West Memphis Three Murder Case | Was Justice Served?

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. Brown day today's question asks if I can take a look at the case of the West Memphis Three so specifically looking at the mental health factors the personality factors and really the evidence kind of for and against these individuals being guilty and I'll talk about who the West Memphis Three are in just a moment so before I get into this analysis the individuals involved that I'll be talking about here of course are real people so I just want to put out the reminder they're not diagnosing anybody only speculating on what could be happening in a case like this so this is really an interesting case because we see a lot of personality and behavior and mental health aspects at work in it not only on the defendants side but also on the law enforcement side so this is I think an interesting case at so many levels now the timeline I'll go through here I'm going to give a brief version the timeline because there's an extensive timeline available for this case but the timeline is actually fairly straightforward in one sense you have the crime the trial the conviction the imprisonment and then the release but again there's a lot of little things that happened especially during the incarceration period and I'm gonna try to sum those up without going through a lot of detail and then move on to the analysis portion of this case this case starts in 1993 in May with three eight-year-old boys going missing Stevie branch Christopher Byers and Michael Moore the reported missing several hours after leaving school an elementary school that was located in West Memphis Arkansas we see that their bodies are discovered a day after they went missing in a creek and they were naked beaten and tied up so a horrible crime that of course drew a lot of attention from law enforcement and the community shortly after the body were discovered the police begin to interview a man named Damien Echols who was 18 at the time and Jason Baldwin who was 16 at the time now if we add in Jessie Misskelley who was 17 at time that gives us the West Memphis Three that's where that term comes from so either way they interviewed Damien and Jason and then they also talked to a woman named Vicki Hutchinson who claims that she witnessed Echols and Misskelley Jessie Misskelley practicing witchcraft we also see that her eight-year-old son claimed that he visited the area where the murders took place and saw people engaging in witchcraft type activities and he later claimed to actually see the murders so either way now we moved to June of 1993 and we see that the police are interviewing Jessie Misskelley and they mentioned that there's a 35 thousand dollar reward for information that could lead to the apprehension of the murders and we also see that they questioned him for several hours eventually Jessie Misskelley starts to tell the officers about this specific case about the murders and he tells them that he was involved in the murders and so is Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin now one of the difficulties here with this confession I'll talk more about this when I get into the factors pointing toward guilt and pointing toward innocence as we see there's a lot of inconsistencies in the confession so again I'll get to those details in a while but either way they did have a confession at that time now based on this confession the police arrest all three the West Memphis Three and file charges for first-degree murder in the deaths of the three second graders after they were arrested a short time later we learned they would be tried separately miss Kelly would be tried alone but Damien and Jason would be tried together and that's because of course Jessie Misskelley implicated the other two through his confession so we see in February of 1994 that Miss Kelly is convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of one of the boys and second-degree murder in the deaths of the other two boys and he's sentenced to life in prison plus two five year terms not long after this in March of 1994 we see that Damien Echols is found guilty and so is Jason Baldwin and they were found guilty of capital murder we see that Damon is given the death penalty and Jason Baldwin is given life without the possibility of parole now we move forward in time to June of 1996 and we see that a film is released called Paradise Lost the child murders at Robin Hood Hills so Robin Hood Hills was like the neighborhood where the bodies were found this begins airing on HBO and really it cast a lot of doubt about the guilt of the West Memphis Three attracted a lot of attention to this particular case in that same year 1996 in December we see that the Arkansas Supreme Court refuses to overturn Damian's and Jason's convictions and I won't go through all of their losses in terms of appeals but there were several over the next several years so they had many appeals that were turned down now in June of 2000 we see another film Paradise Lost to revelations this begins airing on HBO and really looks at the movement to free the West Memphis Three and it introduces some new evidence in October of 2003 we see that individual Vicki Hutchinson who had told the police some information before about the West Memphis Three implicating them she now tells a reporter that everything she told the police was a lie and she also told reporters that the police warned her that she had to cooperate with them or else her child