Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three

by Greg Day

  Voices for Justice

  No event since the so-called DNA press conference in November 2007 received more hype than the “Voices for Justice” rally held on August 28, 2010, in Little Rock. Initially, an announcement was made that the rally and concert benefitting the West Memphis Three would be held in a small Methodist church. Headliners Eddie Vedder and Natalie Maines were to appear before some seven hundred people; tickets were going for ninety-five dollars apiece—$500 for “VIP” tickets. Several days later, allegedly because of “technical and sound issues” at the church, the venue was changed to the Robinson Center Music Hall, and ticket prices dropped to twenty-five dollars each, presumably because of the increased seating capacity (the hall holds some 2,600 people; according to the Arkansas Times, the event sold out).

  There were teasers in press releases of possible appearances by “special guests” such as ex-Guns ‘n’ Roses frontman Axl Rose and shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, but the final line-up was a little more sedate and, with the possible exception of Patti Smith, a lot more talented. The man Lorri Davis said “knows this case inside out,” Johnny Depp himself, took center stage. Eddie Vedder, a constant presence among Echols’s celebrity supporters, was accompanied by a crew cut-sporting Natalie Maines. Performances were also given by Lisa Blount and Ben Harper and Fistful of Mercy (featuring Dhani Harrison, son of the late George Harrison).

  The event was sponsored by Arkansas Take Action. “We are incredibly honored to have Eddie and Natalie lend their voices to this important evening,” co-founder Capi Peck said. “Their willingness to join us for Voices for Justice will help raise even more awareness about the profound injustice that continues to occur. We will not rest until our political and judicial leaders hear our voices and do the right thing.” This would be the movement’s final push for publicity prior to the September 30 hearings before the Arkansas State Supreme Court, along with the attendant demonstration planned for outside the capitol.

  Along with performing a number of solo songs and backing up on others, Vedder read from letters written to him by Echols. From one such letter he read the following passage, one that seems to heavily reflect Echols’s past association with Buddhism.

  One thing I’d dearly love to have is an hour glass, or a collection of them, some that measure minutes, some that measure hours, some that measure the whole day. And grandfather clocks, and pocket watches. The thing I like most about time is that it’s not real. It’s all in the head. Sure, it’s a useful trick if you want to meet somebody at a specific place in the universe for tea or coffee, but that’s all it is. There’s no such thing as the past: it exists only in the memory. There’s no such thing as the future: it’s only in our imagination. If our watches were truly accurate, the only thing they would ever say is “now.”

  It was now Depp’s turn to read, and after asking the audience to close their eyes and imagine this writing was their own, he delivered this passage from Echols’s journal:

  Today, the guards made me bleed again. They chained my feet so tight I could barely move. I bleed through my socks. Last month it was my left ankle; today it was the right. When I wash the sole, it burns like fire. I’m going to have to keep my ankles clean, because I don’t have any alcohol or peroxide to kill the bacteria, or infections, and this place is filthy. I can’t remember what it’s like to walk as a human being anymore. My cell is so small I can only take two steps. Anytime I’m brought out, no matter how briefly or infrequently, I have chains on my hands and feet, as well as guards hanging on me. It’s been well over sixteen years since I’ve actually walked anywhere. Sometimes I still can’t wrap my mind around that. I’m working on my seventeenth year now. There were times when I thought surely, someone is going to put a stop to this. Surely someone is going to do something. But they never do. Time just rolls on; it’s insanity. I’m truly amazed at what they’ve been allowed to get away with, and for how long. It does no good to dwell on it. Either I focus my energy on things I cannot change, or conserve it, and apply it to small things I can change. That’s what the I Ching calls, “the taming power of the small.” Every great victory is made up of many smaller victories.

  This was perhaps the most poignant moment in the show. It allowed the listeners to feel, if just for the moment, the reality of life on death row. If we had hearts at all, we knew this man was suffering greatly. Guilty or innocent, Echols was in pain. For some that was as it should be; for others, it was unbearable.

