WM3 case appears headed for 2024 date with Supreme Court

Echols continues effort to have DNA re-tested in 1993 triple murder

By Ralph Hardin

news@theeveningtimes.com

In the 30 years since three West Memphis 8-year-old boys were killed in horrific fashion, Damien Echols, one of three local teens convicted twice for the murders, has insisted upon his innocence.

Freed, along with co-defendants Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, in 2011, Echols and his legal team have tried numerous angles to have them, the so-called “West Memphis 3” exonerated, either through a new trial, re-testing of old evidence or the collection of new evidence or witness testimony pointed at “the real killers” of the three boys.

In recent years, efforts have been focused on pushing to force the state of Arkansas to test ligatures used to bound three boys murdered in West Memphis on May 5, 1993.

While the case has been tentatively put on the Arkansas State Supreme Court’s agenda, it likely won’t be acted upon until next year.

The Court is still waiting on an amicus brief from the Innocence Project that is expected to be filed before the end of the month. Once that brief has been filed the appeal will be “get in line” behind previously filed cases to be officially submitted to the high court, Arkansas Supreme Court Clerk Kyle Burton told Talk Business & Politics. It’s difficult to predict when it will be heard, Burton said.

Since it’s a criminal case, it could take precedent over some of the civil cases that have already been filed. Once submitted, justices will render a decision in two to four weeks. That means the timeframe for a decision could span from January to April of next year.

Originally convicted in 1994 in two trials (Misskelley was tried first, while Echols and Baldwin were later tried together), the trio were sent to prison for their crimes. Nearly 18 years later, the three men, now in their 30s, pleaded to Alford pleas on Aug. 19, 2011, for the murders of Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore in echange for their realease on time served.

The three men, despite their pleas, have maintained their innocence in the case, which over the past three decades, has drawn worldwide attention from the media, from celebrities and from the general public, thanks in large part to a series of documentaries on HBO.

Echols asked prosecutors in 2020 if the shoelaces that bound the 8-year-old boys could be M-Vac DNA tested.

Often referred to as “touch” DNA testing, the company’s CEO Jared Bradley previously told Talk Business & Politics that the killer or killers were the last person or persons to touch those ligatures.

Shoelaces are coarse and can potentially remove enough skin cells for the testing to be successful, he said. If they can be M-Vac DNA tested, Bradley said he thinks it will reveal who killed the boys.

Initially the prosecutor at the time, Scott Ellington, agreed to the testing. After he was elected judge however, the newly appointed Prosecutor Keith Crestman fought to not allow the testing to move forward. Crestman told Talk Business & Politics in April of 2021 he would seek an order from the judge to destroy all the evidence in the case. When Echols filed a motion in Crittenden Circuit Court to ask for the testing, Crestman opposed it stating in court documents that the testing could destroy the evidence.

Bradley balked at Crestman’s filing, noting that the FBI has credited the advanced testing technique for solving many cases throughout the country in recent years. Repeated attempts by Talk Business & Politics to contact Crestman and ask him about this discrepancy were ignored. His appointed term as prosecutor ended last year.

Judge Tonya Alexander denied Echols’ petition in June 2022. Alexander told Echols during that hearing that since he was no longer imprisoned he could not seek relief in the form of DNA testing. Echols’ defense team member Lonnie Soury said the ruling was an incorrect interpretation of the law. There are consequences that a wrongful conviction brings to a defendant that go beyond incarceration, and many have sought relief even after being released from

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Photos courtesy of WM3

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prison, he added.

Triple Murder

Branch, Byers, and Moore were riding their bikes in their neighborhood on May 5, 1993, when they vanished.

Their nude, bound bodies were found a day later in a drainage ditch that bifurcated a wooded area near the neighborhood known as Robin Hood Hills, a few dozen yards south of the I-55 Service Road in West Memphis.

A month into the investigation, the three defendants were arrested and charged. Prosecutors claimed the murders were part of a Satanic or occult ceremony. Misskelley confessed to the crimes, implicating Echols and Baldwin. The defense argues that these confessions were error-riddled and coached. Miskelley, Echols and Baldwin were arrested based on the confessions, although he later recanted and it was claimed he was coerced.

Misskelley, says Echols’s legal team, suffers from documented learning disabilities and got the time of day wrong, the place where the attacks took place wrong, said the boys were bound with ropes, and in all his confessions he told police the boys were sexually assaulted.

There are conflicing reports from state medical examiners and forensic pathologists working at the behest of the defendants on whether or not there was evidence of a sexual assault.

Prosecutors offered testimony from experts syaing there was, while the defense argued there would be clear physical evidence to prove it and argued there was none.

Echols was originally sentenced to death and the other two received life sentences. The convictions were handed down despite a minimum of forensic evidence that tied them to the crime. Hairs from the crime scene were DNA tested in 2005 and in 2007. None of the hairs tested were a match for Echols, Baldwin or Misskelley.

One hair found in the ligature that bound Moore was a likely genetic match for Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, and another hair found was a partial match to his alibi witness, David Jacoby. Hobbs has denied involvement as has Jacoby.

The case has been the subject of numerous true crime TV shows, podcasts, books and even movies. Most of these works take the stance that the West Memphis 3 were wrongly convicted of the crime. However, in 2017, in his two-book series on the case, former Evening Times Editor Gary Meece takes the stance that the three are guilty as charged.

“Blood on Black: The Case Against the West Memphis 3 Killers, Volume 1” and “Where the Monsters Go: The Case Against the West Memphis 3 Killers Volume 2” are available on Amazon. Meece also has a poscast on the murders, “The Case Against…” online at garymeece. podbead.com.