Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (25 page)

The discussion at the bench was brief. “He shouldn’t have volunteered that,” Judge Burnett acknowledged. “But,” he added, “I certainly don’t see any basis for a mistrial.” Price’s motion was denied.

Then Jason’s lawyer moved for a mistrial. But Burnett was adamant. He noted, “There isn’t a soul up on that jury or in this courtroom that doesn’t know Mr. Misskelley gave a statement.” He said he would caution the jury to disregard Ridge’s statement, and ruled that the trial would continue.

Back in front of the jury, Damien’s lawyer resumed his questioning of Ridge. Price asked the detective about the blood scrapings that Ridge and Sergeant Allen had taken from the wall of the Bojangles rest room after the boys’ bodies were found. “What is the date that you sent the blood scrapings off to the crime lab to be analyzed?” Price asked.

Ridge answered, “They were never sent.”

“They were never sent?”

“That’s correct.”

“Where are the blood samples at this time?”

“I don’t know, sir. They are lost.”

“They’re lost?

“Yes sir.”

Price then attempted to ask Ridge about his note, written a few days after the murders, about an area resident who’d told police that “some black men” had been seen in the woods. Beneath Ridge’s note on the call, Gitchell had added his own comment that “it has been mentioned that during cult activities, some members blacken their faces.” Price mentioned the report to Ridge so that jurors would realize how early in their investigation Gitchell and his detectives had begun looking upon the murders as possibly “cult related.” But Fogleman interrupted and the lawyers approached the bench. Fogleman said he wanted to know where Price was heading with the question. When Price explained, Fogleman said he wouldn’t object to the question, because “that would open the door” for prosecutors to ask Ridge “about whatever evidence he has that there was cult activity involved.”

Now it was Jason’s lawyer’s turn to object. He pointed out that, months ago, he had filed a motion asking that no one on any side be allowed to mention “cult activity,” and a special hearing had been held before Judge Burnett. Paul Ford wanted anyone attempting to assert that cult activity had been involved to have to demonstrate beforehand that some “factual basis” existed for the allegation.

Damien’s lawyer’s trial strategy was different. Price told Burnett that he wanted to be free to use the term in order to show that the police had focused on the possibility of cult activity to the exclusion of other, more reasonable ones during their investigation.
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The disagreement between the two defense teams highlighted the differences that had dogged them from the start, and that had prompted their repeated requests that Damien’s and Jason’s trials be severed. Price wanted to attack the detectives’ focus on cults and satanism, which he believed had drawn unwarranted attention to Damien. Ford, believing that Jason could not be connected to anything relating to cults or satanism—and that Jason would be harmed if the subjects were introduced—did not want the words even mentioned.

The question was what position the prosecutors were going to take. Burnett asked Fogleman, “Are you going to bring up cult activity as a possible motive? Do you plan to develop that in this case?”

“We have not made that decision,” Fogleman replied. “It depends on how the case develops.”

Noting that the law did not require the prosecutors to prove motive, Burnett reflected that whether or not the murders had been cult-related did not “really have a whole lot to do with anything here, unless that was a possible motive.” He asked Fogleman, “Do you want to prove motive?”

Without directly answering the judge’s question, Fogleman responded, “If Mr. Price and Mr. Davidson will stipulate that Damien Echols was involved in satanism and devil worship, then we don’t have any objection to them going into that.” Price and Davidson declined.

Burnett then issued a highly significant ruling. He told the lawyers for all sides that he would allow Price to question police about their interest in cult activity—but only if the prosecutors decided that they were going to introduce cult activity as a motive. Burnett told Ford that if the prosecutors did introduce cult activity as a motive, and Damien’s lawyers attempted to combat it, he would issue “a very strong cautionary instruction to the jury that that evidence should be taken to Echols only, and not to Mr. Baldwin.”

“Is the court aware,” Damien’s lawyer persisted, that “we have a thousand pages of discovery from the state alleging a cult-related killing?”

Judge Burnett only replied, “That doesn’t mean they have to prove motive.”

The question of whether or not Fogleman and Davis would raise the occult or satanism as a motive for the crime remained unsettled as the proceedings resumed in open court. Detective Ridge was questioned further, without the word “cult” being mentioned. Then Dr. Frank Peretti, of the medical examiner’s office, took the stand. Prosecutor Davis’s questioning was brief. Handing Peretti the knife that was discovered in the lake on Fogleman’s hunch, Davis asked Peretti if Christopher’s wounds were “consistent with the serrated portion of that knife.” Peretti answered that some of them were. That was all. The prosecutor sat down.

