West of Memphis: More Lies and Deception from Damien Echols

West of Memphis: 

More Lies and Deception from Damien Echols

     On December 25th, 2012 supporters of the West Memphis Three released a documentary about the crime that riveted the nation: the murders of three young boys on the evening of May 5th, 1993 in West Memphis, Arkansas.  Three teenagers, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Miskelley were arrested and convicted of the heinous crime in 1994.  After a concerted public effort by a well-funded group of supporters, the three convicted killers were released from prison in 2011.  After his release, Damien Echols, the central figure in the murders, continues to maintain his innocence in his recent book Life After Death and in the movie West of Memphis.  Funded by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Peter Jackson and directed by Fran Walsh, the film West of Memphis lists Damien Echols as a co-producer.  Peter Jackson even boasted about his largesse in support of the convicted killers:

GQ: Is there an Excel spreadsheet somewhere with a tally of what you spent on the investigation?

Fran Walsh: No. We have an accountant who’s been running the books.

Peter Jackson: Someone knows. But we don’t really care. Once you go down a road you take it through to the end.

Well received by the national film critics, the myopic and uniform opinion about West of Memphis from critics at the nations top newspapers is astonishing.  Every one of the critics at the major newspapers parrot the falsehood that the West Memphis Three were unjustly convicted.  For example, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote:

       Three young men spent 18 years in prison, one under a death sentence, for a horrifying triple murder they clearly did not commit.

       However, one critic offered a truthful and telling opinion about the new evidence presented in West of Memphis by the defense team:

       But the film also uncovers its own forensic and DNA evidence, thanks to investigators that Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh, pay for.

     Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three continually blamed the murders on someone else.  For a decade, John Mark Byers, the step father of Christopher Byers, was the chief alternate suspect.  For this documentary, Terry Hobbs, step father of victim Steven Branch, is ushered out as the new perpetrator.  Why Hobbs agreed to be in this hatchet piece is beyond me.  After conducting a fishing expedition to target someone other than their client, the blank check defense team found a hair with DNA similar to Hobbs on one of the shoelaces used to tie up Michael Moore.  Terry Hobbs could not be excluded from the 1.5% of the population which matches the DNA on the hair.  In 2007, a defense team DNA analyst related his findings at a press conference in less than conclusive language: 

            In respect to the hair that was associated with the ligature, approximately 1.5% of the population at large could be the source of that hair. So, what we know now are two things. Terry Hobbs could be the source of that hair on the ligature.

    Rabid supporters of West Memphis Three innocence do not have a problem publicly espousing this DNA as a “match” for Terry Hobbs, which it clearly is not.  This miraculous new evidence, ginned up 15 years after the conviction of the West Memphis Three, is absurd on its face.   Conveniently, Damien Echols and the writers of West of Memphis omitted the following statement by Echols recorded in 1996:

I have no doubt that the actual killer is John Mark Byers. He had the knife with his son’s blood on it, not to mention the fact that he could never keep his alibi straight. It was also proven in court that whoever killed those children had the skill of a surgeon and Byers was a jewel cutter. There was also testimony that his knife could have made the wounds on the children because the blade was consistent with the cut pattern.

      In 2009, after a $200,000 reward was offered to West Memphis residents advertised on a local billboard, three female family members rushed forward to provide affidavits to the defense stating they saw Hobbs with the three boys at 6:30 PM on the night of the murders.  The new “evidence” of witnesses miraculously recalled Hobbs with the boys sixteen years later, but couldn’t remember to tell police the day after the murders when the West Memphis police went house to house asking residents for information.  The Arkansas Supreme Court refused to consider the three affidavits as evidence in 2009, but the information is in West of Memphis.

      In a late addition to West of Memphis, two friends of Terry Hobbs’ nephew Mike Hobbs, Jr., Cody Gott and Christian Sisk, were interviewed to discuss the “Hobbs Family Secret.”  The secret is that Mike Hobbs told them that he heard from someone else that Terry Hobbs was involved in the murders.  This garbage evidence is inadmissible in any court of law in the U.S. not merely as hearsay, but double hearsay—-the nephew heard from someone else who told him Hobbs was involved in the murder.  Moreover, the nephew Mike Hobbs denies ever making that statement and both Gott and Sisk are convicted felons.   For a film purported be an objective analysis of the events, why did the West Memphis Three lawyers spend so much time in front of the camera?  As West of Memphis progresses, it becomes obvious the film is a biased position piece than an objective analysis of the West Memphis murders.  

Omission is the greatest form of lie—George Orwell

     West of Memphis omits important questions about the case. Why didn’t the documentary discuss why Echols found it necessary to hire a lawyer and stop talking to police on May 13th, 1993? I suppose that if he were not involved in the murders, Damien Echols and his family would want to provide information to the police that would remove him from suspicion.  What about the failed alibis for all three defendants?  Why didn’t Jason Baldwin even offer an alibi at trial?  Why didn’t the film address the fact that the West Memphis Three were found guilty at law twice, once in 1994 and again in 2011?  Why not talk about Exhibit 500 and the disturbing pre-murder mental illness?  What about the continued obsession with the occult?

      West of Memphis represents the shallowest type of filmmaking.  Instead of presenting an objective analysis of the entirety of the facts and evidence, the film assaults biased opinions into the passive brains of unquestioning audiences.  At the national level, the film critics failed to even raise elementary questions or concerns about the veracity of the information in West of Memphis.   Fortunately, the American public is not interested in the documentary—the box office gross since release totals a mere $117,000.00.