would be taken away so this kind of leans in favor of the defense in July of 2007 we see that DNA collected at the crime scene is tested and it's not found to match the DNA of Damien Jason or Jessie one hair was tested that was found in the knot used a type of victims and it was shown to be not inconsistent with an individual named Terry Hobbs who is the stepfather of one of the murder victims named Stevie branch also in 2007 we see that celebrities start to get involved on behalf of the West Memphis Three so we see these films coming out and now celebrities are becoming active and the case is drawing even more attention so again this is late in 2007 and in September of 2008 we see that Judge David Burnett denies requests for a new trial for Echols and declines to hold a hearing to consider the new DNA evidence that I mentioned before now in November of 2010 so now we move forward two years we see that the state Supreme Court orders a new Circuit Court evidentiary hearing for the West Memphis Three the court says that the circuit judge must consider not only the DNA evidence that was presented by the defense but other exculpatory evidence as well including evidence that was not presented during the original trials so moving ahead to February of 2011 we see the defense attorneys for the West Memphis Three filed briefs on evidence and testimony they hope will develop in the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered hearing and this hearing would determine whether the West Memphis Three would receive a new trial so the defendants asked for DNA testing of physical evidence from the case they make arguments about false statements that were made and about a supposed confession from Damien Echols that was introduced into evidence in the original trial and also they bring up potential jury of misconduct that occurred in one of the original trials now again this is February of 2011 if we moved to March of 2011 we see that hearings are scheduled based on what the attorneys filed in February so at this point the pressure is really on in terms of the prosecution feeling the pressure because of this new hearing that is now scheduled so in August of 2011 we see kind of unusual plea arrangement known as an Alford plea that's used in this case the West Memphis Three plead guilty to murder but are still allowed to maintain their innocence that's what happens in an Alford plea so the judge releases them for time served it was over 18 years and gives them a 10-year suspended sentence so they're released they're still guilty and if they do something wrong of course they would go back to prison now what's interesting about this Alford plea in this particular situation is that it was offered to the West Memphis Three but they couldn't accept it independently and what I mean by that is in order for them to accept the Alford plea and plead guilty and get out of prison all three needed to agree to it and the situation was set up here of course as the Damien Echols was sentenced to die so there was a lot of pressure on the other two to accept the Alford plea so it wasn't offered independently they had to take it as a group or not and they took it and of course as I mentioned they were released from prison now another part of this Alford plea is the West Memphis Three had to agree not to sue so there would be no civil hearings coming up no civil case and they had to agree that the prosecutor had sufficient evidence to obtain a conviction in court so essentially they get to maintain their innocence but they're saying the prosecutor had enough to convict them so really again kind of an unusual arrangement but we do see this used from time to time it's not the only time I've heard of an Alford plea now if the West Memphis Three more or less stuck it out in prison instead of accepting the Alford plea it's likely that they would have been granted a new trial and it's also likely they would have been acquitted this is according to a prosecutor at that time Scott Ellington now he maintains though that the West Memphis Three who are guilty he believes they're guilty but he entered in this agreement because he believed that they would have been acquitted in a trial so that's where we end up here at the Alford plea and the West Memphis Three now again this occurred in 2011 and 2012 we see a film premiering at the Sundance Film Festival named West of Memphis and here we see the suggestion that Terry Hobbs was likely the killer of the three boys now of course we've heard the suggestion for but here we see it actually in a film so again a lot of interesting evidence a lot of appeals being denied and kind of an odd situation with the Alford plea and then of course an odd situation with celebrities being involved that all these films being made so it seems like at first kind of a simple case then it seems very complex the more you look into it now in terms of where things are now as far as I know there have been no changes the West Memphis Three have not been able to prove their innocence and there has been no arrest of another party right so it just kind of stands exactly where it was left in 2011 so now we'll talk about the evidence that makes them look guilty what makes me believe that they may have done it and then I'll look at the evidence that makes them look innocent the information that kind of convinces me that maybe they didn't do it so when I talk about some of these aspects they'll be kind of the opposite aspect talk about the other section so I will