Even bringing in four witnesses testifying to Jessie’s alibi for the date in question wasn’t enough to overcome this obstacle. Fred Revelle, a 240-pounder who wrestled under the name “Rowdy Rebel Fred James,” said that Jessie was with him that evening at an amateur-wrestling match in Dyess, Arkansas.
“It’s not a theory. It’s the actual truth,” Revelle testified. “I would put my life on it.” And he gave details, as reported the next morning in the Commercial Appeal:
Revelle told jurors Misskelley received “a big knot on the side of his head” that night. Outside the courtroom, Revelle said that happened after he tossed Misskelley through the ropes and someone else, trying to toss him back, errantly threw him into the hard side of the ring.
On February 4, 1994, after about nine and a half hours of deliberation over two days, during which they played the confession twice, jurors returned verdicts of first-degree murder in the death of Michael Moore and second-degree murder in the deaths of Christopher Byers and Stevie Branch. It was just what the prosecution had asked for. Judge Burnett sentenced Jessie Misskelley Jr. to life in prison, plus two consecutive twenty-year terms.
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette quoted one observer as saying: “I don’t think the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. But I don’t think he would have confessed if he hadn’t been guilty.”
With the Echols-Baldwin trial scheduled to begin later that month in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the big question was whether Jessie Misskelley Jr. would testify against them. The prosecutors knew they would have to offer him a reduced sentence, and they were willing to do so because they thought it would solidify their case against the other two.
Rumors flew around the community that Jessie would nail his two codefendants. But despite heavy pressure from the prosecution, he told Dan Stidham he would not testify in Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin’s trial. His reasoning was typically simple and straightforward: It just wasn’t true.
At the same time, prosecutors twice offered Jason a deal if he would implicate Damien. He flatly refused for the same reason Jessie had. He said he hadn’t done anything, and neither had Damien.
Now that Jessie had announced his refusal to testify, his confession could not be introduced into the second trial. It would be hearsay, and the defense attorneys would have no witness to cross-examine. In practical terms, however, this was not the advantage to Damien and Jason it should have been. Everyone in the region knew about the confession, and no jury selection question or instruction from the judge could keep it from jurors’ minds. No matter what happened at the trial itself, if a juror believed Jessie’s confession, it would be difficult to grant Damien and Jason even a reasonable doubt.
CHAPTER 20
STATE V. DAMIEN WAYNE ECHOLS AND CHARLES JASON BALDWIN
On Friday, February 25, 1994, after several days of selection, a jury of eight women and four men was seated in the Craighead County Courthouse in Jonesboro for the Echols-Baldwin murder trial. Outside the 132-year-old redbrick building, the curious lined up for a chance to sit in on what promised to be the biggest spectacle the town had ever seen. Despite the change of venue, Judge Burnett was still presiding, as he did in the Jessie Misskelley Jr. trial.
Like Grundy, Virginia, when Roger Keith Coleman went on trial, someone had put a placard on the courthouse lawn with a picture of a Grim Reaper in a black hood. The sign read: HE WANTS YOU, DAMIEN.
Other than some questionable fibers, the prosecution had no physical evidence and no eyewitnesses to tie the defendants to the murders. Therefore, John Fogleman and his team had to rely on inferential elements and reasoning and statements attributed to either Damien or Jason. He said as much in his opening statement, while defense attorney Scott Davidson admitted in his opening statement, “You are also going to see that our client, Damien Echols . . . well, I’ll be honest with you. He’s not the all-American boy. In fact, he’s kind of weird. He’s not the same as maybe you and I might be.”
The public’s fascination was further stoked when Domini brought her young son by Damien to court. The baby, Damien Seth Azariah Teer, had been born in September, when Damien was already locked up.
After watching a portion of the trial, an Arkansas State University freshman commented, “Damien Echols—he was just turning around, staring at everybody. He was, like, evil. I mean, I just got the creeps really bad.”
The opening portion of the trial primarily established the facts surrounding the murders and the individuals who played a part. Dana Moore, Pam Hobbs and Melissa Byers each testified as to the last time they had seen their sons alive. As someone who has spent much of his career advising on prosecutorial strategy, I think this is a good way to start. It personalizes the victims, their families and the loss, which can often be forgotten in a trial that focuses on the defendants. So if I were Fogleman, I would have done exactly the same.
The only significant evidentiary element that came out of this for those studying the case was that Pam Hobbs’s account of the day did not square with what her husband, Terry, had told investigators. But since Terry was not called to testify, there was no impact on the jury.
Officer Regina Meek testified about responding to the call from John Mark Byers about his missing stepson, and became defensive when describing the incomplete Bojangles’ investigation. Detective Sergeant Mike Allen described finding the bodies.
The atmosphere in court grew grim as Dr. Frank Peretti described the autopsies he performed on the three boys: the multiple head injuries on Michael Moore and Stevie Branch; Michael’s water-filled lungs; the gouging wounds to Chris Byers’s thigh, the removal of his scrotum, testicles and the head of his penis, and the missing skin on the organ’s shaft. Peretti said it would be difficult to determine time of death, but when pressed, he reluctantly speculated that it could have been between 1:00 and 7:00 A.M. on May 6.