  More on Film

  Bruce Sinofksy and Joe Berlinger weren’t the only ones planning to capitalize on the current status of the case of the WM3; Paradise Lost 3 had some competition. Filmmaker Amy Berg (Deliver Us from Evil), backed by director Peter Jackson, had been busy trying to put a film together, though she was meeting with many closed doors. For example, Sharon Nelson, Terry Hobbs’s former girlfriend, gave an affidavit to the defense as part of Jason Baldwin’s appeal but rebuffed attempts by Berg to get her on film.205 Berg has stated that her film will “tell the truth of this very complex tragic story,” the “truth” being that the WM3 were wrongly convicted. Indeed, it is difficult to find any form of media that believes otherwise.

  Amy Berg had recently begun taking Amanda Hobbs around to various doctors and hospitals in the Memphis area. Amanda told her father that Berg was giving her money, money that she desperately needed. Terry wasn’t buying it. “It’s as lowdown as it can be. That Lorri Davis is behind all this,” he told George Jared of the Jonesboro Sun.206

  Larry King Live, Part 2

  On Wednesday, September 1, 2010, less than a month before Damien Echols’s attorneys were to make oral arguments before the ASSC, CNN aired a second episode of Larry King Live devoted to the case of the West Memphis Three. The first, discussed previously, had been shown in December 2007. This show was presented in panel format, with King in his studio and his guests sitting against the backdrop of the stage at the Robinson Music Center in Little Rock. Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maines, Lorri Davis, and attorney Dennis Riordan sat in director’s chairs, answering questions posed by King.

  King asked whether Vedder and Maines were “100 percent” convinced of the innocence of the WM3 or were just saying there was reasonable doubt. Although Vedder seemed to equivocate, the truth was that he had always believed in the innocence of the West Memphis Three. “This is a tragic crime, and there were three young kids that were killed. I really wanted to be sensitive to the crime that was committed and the victims and their families,” he said. “At one point I had to look [Echols] in the eye and ask him straight ahead, and I was completely satisfied with his answer.”

  Dennis Riordan explained to King how DNA evidence was used to exonerate convicted men. “If you are tried and convicted [of a serious charge], it is virtually impossible to win your case on appeal, but once your direct appeal is over, as it was in the Arkansas Supreme Court, the legal system really assumes that there can be no validity for a further appeal or challenge.”207

  King turned his attention to Lorri Davis and her marriage to Damien Echols in December 1999. “It’s been a journey,” Davis said. She giggled somewhat nervously when King told her how “talented,” “bright,” and “very beautiful” she was. Maines giggled too, though she didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the occasion. Vedder and Riordan maintained the somber look of two men attending a funeral, which was perhaps more appropriate, given the topic.

  “Why subject yourself to a marriage in which you don’t touch your husband?” King asked Davis.

  “Yes, it’s difficult, and yes, I would much rather it be different, but it will be,” she answered. Unbelievably, King asked her if there were conjugal visits in Arkansas. “No,” she answered, clearly embarrassed. “There are not.”

  King could be a remarkably insensitive buffoon at times, and he was notorious for doing little or no research on his guests before their appearances. Unless he had interviewed a guest previously—he could lob softballs at Bill Maher in his sleep—the show was likely to be a little t
hin on substance.

  The subject then came around to the Maines-Hobbs defamation suit. “I never expected it,” Maines said, trying to sound confused about why someone who was being accused of murder with little evidence would try to sue a well-heeled celebrity. But she was happy about it. “It’s been awesome. It’s been great for the case, and hopefully that gentleman will regret it [laughing], and everyone else will benefit from it.” She and Davis continued giggling. “Bring it on. I’m not scared,” Maines continued, “when I believe wholeheartedly in what I’m doing, and I felt confident in my case in that instance, and in Dennis’s case.”

