OT--the unexpected post script to my Big Bang story
Bonnie L. Sherrell
which I finished posting yesterday. What I found after I got those last three
chapters posted was something we had not anticipated until December at the very
earliest! But I wanted to share this news with everyone right now!
The entire story can be read now at:
http://www.lotrgfic.com/viewstory.php?sid=1805&warning=4
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The following is posted at this time solely to share the surprise of today with
everyone who is following this story. The past two days have marked a highly
emotional and turbulent experience we who have followed the case of the West
Memphis Three had not expected to see for months yet, if not for still more
interminible years. But I feel as my characters must feel as they see the
manacles struck free from their wrists for the final time. Justice for the West
Memphis Three is not yet full or final, but at least we know our primary goal to
have been reached. Rejoice with me!
Post Script
Thursday, August 18, 2011, at about 8:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight
Time. I’d just arrived home from my night job and hooked up my laptop computer
by my bed, inserting the modem and connecting to the Internet. First I
downloaded my email, noting that Fiondil had returned the last chapter and
epilogue for this story with suggestions for corrections and revisions. I
swiftly set to work to see the two chapters amended, adding some more changes
I’d decided were needed as well, and then logged onto the Many Paths to Tread
archive in order to add them and the Author’s Notes to the longer work.
Once done with that and the posting of an unrelated story, I
checked into the WM3 Discussion board hosted by YUKU to see if Dollparts had
managed to obtain and post the transcript of a portion of a statement made by
Jessie Miskelley she’d indicated she intended to acquire from Jessie’s original
defense counsel, Dan Stidham. It wasn’t there, but there was a new thread
entitled “Breaking: Surprise wm3 hearing tomorrow 8/19/2011.” The first post in
the thread merely offered a link, and when I clicked on it I found an article
from an Arkansas news agency indicating that the Honorable David Laser had
announced there would be an unexpected hearing on Friday, August 19, 2011,
regarding the case, and that all three of the convicted men would be attending.
Laser was the judge appointed to take over the case once Judge David Burnett,
who’d officiated over the original trials and all appeals and Rule 37 hearings
since 1994, actively began running for a seat on the Arkansas State Senate and
thus was no longer able by law to serve as an acting judge. I copied the text
of the article and posted it on the board so others could see it without needing
to click on the link, and posted it also to the WM3 email discussion list I’ve
belonged to for the last twelve or so years.
Response was phenomenal. Suddenly everyone was finding articles by
news agencies and video from television stations indicating that it was possible
that at least two of the three men could be released on Friday. Then family
members of the victims began making statements on the boards and to reporters
indicating they’d been advised that this was possible, although all had been
warned by Judge Laser not to give details prematurely to the press or other
outsiders. Finally official word was given that Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols,
and Jessie Miskelley had been transferred from the maximum security prisons
where they’d been most recently held to the Craighead County Jail in Jonesboro,
and that they had been directed to take with them all of their personal
property. That such a thing would happen to one who’d spent eighteen years on
Death Row was almost unprecedented; and in the few cases where this had happened
in the past it had always indicated exoneration of the condemned man.
We saw the transfer orders for Jessie and Damien, and finally the
one for Jason as well. Rumors were rife that they would be forced to admit
guilt in the commission of the murders in return for release from prison on the
basis of time served. Supporters and NONs expressed elation, frustration,
suspicion, dismay, joy, and a host of other emotions and concerns. And we
awaited the two hearings scheduled to take place on Friday morning, first a
private one to take place in Judge Laser’s chambers in the courthouse involving
the three men, their families, their lawyers, the prosecutors, and the families
of the victims, to be followed at about eleven by a more public hearing in a
courtroom that could possibly seat only about a hundred people.
Cruecial could not get into the courtroom as she’s always done
before, so we didn’t have our usual insider slipping us tidbits via her
smartphone as we waited. I managed to fall asleep while waiting for the
hearings, and woke at noon to find that Damien, Jason, and Jessie, surrounded by
lawyers and family, were giving a news conference explaining that they had
accepted what is called an Alford plea, a move in which they admitted that the
prosecution has sufficient evidence that it might lead to a ruling of Guilty
should they go again to trial, but still insisting that they were factually
innocent. Such plea-bargains are not uncommon—the accused isn’t admitting guilt
but indicating he doesn’t want to risk the possible vagaries of a trial enough
to possibly end up in prison or worse should the judge prove biased or the jury
prove amenable to manipulation by the prosecution or one of their own
members—both of which had proved true in the original trials for these three
men.
What was unprecedented, however, was that this plea was being
offered them after they’d already been convicted and had spent years in prison,
with Damien in isolation in a death cell for eighteen years. This plea has
always previously been offered in lieu of going to trial to begin with, not in
lieu of going through the process of the scheduled evidentiary hearings in
December with the likelihood of orders to retry them. In return for accepting
the Alford plea, their sentences would be suspended and they would be
immediately released with no restrictions on their ability to travel.
Jason had not wished to take this plea-bargain, wanting to go
forward through the coming hearings and possibly a retrial, intent on having his
name fully cleared. But, on hearing that Damien has not been in good health and
having experience with the health care within the Arkansas prison system, he
finally decided that, for Damien’s sake, he would accept the plea. It was
possible that had he not done so, he would have remained in prison and the other
two could find themselves returning to the custody of the Arkansas Justice
System, with Damien always in danger of returning to Death Row once more.
The state of Arkansas could save face, implying that they were being
magnanimous in allowing the three to go free in spite of never being proved
innocent in a court of law; and they could always further imply that the three
were admitting the possibility of guilt. This would save the state of Arkansas
the expense of a retrial it could easily (and embarrassingly) have lost, and
would prevent the three men from being able to sue the state for wrongful
conviction and imprisonment. It would also, they hoped, allow the prosecutor to
campaign for a seat on the U.S. Senate and the state Attorney General to make a
bid for governor without further embarrassment from outside sources constantly
throwing the situation of the West Memphis Three in their faces in public
forums. And the three men could at last leave prison bars and life behind them
and seek to forge new lives on the outside.
So, now they are free, and months before the expected December
hearings, and without having to wait while the prosecutors possibly challenged
Laser’s expected order to retry, followed by who knew how long before the state
quit fighting the inevitable and allowed them to walk out of their cells for the
final time.
The NONs are most upset with the situation, and most are trying to
put the spin on it that they “admitted guilt” in signing the Alford plea, or at
least that they still haven’t had their names fully cleared.
Many of the supporters have pledged to continue helping as they can,
and Jason has indicated he, at least, intends to continue working to clear his
name, but at least now he can do so from the outside, taking a direct role in
the process.
So, most of us are feeling ecstatic, and shocked to find that, all
of a sudden, our immediate goal has been reached, and Jessie, Jason, and Damien
are at last out of prison. And so it is that on August 19, 2011, Damien Echols
is able to take the woman he married while on Death Row into his embrace and
finally know the joy of his marriage to her. She gave up a promising career as
an architect in New York to move to Arkansas and pursue his freedom. I suspect
he’s wondering what he can do now to fully repay her for all she has sacrificed
for his benefit.
One other surprising experience I knew was an unexpected pride in
the sight of big, blustering John Mark Byers, Christopher’s adoptive stepfather,
insisting furiously that until the real killer is arrested and prosecuted, he
won’t feel that justice is done. He’s known since 2007 that those he’d thought
had killed his son were actually innocent. Now he wants the whole world to
acknowledge it, and for the real killer to know the punishment he’s earned. To
find that I actually now respect him is a bonus I’d never expected to know. But
there’s no question that for the last four years he’s worked tirelessly toward
clearing the names of Jason, Jessie, and Damien while seeing the actual killer
publicly recognized and made to stand trial, and he does not want for that man
to continue to go free.
And now we need to remember those three little boys, Michael Moore
in his Cub Scout uniform; Steve Branch on that shiny new bike his grandpa had
just given him; and Christopher Byers and the two dollars worth of candy he’d
just kiped from his older brother. Someone killed them by striking each
repeatedly on the back of their heads, and that someone has not yet been
arrested or prosecuted. Until that day comes, the questions will continue to
remain, and their families will always feel that their sons are unable to truly
rest in peace.
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Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."