West Memphis Three Worldwide Awareness Day: June 3, 2007
West Memphis Three Awareness Day West Memphis Three Worldwide Awareness Day 2007 June 3, 2007
borrowed from www.wm3.org
June 3, 2007 marks the 14-year anniversary of the arrests of Damien
Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin.
These men have been locked up for almost a decade and a half for something they did not do, and the many efforts to expose what happened to them in those Arkansas courtrooms is even more powerful and committed than ever. Time hasn't diminished the outrage or the frustration over verdicts that grow even more absurd as the years have passed and more is learned about what really happened to the murder victims.
West Memphis Three Worldwide Awareness Day is a way for people all over the world to come together to organize their own benefits, awareness-raising and fundraising events to help keep this tragic injustice in the public eye and to generate funding for the ongoing legal and investigative work that will free these three men. The world is aware of this case and there's no chance of it disappearing. There are too many eyes and ears and voices now.
If you don't know anything about this case, which has recently become a celebrity pet cause, you should check out www.wm3.org. Three little boys were brutally murdered in the woods of West Memphis, Arkansas. Thanks to a bunch of folks who made livings in the early 90s by terrifying gymnasiums full of parents with tales of occult kidnappings and satanic orgies - the only motives/scenarios the police ever investigated involved black magic and human sacrifice (I guess that's less scary than a drug informant with a behavior altering brain tumor castrating his stepson and a couple of other kids). This, of course, lead to the arrest of the two local "scary" kids - the guys in everyone's high school who wear too much black and listen to bad music. Yes, these were the two main pieces of evidence used against the guys in court (one owned 13 black tshirts, the other had doodled quotes from Metallica songs and Shakespeare on his notebook - that got him the death penalty). Oh, that and a coerced confession by a mentally retarded 15 yr old with out the presence of a parent or lawyer; the facts of which were in complete contradiction to the known facts of the case (time and method of death, etc). This was immediately recanted and was not used during the trial against the other two - meaning that the evidence used to convict on these crimes was not even sufficient for an arrest. But, when you show a jury of stupid, poor people pictures of mutilated little boys then point to the asshole kid in a trenchcoat and say, "the person who did this should be punished." - well, sometimes they agree, whether or not the person you've pointed to has any real connection to the crime. But anyway.... I own both of the HBO Paradise Lost documentaries on the case, as well as Mara Leveritt's book on the subject (Devil's Knot - by far the most in depth account of the case) and will gladly watch them with any one who wants to sit down to several hours of a shocking and depressing glance into mass hysteria, poverty, and the legal system.
borrowed from www.wm3.org
June 3, 2007 marks the 14-year anniversary of the arrests of Damien
Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin.
These men have been locked up for almost a decade and a half for something they did not do, and the many efforts to expose what happened to them in those Arkansas courtrooms is even more powerful and committed than ever. Time hasn't diminished the outrage or the frustration over verdicts that grow even more absurd as the years have passed and more is learned about what really happened to the murder victims.
West Memphis Three Worldwide Awareness Day is a way for people all over the world to come together to organize their own benefits, awareness-raising and fundraising events to help keep this tragic injustice in the public eye and to generate funding for the ongoing legal and investigative work that will free these three men. The world is aware of this case and there's no chance of it disappearing. There are too many eyes and ears and voices now.
If you don't know anything about this case, which has recently become a celebrity pet cause, you should check out www.wm3.org. Three little boys were brutally murdered in the woods of West Memphis, Arkansas. Thanks to a bunch of folks who made livings in the early 90s by terrifying gymnasiums full of parents with tales of occult kidnappings and satanic orgies - the only motives/scenarios the police ever investigated involved black magic and human sacrifice (I guess that's less scary than a drug informant with a behavior altering brain tumor castrating his stepson and a couple of other kids). This, of course, lead to the arrest of the two local "scary" kids - the guys in everyone's high school who wear too much black and listen to bad music. Yes, these were the two main pieces of evidence used against the guys in court (one owned 13 black tshirts, the other had doodled quotes from Metallica songs and Shakespeare on his notebook - that got him the death penalty). Oh, that and a coerced confession by a mentally retarded 15 yr old with out the presence of a parent or lawyer; the facts of which were in complete contradiction to the known facts of the case (time and method of death, etc). This was immediately recanted and was not used during the trial against the other two - meaning that the evidence used to convict on these crimes was not even sufficient for an arrest. But, when you show a jury of stupid, poor people pictures of mutilated little boys then point to the asshole kid in a trenchcoat and say, "the person who did this should be punished." - well, sometimes they agree, whether or not the person you've pointed to has any real connection to the crime. But anyway.... I own both of the HBO Paradise Lost documentaries on the case, as well as Mara Leveritt's book on the subject (Devil's Knot - by far the most in depth account of the case) and will gladly watch them with any one who wants to sit down to several hours of a shocking and depressing glance into mass hysteria, poverty, and the legal system.