LITTLE ROCK – Three men imprisoned for the “Satanic” 1993 slayings of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, will walk free after nearly two decades of proclaiming their innocence, a judge ruled yesterday.
Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley jnr, known as the “West Memphis Three”, accepted a bargain known as an “Alford plea” in which they could continue to claim their innocence but plead guilty in exchange for an 18-year sentence and credit for time served.
Two had been sentenced to life in jail, while Echols was on death row. They were expected to be released yesterday after the ruling in the Craighead County District Court in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
“As far as the state is concerned, this case is closed,” said prosecutor Scott Ellington, adding that the state believed the three were guilty.
“I strongly believe that the interest of justice was served today.”
Pressure had mounted to free them after they were convicted in 1994 of murdering cub scouts Steven Branch, Christopher Byers and James Michael Moore. Police at the time called the murders “satanic” because the children’s naked bodies had been bound and mutilated.
The West Memphis Three, teenagers at the time of the murders, maintained their innocence in the deaths of the boys.
Recent DNA tests did not link the men to the scene and showed the presence of others who have never been identified.
Their cause was taken up by activist groups across the country and was championed by celebrities such as Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines, both of whom were in Jonesboro for the hearing.
Yesterday’s move was a complicated legal proceeding that protects Arkansas from a potential lawsuit should the men win a new trial, get acquitted, and seek to sue the state for wrongful imprisonment, Mr Ellington said.
The plea means the defendants acknowledge officially the state has evidence against them, but can continue to claim their innocence, he continued. It was “most likely” that a judge would have granted them a new trial, he said.
The state believes the defendants could easily have been acquitted in a new trial because of the deaths of witnesses, DNA tests, changing stories and stale evidence, he added.
If they were found guilty in a new trial, chances were high they would not have been convicted of capital murder and would have had lighter sentences, he said.– (Reuters)