get to all the information that I believe is important but it'll take putting both sections together to really get the complete picture so now in terms of the evidence of guilt well when we talk about guilt in this case I mean the first significant piece of evidence is that confession by miss Kelly a lot of times we see it characterized as he was like coerced and he had a low IQ and I'll talk about that on the innocence component here but we see these features but actually miss Kelly did confess multiple times this wasn't just a one-time event now of course the argument could be made once somebody confesses once they're kind of locked into that story so confessing additional times really doesn't mean anything but still we do have this confession and there's some inconsistencies in it they'll talk about that on the innocent side now staying with miss Kelly for a moment we see that he fails to mention his alibi during his confession his alibi was that he was at a wrestling match so that doesn't look really good and we see that when his alibi was constructed in the trial the witnesses actually contradicted each other so in the end we don't really see a good alibi for Miss Kelly now lack of an alibi is different than being guilty but still it's a piece of evidence that points toward guilt we also see that even though he has a low IQ miss Kelly had a job relationships he could read and write it was a functioning member of society another feature we see here is there's discussion that he was in interrogation for over 12 hours but actually he confessed about four hours in a little bit over four hours into his time with police so it wasn't after 12 hours it was after about four or four and a half hours now moving on to Jason Baldwin I think the element here with Jason Baldwin that points toward guilt of course is that he has no alibi right there was really just no alibi in his instance again that doesn't mean he was guilty but it just doesn't look good now a lot of the evidence in terms of what makes the West Memphis Three guilty actually has to do with Damien Echols so we see a lot of focus on that in terms of guilt he said some odd things when being interviewed by the police and he was interviewed several times he talked about what a person might do if they had committed the crime without admitting guilt exactly he said they probably felt good about it and they probably felt like they had a lot of power and felt good about having a lot of power he also made statements in that same sense about the methodology that the murder would have used and he talked about how the victims would have been easy to control so his kind of unusual statements even though they were like really theoretical were something that made him look guilty now Damien Echols also had a mental health history and of course this gets into an unusual area because the mental health history isn't really tied to criminality I've talked about this before in other videos but his specific types of mental health problems the ones that we see in the evidence anyway apparently frightened his parents but they're not really well described the mental health components right we see potential narcissism potential psychopathy potential psychosis these words seem to be thrown around without any real concrete examples we do have just a few examples though of some of his thought processes he did believe that he was possessed by a demon and he did have homicidal and suicidal thoughts we see in a disability application he described himself as homicidal seidel as having manic depression which the correlate now would be bipolar disorder as having schizophrenia and as being sociopathic so those are his own words too I guess file a disability claim so again we see a lot of different mental health symptoms and disorders kind of brought up there and it's not really clear what he actually had it also appears that damien echols had difficulties with the truth he said a lot of statements that turned out to be untrue one of the most glaring examples as he said he did not live in West Memphis at the time of the murders and of course he did and he also said he was not familiar with the neighborhood Robin Hood Hills but he was there was really clear evidence that he was quite familiar with that neighborhood other evidence specifically around Damien Nichols that makes him look guilty we see that witnesses saw Echols close to the area where the bodies were found and he was covered in mud and these witnesses have never changed their story and they really didn't have any incentive for coming forward and saying Damien Echols was there they also knew Damien Echols well so it makes sense that they could have recognized him in a location where they said he was although of course we know that eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate but that's really more an element for the innocence component there we also see that there's problems with Damien's alibi he claims his lawyers didn't call people that would have supported his alibi he was allegedly talking on the phone at the time when the murders were being committed but that seems really unusual if his defense attorneys had an alibi for him they would have constructed it so this doesn't make a lot of sense we also see that Damien Echols bragged to people he knew about the killings at a softball game and later on claimed that if he did that it was probably a joke so that didn't look good for him and then we moved to the limited amount of physical evidence