Rarely is the power of filmmaking so starkly evident as with the release last August of three innocent men convicted of the murders of three eight-year-old boys in 1993.
“Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” is the third – count ‘em – in a series of documentaries starting in 1996 by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, backed by Sheila Nevins at HBO, to chronicle the injustices perpetrated by the Arkansas judicial system against the men who became known as the West Memphis Three.
The filmmakers refused to give up. HBO declined to move on. The public pressure and national scrutiny meant that this travesty -- a betrayal of the young murder victims and a horror story for the wrongly convicted -- would not be ignored.
Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley were freed in August after 18 years in prison under an obscure statute that allowed the state to avoid fessing up to its misdeeds.
Their story, a must-see for anybody who cares about justice, is laid out in all its cynical truth in the last of the series which airs on Thursday night on HBO, and is short-listed for the Oscar.
I got to meet Baldwin, a soft-spoken and gentle 34-year-old, on his first visit to Los Angeles this week. He went to prison at age 16, and is still discovering the outside world.
“I’m picking up where I was at 16,” he said. “I just got my driver’s license, got a car.”
He doesn’t seem angry.
“You can’t be angry, it just ruins your life,” he said. “For a long time I was in a state of bewilderment and helplessness. And then as you learn about the techniques used in the investigation – threatening people to lie… they lost evidence, they took blood scrapings and never followed up…”
Baldwin had every reason to believe it was impossible to convict him. He had a strong alibi, having spent the day at school, after which he cut a relative’s lawn and then went with friends to play video games at Wal-Mart.
But the defense attorney never called witnesses. A confession squeezed out under pressure from Misskelley – who is mildly mentally disabled – achieved the desired conviction.
It took years even after DNA evidence became available to get it tested and to prove there was no link between the three men and matter left at the crime scene.
The state dragged its heels, rejected the arguments for years. Finally the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed to allow a new evidentiary hearing. But rather than allow the new facts to emerge, Arkansas prosecutors dug up an obscure statute under which the three convicts pleaded guilty while professing their innocence and accepting the sentence of time served.
This means they cannot sue the state for civil damages. Imprisoned as teenagers, the West Memphis Three are now nearly in their mid-30s and finally free – though not yet exonerated.