He mentioned scratches and contusions of various sorts on all three bodies, but contrary to the Misskelley confession, he found no evidence of sexual assault.
Perhaps the most significant and grisly part of Peretti’s testimony came in response to questions about the damage to Chris’s genital area. He stated his opinion that it would take considerable time and considerable surgical skill with a scalpel or a very sharp knife to perform this mutilation under the best of circumstances, such as a well-lit lab. In the dark, in the water, with the locally notorious mosquitoes present, it would be considerably more difficult. Also, since Chris had bled to death, it would be almost impossible to remove all the blood from the creek bank or any other solid ground. The only situation in which there would not be a great residue of blood would be if the body was in water at the time. Yet, he could not see how such a delicate procedure could be performed in water. He didn’t think it could be done. That comment left its own tantalizing mystery. If Dr. Peretti himself couldn’t have accomplished such a task, how could Damien or Jason have done so?
After testimony from detectives on searching the crime scene and finding the knife in the lake—no evidence was presented tying it to either defendant—the prosecution put Michael Ray Carson on the stand. Michael was a sixteen-year-old ninth grader who spent a week in the county juvenile detention center in August for burglary—breaking into a house to steal guns—during the same time Jason Baldwin had been held there. He testified that on his third day there, he met Jason when they were both involved in a game of spades with two other boys. He said he asked Jason if he was involved with the murders and Jason denied it.
The next day he and Jason were alone cleaning up the cards before returning to their cells for lunch. Michael again asked Jason the same question.
This time, according to Michael, Jason gave it up. “I said, ‘Just between you and me, did you do it?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Michael described Jason talking about how he had dismembered Chris Byers, sucked blood from his penis and scrotum, then put his testicles in his mouth. He added that he was going to kick Jessie’s ass for messing eve
rything up, but that he still expected to walk free. The entire conversation, Michael said, did not last more than two or three minutes.
You have to deal with a witness like this the same way you’d deal with a suspect: you need to profile him. You have to evaluate the background of the subject, the situation in which the confession was allegedly made, and whether there are extenuating circumstances, such as whether the witness has anything to gain.
This encounter was supposed to have happened in August; yet Michael didn’t come forward until February 1, the final day of Jessie Misskelley Jr.’s trial. Why? prosecutor Brent Davis wanted to know.
“My father told me that I should tell somebody. But I just really didn’t want to get involved. I’d just gotten out of jail, and I didn’t want to get involved with the court system,” the witness answered.
But then he and his father were watching television when a segment came on showing the still-grieving parents. “I saw how brokenhearted they were about their missing children. I got a soft heart,” he allowed. “I couldn’t take it.” He was not offered a reward, he said, and wouldn’t have taken it, even if it were offered.
Give me a break! I wish all teens that break into houses to steal guns had this much integrity.
The idea that even a guilty person would confide in this kid he hardly knew, and who was bound to talk, is so absurd that it is difficult to conceive of any jury buying it. At some point after the trial, Michael admitted he had made up the whole thing, but that’s getting ahead of our story. I only mention it here because it should have been obvious to the prosecution—whose first job is to see justice done and only secondarily to seek conviction—that there was a pattern to all of this weak and attenuated evidence. The only logic I can come up with is that they needed a witness like this to make the case. But that doesn’t make it right. Combined with a supposed participant who had to be led into the basic facts of the case by the police, you have to wonder why they didn’t just admit that there wasn’t a solid case.
Judge Burnett wouldn’t allow into the record evidence that Michael Ray Carson was a habitual substance abuser because that fact wasn’t sufficient grounds to challenge a witness’s veracity. Huh? And he further disallowed a communication to both prosecution and defense from Danny Williams, a counselor who worked at the juvenile detention facility, saying that he had told Michael the details of the murder supposedly obtained from Jason and that he knew Michael was going to lie at the trial. The judge knocked this one out because of patient-counselor confidentiality.
All in all, the deck seemed to be stacked against the defense.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen this attitude over and over again, going all the way back to William Heirens in Chicago and before. When it becomes more important to close a case than to make sure the state has the right suspects, the system falls apart and no one is served. Perhaps worst of all, a killer remains free and unpunished.
The issue of the knife in the lake got even more complicated when Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the HBO filmmakers, turned in to police a flip-blade knife John Mark Byers had given to Douglas Cooper, one of their camera operators, as a gift. When HBO officials found out about it, they told Sinofsky to turn it over to the police. Gary Gitchell testified that he sent the knife to a genetic analysis lab in North Carolina, which found traces of human blood near the base of the blade that matched both Byers and his stepson, Chris, but not Damien or Jason. This was of interest because prior to the analysis Byers had previously stated under questioning by Gitchell that the knife had never been used. Confronted with the lab report, he remembered cutting his thumb while dressing some venison.