there wasn't really a lot of physical evidence in this case there was a knife found in a lake behind where Damien lived so this didn't look good for him why was the knife in the lake why his have it in his possession or in his residence but either way this knife was located in the lake and the handle of the knife matched a mark that was on the forehead of one of the victims in terms of the size and shape we also see that blue axe was found on the bodies and this blue wax matched a candle found in Damien's room so in his residence this candle belonged to his girlfriend so again not much physical evidence but there was some now in terms of all three the West Memphis three together we see that all three had exhibited violent behavior in the past so this didn't look good and they pled guilty so even though the Alford plea really seemed kind of coerced and it's an unusual kind of legal instrument they did plead guilty now they were allowed to plead guilty and maintained their innocence so I look at this as really not something that points squarely toward guilt but it doesn't really point squarely toward innocence either so that's why I kind of left it at the end of this section on guilt to transition to the section of on innocence so looking at the evidence that points toward innocence I mentioned before the eyewitness accounts eyewitnesses usually aren't really reliable when it comes to remembering faces remembering times so you have to be careful in interpreting kind of eyewitness accounts so we see here other evidence I think it's more convincing of innocence would really be the nature of the crime this is one of those elements that I kind of keep coming back to as I think about this case when we look at a crime like this you see three second graders three boys who are murdered tied up and again found naked so there seems to be kind of a sexual domination component to this crime even though there was no sexual assault now we think of this type of crime we usually don't think of multiple perpetrators usually with like a domination murder like this there's one perpetrator and the motives for this type of crime are typically restricted again we're talking about second graders so you're not gonna see motives like revenge or money or the involvement of like organized crime but rather something like as I indicated domination killing so usually someone who commits this type of murder is also organized and the West Memphis Three just don't really strike me as being organized none of them seem particularly organized so does this mean that they're innocent no but this just isn't the type of crime we would expect to see three young men as the perpetrators that just doesn't line up with the evidence of the crime scene now I've seen the argument that different types of knots were used so this points to different perpetrators maybe but one person could certainly tie different types of knots so I look at that evidence and I think that doesn't really outweigh the expected type of perpetrator profile for murders like this now moving to the confession in a way I use the confession of course to show that the West Memphis Three might be guilty but it can also be used to show that they're not guilty certainly this confession could have been coerced this is relatively common when law enforcement is dealing with like a high-profile case and they're under a lot of pressure to find somebody they can call guilty we see that Jessie Misskelley had a low IQ I saw different estimates available in different sources but there seems to be a convergence around the IQ of 72 so just to put this in perspective if somebody has an IQ of 72 that means their IQ is ranked at around the 6th percentile right so that's the number 6 so that means that 94% of the population would have an IQ higher than Jessie Misskelley that's something to keep in mind especially talking about like interpersonal pressures the police certainly pressured him and they probably suggested ideas to him and this kind of points to the next piece of the confession that seems suspect which is his confession is inconsistent with the actual crime he said that rope was used to tie up the victims actually their shoelaces were used he said that Damien and Jason sexually assaulted the three boys but no sexual assault took place he also said that he committed the murders with them in the day but they occurred at night so confessions are powerful indicators of guilt but they have to be consistent with the crime they have to be accurate and we don't see that in this case something else here that points toward innocence is the lack of logic used by the West Memphis Police Department they used kind of method I call the tail wagging the dog right so they found a suspect first and kept pressing to make that suspect fit the crime the way investigative processes really should work this is logic in general not just for police work would be you look at the crime and then you look at the population and see if anybody matches that right you look for people that are around the crime scene that have a motive you look for evidence like video evidence or audio evidence or other physical evidence that ties specks to the crime you don't start with the suspect right the dog wags his tail the tail isn't wag the dog so this is a problem I think in particular in a really high-profile case and a small Police Department that evidently turned away offers from other departments to come and assist there's also evidence presented at trial that