They're free.
This morning,via an "Alford plea", a judge in Jonesboro, Arkansas ordered the release of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., known to their supporters worldwide as the "West Memphis Three".
They spent seventeen years in prison - on Death Row, in Echols' case - for being the weird kids in a small town on a day when something unspeakable happened: three 8-year-old boys - Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers - were found dead, naked and bound near a creek. According to initial exams, the bodies had been mutilated (later, actual experts would find the supposed mutilations were work of animals, post-mortem). Steve Jones, a juvenile probation officer who for some ungodly reason was stomping around the crime scene, remarked that it looked "like a cult thing" and gosh, he thought he knew a kid who would do something like that.
And so it began.
Read on . . .
This case was always a bit close to home for me. In my case, the town was West Monroe - a bit bigger than West Memphis, and one state southward, but in every way that counted, the same sort of Bible-Belt, rumor-driven, enclave.
I was that kid - smart, dark clothes, Pagan (though the word - and the news there actually was a word for it - was years ahead of me), spending his time reading books that scared the "good people". When the case first came to my attention, when I first got a look at Damien, my first thought was - if that kid wasn't me, at that age, he sure as hell would have been in my clique.
And here he was, on trial for his life, with jurors who - I kid you not - huddled down in the backseat of the car as they were driven to the courthouse for fear the National Satanic Cult, or whatever the hell, would "get them" for being involved with the case. The more I read about the case, the more footage I saw of the actual trial, the more I recognized the kind of people that were prosecuting the West Memphis Three . . . and the more it chilled me.
I remember the kind of people that spread the Satanic Panic - gullible, sheltered, largely ignorant of any aspect of the world they didn't see or learn firsthand. They are not people you want on your jury, if you're anything less than apple-pie normal. Echols - a weird kid into witchcraft, with a troubled history including manic-depression and some run-ins with the law - had no chance whatsoever.
The details of the investigation and trial . . . well, you should check out the Paradise Lost documentaries (be warned - there are graphic images). Or just trust me - there's a reason why people from bus drivers to celebrities to - in the last few years - even some of the parents of the victims have hoped for this day. Words like "farce" and "sham" don't begin to describe it. People have received more justice from judges wearing Chinese military uniforms.
But today is a victory. Not a total one - an Alford plea is not exoneration, and of course somewhere out there, the killer(s) of three young boys are still running around free. I'd like to see both of those corrected, and soon. But three men who've been behind bars since before they were old enough to drink finally get to go home tonight, and that's something.
Welcome back, guys.