Quote:
Originally posted by Happypeekers
http://www.wm3.org
Shortly after three eight-year-old boys were found mutilated and murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, local newspapers stated the killers had been caught. The police assured the public that the three teenagers in custody were definitely responsible for these horrible crimes. Evidence?
The same police officers coerced an error-filled ?confession? from Jessie Misskelley Jr., who is mentally handicapped. They subjected him to 12 hours of questioning without counsel or parental consent, audio-taping only two fragments totaling 46 minutes. Jessie recanted it that evening, but it was too late? Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were all arrested on June 3, 1993, and convicted of murder in early 1994.
Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution pathetically resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual. Unfathomably, Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin received life without parole, and Misskelley got life plus 40.
For nearly 11 years, The West Memphis Three have been imprisoned for crimes they didn?t commit. Echols waits in solitary confinement for the lethal injection our tax dollars will pay for. They were all condemned by their poverty, incompetent defense, satanic panic and a rush to judgment.
But there?s still hope for them, and you can help.
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Don't forget Damien's notebook and the funeral register he had turned into a Grimoire which they claimed as "evidence" that Damien had sacrificed the boys.
Some people's ignorance of Wicca just amazes me sometimes...
Here's a part of the site that talks about these two things they found in Damien's room, if anybody is interested to read about them:
"Various items were found in his room, including a funeral register upon which he had drawn a pentagram and upside-down crosses and had copied spells.
According to an interview with Damien, this funeral register was in fact confiscated by Jerry Driver a year before the murders, at a time when Driver was investigating Damien for, of all things, possible involvement in the train robbery of a top-secret Army laser rifle which had occurred hundreds of miles away from where Damien lived. No evidence ever came to light to even remotely connect Damien to this caper. (38)
An upright pentagram is a "white witchcraft" or wiccan symbol, yet upside-down crosses are a symbol associated with "black witchcraft," according to the testimony of Dr. Dale Griffis. (39) What the jury did not hear, however, is Damien's claim that he had loaned out this funeral register (which he had transformed into a grimoire, or Book Of Shadows, a book in which witches record their spells) to a former girlfriend, fellow wiccan Deanna Holcomb, who added the crosses to the cover. Damien was displeased with the mixing of symbols and, apparently sensing something bad might come from it, thought about getting rid of the cover. But at the time he was very emotionally involved with Deanna, and so decided to keep it. (40)
These points will be very important to keep in mind later when discussing the significance the prosecution attempted to make out of Damien's poem "In the Middle" during their cross-examination of him. The spells contained within Damien's Book Of Shadows include one to improve the memory, a love charm, improve your chances at success, a cure for worms, and a cure for cramps. Only one "spell" apparently had any sinister implications, "Sacrifice Addressed to Hecate." Fogleman, naturally, chose this one to read to the jury, ignoring the rest. (36)
A journal was introduced, and it contained morbid images and references to dead children.
This handwritten journal was confiscated from Damien in May of 1992 along with many other personals items after he was arrested for breaking into an abandoned mobile with a girl, Deanna Holcomb, whose parents had forbidden her to see him. In July Prosecutor John Fogleman agreed to drop the charges in consideration of Damien and his family moving to Oregon. (41)
The journal turns out to contain an eclectic hodgepodge of quotations from the likes of Metallica songs and Shakespeare, mixed in with Damien's own moody "teenage angst" style poetry. A selection of this material culled from the file is available online. (42) An obvious counter-argument to the state's insinuations is that to present any writer's material -- whether he or she is a professional or novice, or it is poetry or fiction -- as something which necessarily has a one-on-one relationship to how the author conducts himself in society, is not only groundless but usually foolish.
The Opinion did not find the following to constitute "substantial" evidence, but there was additional evidence presented by the state or elicited from witnesses during the trial for the jury to hear intended to show that Damien Echols delved deeply into the occult, specifically Satanism:
* The fact that he'd read books by Anton LaVey (the founder of the modern Church of Satan, which does NOT advocate human sacrifice), horror novelist Stephen King, and one tome called "Cotton Mather on Witchcraft" which is decidedly ANTI-witchcraft. (36)
* Det. Bryn Ridge's expert testimony that these kinds of reading materials are "strange" in a teenager. (43)
* The fact that he was at least familiar via secondhand research with the theories of Aleister Crowley, a turn of the century occultist/magician whose writings seem to advocate -- arguably in a tongue-in-cheek manner, according to scholars -- human sacrifice but are more likely sexual references. (36)
* The fact that he had a Wiccan pentagram and an Egyptian ankh tattooed on his chest. The E - V - I - L tattoo across the fingers of one hand, something which the defense brought up on its own. (36)"
Abnormal reading material for someone that was his age?! Yeah right... I was about 10 years old when I read my first Stephen King novel ("Misery") and by the time I was his age I had already read plenty of books on Wicca.
As for the lyrics he wrote down....what kid DOESN'T write lyrics to songs they like when they're bored...
The things they come up with throughout this case are absolutely absurd. A modern day witch trial, that's all it is.
Ok, I'm done ranting now.