the West Memphis Three Police Department was highly disorganized and what I mean by evidence presented at trial is the way the evidence was presented shows that they really weren't necessarily good at police work so this kind of moves toward the side of innocence now another element here that points towards innocence is Terry Hobbs right Terry Hobbs is implicated with the DNA he has a history of violence he's a good alternative suspect and he is an individual and therefore much more consistent with the nature of the crime I talked about that before this was likely committed by an individual not a group of people now there are also other potential suspects that were brought out during the trial they didn't pan out but they weren't excluded completely so it's not just Terry Hobbs here there's some other people that have committed this crime as well now the next element that points to innocence would be the nature of those convicted right so the nature of the West Memphis Three so Damian Nichols and to some extent the other two did not really fit in with a local community they weren't really liked they appeared to be outsiders or misfits we see this report that Damian Nichols had the word evil tattooed across his knuckles he had an interest in the occult and of course a primary theory in this crime was that this was some sort of satanic ritual right we see that as testimony in the trial so he kind of matched that description because of his interest in the occult we also see the a dressed in dark clothing he liked heavy metal music and again as I mentioned he was interested in witchcraft or Satan worship or something like that and that just didn't really I think match again the norms of the community so certainly this would lead to bias now we know of course the trial took place in other town not in West Memphis but it makes sense if the values of West Memphis weren't consistent with Damien Echols it would make sense that another town nearby or even a distance away you would still see a jury pool that had similar values so I think the nature of those convicted and how they relate in terms of the values of the community does point toward innocence now another element here is we see those strange statements that Damien Echols made and yes they didn't look good but Jason Baldwin didn't make any statements like that so these individuals are kind of grouped together and it was just assumed that all three did it and not one person could have done it alone but we don't really see consistent statements between Damien and Jason now this points to the innocence of Jason not necessarily Damon but still it kind of breaks apart this whole theory of the crime so those are some factors that point toward innocence I talked about the factors that point toward guilt so I want to review kind of a few I think key features of this case that really make it interesting and then I'll talk about like my thoughts on their guilt or in a so the first thing really stands out to me here is whenever we see an intersection of mental health and personality with the law and even when we don't even we just see an intersection of people with the law we see this desire by law enforcement to extract a confession to have somebody talk without a lawyer present and this case could have been really simplified if Jessie Misskelley had his lawyer available the first time he was questioned and the same thing for somebody like Damien Echols now this of course would require Damien Echols going out and securing an attorney which he didn't do at the time when he's being questioned as far as I know but either way there seems to be this drive for pleas to get people in and get them to confess I know this makes their job easier in a way but I'm not really happy with this practice and there's a few reasons why our criminal justice system is an adversarial system right you have the defendant and then you have the state and the full way of the government comes down on the defendant now when you have adversarial systems and we think of like sports like basketball baseball football there are teams and they're against each other one is trying to win and the other one will lose but both teams know the rules with the criminal justice system it seems like it's okay that one party doesn't know the rules now the police know the rules but defendants or suspects don't always know the rules they don't always understand the Miranda warning right the Miranda warning is like the right to remain silent all that they don't understand that all the time and the police push them and really deceive them manipulate them and I just think this case really highlights the problems with that practice I don't really have a solution because I know there's a theory that the system would grind to a halt if everyone's rights were protected but I find that unusual in itself so we have a system where if everyone's rights were defended the system would shut down I don't know I kind of dispute that theory I've heard a number of lawyers tell me about that theory I'm not a lawyer myself of course I'm a mel health counselor but I've heard a lot of lawyers tell me that and I'm not sure I believe I'm kind of torn on that I would rather see everyone's rights protected so somebody wants to confess that's fine that does make things easy but I would like their lawyer to be present especially in situations where the person may be compromised so this kind of connects back to of course Jessie Misskelley and this idea that he had although IQ if there's a reason to believe that somebody might be easily manipulated that's all the more reason why the defense attorney should be there so I would just like to see people's rights protected and again this case really kind of touches on that the next owner in this case I think that really stands out is the power of celebrities for good or for bad this case would have remained the same nothing would have changed but for the celebrities being involved right we see they come down from Hollywood they make films they give speeches they get people all fired up and that does lead to justice maybe or maybe it leads to injustice we don't really know but it did lead to change either way so when celebrities see situations like this and they decide to get involved that really does create a tremendous pressure I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing it's just like their selection criteria right like so the celebrities pick out cases based on something that touches them personally and not necessarily based on like prioritizing it one need or something like that so I like their involvement in this case because it did kind of I think move people in the direction of looking at the case more closely and that gave us more insight to the evidence but I realize their involvement could be considered both a positive and a negative so in terms of the last item I'll cover like what this case really highlights for me there's really the ease of being convicted it is easy to be convicted of a crime and how the path to a trial is not all that hard to get on right so if we consider ways to be found not guilty ways to not be convicted of a crime the easiest way to fail to be convicted of a crime is not to be tried right so if someone had a choice between not being tried for a crime or being tried for crime even if all the evidence was in their favor even if there was like a hundred different segments of video showing that they didn't do it somebody would still choose not to be tried at all when somebody's tried they're a risk for being convicted so then we really have to look earlier in the sequence of events and say okay what makes it so somebody can be tried well the police right so their standard isn't reasonable doubt right being guilty beyond a reasonable doubt their standard is probable cause and sometimes really not even that as we see in this case so the police can decide essentially who goes to trial I know I'm simplifying the system a bit here but really they can through behavior including this behavior and that puts someone on trial and then makes them vulnerable to be convicted so what this case really points out is it's easy to be convicted of a crime because it's a really low barrier at that first level of dealing with the police so one of my thoughts on the guilt or innocence of the West Memphis Three this case is difficult you know I looked at this case for a long time first saw this case several years ago I looked at it then it's changed a little when I examined it recently I would say this in terms of the standard of reasonable doubt to me it seems clear they're not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt right so in the eyes of the law I don't see how they could be considered guilty there are many reasonable doubts in this case now reasonable doubt of course doesn't mean that somebody really didn't do it right being not guilty is different than being innocent what's the probability that they're not guilty I really don't know I'm back and forth but I would probably lean more toward the idea that they're actually not guilty that they're truly innocent this makes a little bit more sense to me than the idea that being guilty I based my opinion on several factors but the big factors for me that confession and also the nature of the crime like those two pieces just lead me to believe that there we'll be innocent but again I don't know for sure as is the case with a lot of these types of criminal acts where we see somebody's convicted and they may have been wrongly convicted one thing for sure that we know is there's a tragedy here right several the murders are tragic three boys lost their lives in a terrible manner and nothing can make that right we see that if the West Memphis Three was wrongly accused then innocent people were sent to prison and the guilty parties are out free potentially to commit more murders if the West Memphis Three in fact were guilty if these people were guilty then murderers were set free and that's a tragedy as well so with this case we see a tragedy no matter what several of them no matter what so those are my thoughts on the West Memphis Three I know whenever I talk about these high-profile cases there gonna be people who agree and disagree with me please put those opinions in the comments section they always generate a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found the description of this case the West Memphis Three to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 210,175

Rating: 4.7832398 out of 5

Keywords: West Memphis Three, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley, Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, Terry Hobbs, alford plea, Paradise lost, Paradise lost 2, Robin Hood Hills, West Memphis Arkansas, guilty, not guilty, innocent, domination murder, exoneration, mental health, homicidal, suicidal, psychopathic, sociopathic, narcissistic

Id: V6EqGFzrCgo

Length: 34min 30sec (2070 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2019