Known by his middle name of Mark, Byers was thirty-six years of age and kind of an outsize character. He was about six-feet-five, with long stringy blondish hair, often sporting a beard, and given to public eruptions of biblically oriented vengeance against the killers of the “three babies,” at least when the cameras were rolling. He had been married previously and had a son named Ryan from his prior marriage. He was a jeweler by trade, but he had held a variety of other jobs. In a community in which corporal punishment of children was the norm, he had often been rough with Chris, but he seemed devoted to him. Chris had ongoing problems with hyperactivity, often acting disruptive in class and elsewhere, and Mark and Melissa were trying to manage the condition with doctors and prescription medication. Damien publicly professed belief that John Mark Byers was the real killer; and of the three fathers, Mark Byers was the only one Gary Gitchell had investigated in depth before he became convinced that the three teens had done it.
A number of witnesses claimed to have seen one or more of the defendants in compromising situations. Jerry Driver testified he had seen Damien, Jason and Jessie walking along in long black robes and carrying staffs at least three times, though no one else ever claimed to have seen them attired this way. Narlene Hollingsworth was in her 1982 red Ford Escort wagon on her way back from picking up her mother from her job in a Laundromat, about nine-thirty on the evening of May 5, when she spotted Damien and Domini walking on the South Service Road near the Blue Beacon Truck Wash. She said that Damien’s dark clothing seemed dirty and disheveled. Her husband, Ricky, was in the front seat with her; her mother, son Anthony and daughter Tabitha were in the second seat; and daughter Mary, son “Little Rick” and his girlfriend, Sombra, were in the back. “Big Ricky” said it was dark and the spotting was so brief that he couldn’t identify anyone. Anthony said the spotting had actually taken place around 10:30 P.M. The prosecution suggested that maybe it wasn’t Domini they had seen with Damien, but rather Jason, whose hair was long and blond.
The trial got down to specifics on Damien Echols when Detective Bryn Ridge testified about a conversation he had with Damien on the morning of May 10. Remember, Damien and Jason would not be arrested until almost a month later, but police were already focusing on them based on Jerry Driver’s suspicions.
It is clear when you read the trial transcript that Ridge and Damien were operating on two completely different levels. Damien perceived that he was being asked to speculate about the crime based on his personal knowledge and what he had heard about it. Ridge perceived that he was revealing information and motivation that no one but the killer would possess.
Ridge stated that Damien had told him the boys might have drowned and that the bodies would have been cut up, perhaps to scare someone. Eight-year-olds are not big or smart, so they would be easy to control. The one who did this probably knew the kids and was able to convince them to come with him. It may have been intended as a single murder, but the other two had to be killed to keep them from squealing.
The detective also said Damien told him his favorite book of the Bible was Revelations, his favorite writers were Stephen King and Anton LaVey, author of The Satanic Bible and other writings on the occult. From this, Damien knew that young children are the most innocent, so they would give more power to the person who did the killing. All people have demonic forces in them over which they have no control, he said, and speculated that the person who did this probably felt good about it. If this were a satanic killing, Damien would expect to find candles, stones, crystals and a knife at the crime scene. Damien also said that whenever a person does something either good or bad, it will come back to that person three times over.
Ridge asked Damien why his fingerprints would be at the scene. This is a common police questioning technique. Damien said he had never been in the woods, so he would have no idea. Ridge did not tell him that no fingerprints from anyone were found.
The prosecution asked Ridge if there was evidence that the murder was a cult activity. He answered in the affirmative, citing the secluded wooded setting, overkill and torture elements; the mutilation and blood ritual involving Chris Byers’s penis and other stab wounds; the way the boys were bound and the fact that they were eight, the “witch’s number”; and the meticulous cleaning of the site afterward so that no blood or implements remained.
How did he
know all this about cult practices? From books and police handouts not available to the public, as well as notes he had taken from his own research, he replied.
Throughout the questioning, Ridge conceded, Damien had steadfastly denied he had anything to do with the murders.
Remember the sticks that Ridge retrieved from the crime scene on July 4? Damien’s lawyer Val Price questioned him about why they had waited two months and how valid such evidence could be. “You all did not take that stick into evidence at the time you recovered the bodies?”
“No, sir,” Ridge replied. “I didn’t take this stick into evidence until the statement of Jessie Misskelley.”
Whoa! Jessie was not testifying, so nothing about his statement was supposed to be introduced. Price immediately moved for a mistrial. “The question I asked the officer did not call for him blurting out the fact that Jessie Misskelley gave a confession. The whole purpose for our trial being separated from Mr. Misskelley’s trial in the first place was the confession of Jessie Misskelley.”
Judge Burnett allowed as how Ridge “shouldn’t have volunteered” that information. But in denying Price’s motion for mistrial, he commented, “I suggest, gentlemen, that there isn’t a soul up on that jury or in this courtroom that doesn’t know Mr. Misskelley gave a statement.”
In other words, the defense would have to deal with the worst of both worlds: Jessie’s confession hanging in the air and the inability to challenge it! If the jurors believed it, but didn’t understand how it was obtained, then Damien and Jason’s involvement would be a sure thing. And if Jessie was sent to the slammer for life and he didn’t even kill any of the kids, it would have to be worse for the two who he said actually did the killing.
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