FREE THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE

I got interested in this case of blatant injustice after watching the HBO documentary 'Paradise Lost" On May 5th, 1993, three young boys were brutally murdered in Robin Hood Hills, West Memphis Arkansas. Instead of searching earnestly for the real killers, three teenage boys were singled out because they were considered the town freaks. Despite the obvious evidence that they just could not possibly have commited these murders, they were found guilty. The following excerpt was taken from the Free the WM3 home page, which can explain the case better than I can.

" The police were under enormous pressure to secure convictions. On June 3, they interviewed Jessie Misskelley, 17 years old with an IQ of 72. After five hours of unrecorded questioning, and having taken and passed a lie detector test, he finally gave the police a confession. His statement implicated Damien Echols, 18, and Jason Baldwin, 16. Jessie retracted his confession soon afterwards, and pleaded not guilty at his trial. The confession was riddled with inconsistencies. An expert in false and coerced confession, Dr. Richard Ofshe, expressed grave misgivings about it's reliabilty and the methods used to extract it. Despite this, and despite the lack of any further evidence linking him in any way to the killings, Jessie was found guilt and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Soon afterwards, Damien and Jason were tried. Although he was offered a reduced sentence if he cooperated, Jessie refused to testify against them. During the trial it became clear that there was no physical evidence whatsoever connecting the two boys to the murders, and that the police had ignored at least two other avenues of investigation. They had even lost vital vidence. The bulk of the prosecution's case revolved around the fact that Damien is a heavy metal fan who is interested in Wicca, a kind of eco-spiritualism he read about at his local library. Unbelievably, the prosecution argued that this, along with his black hair, was proof that he was a devil worshipper. With the help of the media, the murders became Satanic rituals, and the trial a witch hunt.

There was not one shred of hard evidence connecting either damien on Jason to the murders. The prosecution relied entirely on insinuation and prejudice. Despite this, Damien and Jason were both found guilty.

Jason was sentenced to life imprisonment

Damien was sentenced to death by lethal injection. He is now on Death Row."

At the time this article was printed, Damien's hearing to determine if he gets a new trial had been continued time and again. He finally got it, and was denied. For more about that, check out the web site FREE THE WM3 or check out issue four of Dilapidated. In the mean time, here's what you can do to help.

Instead of a regular petition, we decided that a nice, big, scrapbook packed full of postcards and letters from all over the world would be more impressive when it arrived at the Governor's office all at once.

1) Send us a postcard from your hometown with FREE THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE written on it, along with your name and address. Send your postcard to this address:

Free the WM3 Support Fund

1626 N Wilcox PMB #423

Los Angeles, CA 90028 Then we'll do the rest. 2) Collect the names and addresses of as many people as you can on postcards or postcard-sized cards and send these to us, too. Get them to print FREE THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE along with their name and address on the card.3) Try not to send duplicate names.4) Remember to send them to us here at the fund. That way we can send them to the Governor all in one big, batch. 5) Tell everyone in the world to do it.

It is everyone's responsibility to help get these innocent men (yes, now men, they've been in jail for over 5 years now) their freedom back because it could happen in your town at any time, and you may very well be the "freak" that the cops target. By doing nothing at all, you are saying that it is alright to continue with these witch hunts even in this so called modern age. you are saying that it is alright to convict a person of a crime they didn't commit simply because they didn't fall within societies guidelines of what is normal. The post card campiagn will cost you less than one dollar, maybe even less than a quarter if you just get one of those 19 cent jobs from the post office. You have nothing to lose, and these three innocent people have everything to gain.