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West Memphis 3 killer getting his date in court

Echols wants DNA evidence to undergo new testing procedure

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Echols wants DNA evidence to undergo new testing procedure

By RALPH HARDIN

ralphhardin@gmail.com

It turns out that a twice convicted child killer isn’t quite through with the Arkansas judicial system.

Damien Echols, one of three defendants in the infamous West Memphis Three case, will once again get his day in court. Echols, or at least his legal team, will be back in court on Thursday to ask the judge to order prosecutor Keith Chrestman to hand over DNA samples from the case to lab for additional testing. In March, a circuit judge ordered the hearing to settle the dispute after Echols was initially being denied the right to have the evidence tested via a more advanced but not widely accepted new form of DNA testing.

“The state is attempting to prevent the truth from coming out,” Echols said.

Echols, who along with co-defendants Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin, has now twice been convicted in the murders of three West Memphis 8-year-old boys in 1993, has maintained his innocence.

Back in December of 2021, Echols’ legal team said that evidence believed to have been lost in the case was found at the West Memphis police department.

“Every single piece of it was right there. Nothing had been destroyed. It was all accounted for and cataloged,” he said.

Echols wants a California lab to use new technology that suctions out DNA from the evidence. He wants the shoestrings that were used to tie up the children tested _rst.

“The only person whose DNA would be in that ligature is the person who tied the knots,” he said.

Echols’ legal team says prosecutors are blocking that, too.

“Now that we’re asking to test it, now that it’s been found, now that we know they were lying when they said it was destroyed, now they don’t want to go through with the testing.

Now they’re _ghting it,” Echols said.

Back in February, Crittenden County prosecuting attorney Keith Chrestman said _lings from Echols’ legal team did not meet state requirements.

At the time, Chrestman claimed Echols’ petition must be presented in the court where the conviction happened, which is Craighead County, not Crittenden. Thursday’s hearing will take place in West Memphis.

Damien Echols (top center), along with Jessie Misskelley (top left) and Jason Balwdin (top right) were convicted in 1994 and again in 2011 in a plea deal of the murders of (bottom row, from left to right) Chris Byers, Michael Moore and Steven Branch in ritualistic style on May 5, 1993. A hearing tomorrow in West Memphis will determine whether or not Echols’ legal team will be allowed to test DNA from the case with a new testing system that prosecutor Keith Chrestman says has not been largely accepted in legal proceedings.

File photos

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