of not guilty, but they had already been convicted once before with dubious evidence. Plus, there’s probably a bunch of evidentiary matters that would have to be hashed out before a new trial, which could take a long time, and there was no guarantee that they would have been released on bail during the pendency of their cases; they would have remained in custody. Better to get out now and try to prove your innocence from the outside than to languish in prison.
OK, the state called them violent criminals, and they said they wouldn’t argue with that.
hh