  Possibly the most curious and surprising aspect of the supporters, the various celebrities, Lorri Davis, Mark Byers, and Echols himself, was the incredible confidence and hope they had in the eventual exoneration of the West Memphis Three. They all claimed to be well educated on the case, and though Riordan had probably prepared them for the worst, they chose to remain amazingly optimistic about the outcome. Vedder’s comments on Larry King Live were almost shocking given his (perhaps inaccurate) reputation as a “grunge” rebel. “You have to have faith in the justice system. It’s part of our country; it’s part of the fabric of our flag to believe in justice.” Vedder appeared to be the most thoughtful of the group and was genuinely troubled, filled with fear and empathy for a man he called his friend, a man who was condemned to die.

  September 30, 2010

  Arkansas attorney general Dustin McDaniel said of the case, “Our office knows that there are concerns about this case, but be assured that we take the utmost care in handling the appeals of death sentences handed down by Arkansas jurors. We are committed to fairness and justice not just for the three inmates, but also for the three little boys who didn’t live to see middle school.” If that statement, read on Larry King Live, wasn’t heard as an omen, perhaps McDaniel’s political message was missed. It wasn’t just political posturing; McDaniel wasn’t much different from most states’ attorneys general when it came to upholding convictions. Most believe in the integrity and accuracy of the justice system in their state, the system Eddie Vedder said he too had much faith in. This was a triple homicide involving eight-year-old children, and there was nothing in the defense’s case that could not be refuted by the state. As Riordan stated during Larry King Live, the defense had to prove that were the case to be tried today, there would be a reasonable probability that a jury would acquit.

  The exposure of the case expanded when the ASSC announced that during the summer of 2010, cameras and software had been installed and tested and would make the court’s oral arguments available to viewers over the Internet. After 48 Hours Mystery, Voices for Justice, and Larry King Live, as well as the announcement of the soon-to-be-released Paradise Lost 3, the court needed to prepare for extra demands on its available bandwidth.208 Chief Justice Jim Hannah said, “The judiciary, as an institution, has a history of not looking forward to change, and we do not do change well.” He relented, however, and said that he and his fellow justices were “proud to be using this technology” by providing live streaming video of oral arguments.

  At the lectern at the ASSC that Thursday morning in Little Rock, Dennis Riordan, accompanied by second chair Donald Horgan, gave a powerful argument, one that wasn’t explicit in the writ, but one that he would pound home to the bench for the bulk of the twenty minutes allotted to him. The case for a new hearing would require that all evidence, old and new, be considered, Riordan argued. The so-called DNA statutes (Ark Code 116 sections 201-208) had been incorrectly interpreted by Judge David Burnett when he denied Echols’s appeal. Riordan, referring to the state’s brief to the circuit court, told the justices, “It may seem that that would be hyperbolic on my part, to say that the state’s taken a position that no one could ever prevail under these [statutes]. But I quote from their brief in the circuit court: ‘The state does not shrink from Echols’s charge that relief may never be granted under this view of the statute, but embraces it out of confidence that the Arkansas criminal justice system does not convict the innocent.’” The ASSC found this ludicrous. The court’s justices seemed to be favorably disposed toward Echols from the beginning of Riordan’s argument. Associate Justice Elana Cunningham Wills had recused herself, possibly because she had spent twenty-two years in the attorney general’s office. Her replacement, Little Rock attorney Jeff Priebe, seemed as open to a wide interpretation of the statute in question as did his fellow justices. This exchange between Priebe and Assistant Attorney General David Raupp is a case in point:

  Priebe: Counselor, what harm is there in allowing [Echols] to introduce evidence from the last seventeen years?

  Raupp: Well, the harm is in the finality of the criminal judgment that is not demonstrated to have any constitutional or procedural defect, and just to try it again. It sounds to me, Justice Priebe, as though you’re suggesting that every fifteen or seventeen years or so, we ought to try cases again to reestablish guilt, and I suppose a legislative judgment could be made to that effect . . . The harm is to the criminal justice system’s interest in finality and the work that gets done in evaluating whether justice has been served . . . The question is now, can he demonstrate his own innocence?

