Words are hollow, but freedom is real
Columnist | John Brummett
JONESBORO — Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley and Jason Baldwin pleaded guilty here Friday to mutilating three little boys in West Memphis in 1993.
But they didn’t mean it.
Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington told the world’s media that he was personally certain the three men committed this horror.
But I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that, either.
For what they said, Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin walked free after 18 years in state prison.
For what he said, the prosecuting attorney avoided three likely mistrials he figured he would lose. He also spared the state millions in false imprisonment damages that the three men might have won had they secured those likely acquittals in retrials.
Was justice served? It wasn’t if you think the murder of 8-year-old boys ought to be solved to achieve justice. It wasn’t if you think people ought to shoot straight with you in a court of law and in person.
Politics was served, though, and quite well. What transpired was an intricate negotiation worthy of Congress and the debt ceiling debate.
This was all about a rarely used legal maneuver called an “Alford Rule,” by which a defendant is permitted to plead guilty in court, then to walk outside and say he is not at all guilty no matter what he just said, but innocent.
And while justice is surely imperfect, and sometimes not pretty, and sometimes not altogether achieved, free is free.
These three men are now free. The state is now free of futile trials and looming damages, not to mention free, should it choose, to look for what might be the real killer.
Echols’ high-priced investigators, paid for with celebrity-raised money secured through the diligence of Echols’ wife, Lorrie Davis, said they’d be happy to work further with local police authorities. Two of those celebrities, music giants Eddie Vedder and Natalie Maines, were in the courtroom Friday.
Perhaps the police will take up Echols’ team on that offer, even though the district attorney is on record saying the case is closed because these three guys did the crime for sure. Ellington even said he could only hope and pray he’d made the right decision in doing this deal, and, when asked what he meant, suggested he was fearful these so-called West Memphis Three might not be “rehabilitated” and might commit crimes again.
Why was Ellington so fearful of having to face new trials? Actually, he was pretty candid about that. He said evidence was strong of jury foreman misconduct in Echols’ trial.
That foreman, Kent Arnold, is a local real estate mogul whose signs are strewn all over commercial developments blocks away from the courthouse on Jonesboro’s Main Street.
What Arnold stands accused of by Echols’ lawyers is maneuvering to get the jury to vote guilty on account of a recanted confession by Misskelley that the state had not been allowed to enter as evidence.
And why did Ellington figure he’d lose the retrials? He said witnesses were dead. He said the state didn’t have any DNA evidence at the time, and that none of the DNA evidence produced since, gathered by Echols’ experts, implicates the three.
What now for Echols and his wife? Nothing about this negotiated settlement restricts Echols’ travel. Friends of his wife said a celebration might be imminent in Memphis, after which Echols and Davis likely will go to New York to stay at least for a while.
That’s where Davis lived as a landscape architect before she learned about Echols’ plight from a documentary on HBO, was moved by it, visited Echols in prison and then moved to Little Rock to marry Echols and devote herself to his freedom.
The best part of this ,is that a crazy woman who married a killer in prison now has to live with that SOB.
I hope Justice is served on her.
Now that Justice could be a happy life with a man that was wrongly convicted ,or it could be one day he kills and mutilates her. It isn’t my decision, that has to come from above, I only wish for Justice.
I have seen the Alford plea used right here in Maryland, but here the guy pled it to avoid the death penalty, he still got 30 years and he was guilty . Guilty as sin, as I believe these three are.
Two of those celebrities, music giants Eddie Vedder and Natalie Maines, were in the courtroom Friday.
..........................................................
I wouldn’t call these two” Music Giants”.
Unless you are into Rock and Roll, which I am not, you probablynever heard of Eddie Vedder —and Natalie Maines is the fat chick with the big mouth who put the Dixie Pigs out of business.