  Raupp, like Burnett, was apparently tired of this case.

  After the hearing, Mark Byers had the opportunity to do something he’d waited ten years to do: outside the courthouse that day, he confronted author Mara Leveritt with the things she had written about him in Devil’s Knot. Leveritt was covering the ASSC hearing and was chatting amiably outside the courthouse with director Joe Berlinger. Mark was nearby, signing autographs and visiting with supporters. He approached Leveritt, and the two shook hands. Berlinger scrambled to get his cameraman in position.209 Leveritt asked Mark for his phone number, and Mark told her, as he tells everyone, that he’s listed in the phone book under his own name; he has never been hard to find. Her next request was a jaw-dropper: “Would you sign my book?” The question hung in the air like a boulder in one of those old Road Runner cartoons.

  “Would you apologize for the things you said about me in your book that were untrue?” he finally asked.

  She feigned surprise. “Like what?”

  Mark began with the account in Devil’s Knot in which Leveritt had accused Mark of holding his parents at knifepoint for drug money when he was a teenager in Marked Tree.210 After a discourse on his criminal record and the case made against him by Leveritt and other supporters, Mark got down to the heart of the matter, at least for him. “It has hurt to lose my wife, and it has hurt to lose my son. But I want to tell you what tears my heart apart more than anything is to be blamed for it, to be spit on and asked to leave restaurants, to go into church and have the pastor say, ‘We’re glad you’ve come, but you’re too controversial; don’t come back.’” Leveritt weakly attacked Mark for his treatment of the West Memphis Three during the months leading up to the trials in 1994, but the attempt fell flat. A disassociated journalist was no match for a then-grieving parent.

  Mark tried to explain to Leveritt why Terry Hobbs should have been investigated as thoroughly as he himself was. “If he had been, we wouldn’t be here today,” he said. But Leveritt wouldn’t let it go. She continued to hammer Mark on his criminal record, particularly the 1987 conviction that she covered in excruciating detail in Devil’s Knot and the subsequent expunging of that conviction.

  “Why was it expunged?” Leveritt asked, something she hadn’t asked Mark prior to writing Devil’s Knot, as was the case with almost everything else she had written about him. Mark attempted to explain to her the facts of the situation—that it was expunged per a prior agreement with the court—but she wasn’t interested. She stuck to the accusations of cronyism that characterized nearly all of her writing.

  “Now what was it you wanted me to sign?” he asked.

  “My book.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to do that because I don’t endorse it. You’ve badgered me and bad-mouthed me
long enough and had many people say bad things about me because of what you wrote, so as far as endorsing anything you’ve got? I wouldn’t endorse it. I do appreciate your apology. It shows that you are a woman of integrity to apologize. However, my hypocrisy goes only so far. And to sign your book? No way.”

  The ASSC Returns a Surprise Decision

  Priebe and his six colleagues on the bench didn’t buy Raupp’s argument. According to the sixteen-page opinion issued on November 4, 2010, “Echols was entitled to an evidentiary hearing under this subsection [of the law] before the motion for a new trial was ruled upon.” This time, and in accordance with the statute, the high court ruled that Echols’s hearing was to include “all evidence,” whether or not that evidence was introduced at the original trial in 1994. This would include the evidence of juror misconduct that his defense team felt would be among the strongest in obtaining a new trial. The thrust of Dennis Riordan’s argument during his twenty minutes before the court had focused on these points, and his victory, after seventeen years of rejection, was nothing less than stunning. In his opinion, Associate Justice Ronald L. Sheffield wrote, “It is clear that each of the alternative reasons for denying Echols’ motion [by Judge Burnett] for a new trial rests, in part, on the circuit court’s [erroneous] interpretation of the DNA testing statutes.”