On cross-examination, Jason’s attorney got Peretti to admit that most serrated knives—not just this one in particular—could have caused the injuries. Then Damien’s lawyer got up and handed Dr. Peretti what he called “the John Mark Byers knife.” He asked if Christopher’s injuries were consistent “with wounds being inflicted by this type of knife.” Peretti again said yes, and that “some of the smaller serrated wounds” were consistent with the serrations on that knife.

Davis turned the questioning to certain injuries on Michael Moore. He asked about bruises that Peretti said he’d found on the boy’s ears and about abrasions inside his mouth. Peretti said the injuries were of a type “we generally see in children who are forced to perform oral sex.” Davis asked if there could have been other causes. “Well,” Peretti said, “you can get them by—the lip injuries—by putting an object inside the mouth. You can get those type of injuries also from a punch or a slap. Or you can get those type of injuries from the hand over the mouth and pressing the hands very tightly up against the mouth.” Peretti also said that Michael had “defense type wounds” on his hands indicating that he had fought his attacker. He testified that the boy had suffered “multiple fractures” to his skull, causing bruising of “the entire brain.” In addition, he said, the boy’s lungs were filled with water, indicating that, “when he was in the water, he was breathing.”

When questioned about Stevie Branch, Peretti noted that “multiple, irregular, and gouging type cutting wounds” were evident on his face. When Davis asked for possible causes, Peretti said “an object such as a knife or glass or any sharp object” could have made the marks, if the object were twisted or the child had been moving. “What is important to note,” Peretti elaborated, “is that on the forehead region, we have an abrasion or scrape that left a pattern. And inside the pattern, you can see, it’s almost like a dome shape. And that injury, you see, it’s typical of a belt injury. The belt has a little buckle…. That type of injury we typically see with belts.” Peretti said that Stevie Branch’s body showed injuries to the ears and mouth similar to Michael Moore’s. He said that like Michael, Stevie had fluid in his lungs, and had also suffered a massive blow to the back of his head. “The base of the skull, the back of the skull, showed a three-and-one-half-inch fracture, which had multiple extension fractures.” He added graphically: “If you have ever dropped an egg, and you see how you have fractures of the egg; that is basically what happened.”

Davis asked Peretti to “generally describe” Christopher’s wounds. “Well,” the doctor replied, “Christopher also had head injuries, as well as neck injuries, genital-anal injuries, right leg injuries, left leg injuries, back injuries, right arm injuries, and left arm injuries.”
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The doctor said that Christopher had “a contusion or black eye” and that other facial wounds had “the appearance of, like, the stud on a buckle.” Peretti described the wounds to Christopher’s genital area as “antemortem,” meaning that they had been inflicted while the boy was still alive.

Pointing to a photograph, he continued. “Here we can see that the skin of the penis has been literally removed or carved off,” Peretti said. “And what we have here is the shaft of the penis without the skin on it. And all around it we have all these cutting, gouging wounds. The scrotal sac and testes are missing.”

Christopher’s skull was fractured, as were the other boys’, but there was an additional fracture on his skull, not found on the other two: a round, quarter-inch hole had been literally “punched out” of his skull, just above where it joined the spine, where, Peretti said, something had been literally “punched into the brain.” It was a dramatic statement, and one that bore no relation to anything Jessie had said. But no explanation was sought—or offered—for the remarkable injury.

As the questioning continued, Peretti also reported that he had not found any mosquito bites on the three children. That absence had troubled Lax and the rest of the defense teams from the beginning, because of the numerous reports about how thick the mosquitoes had been in the woods on the night the boys disappeared and the association of mosquitoes with blood. But having asked the question, Davis quickly moved on. “Now, Doctor,” he said, “I have noted in your autopsy report that there’s no mention as to time of death. Did you deal with that issue, or did you mention that in your autopsy report?”

“No, I didn’t,” Peretti answered.

Estimating the time of death is an important part of a medical examiner’s work, and Peretti offered a only weak explanation for his failure to report one. “Determining the time of death is more of an art, not a science,” he said. “Realistically, it is not possible, unless you were there and you witnessed the person who died.” He said the best anyone could provide would be an estimate, but in this case, not even that had been possible.

“Now, Doctor,” Prosecutor Davis said, “you said that part of your job is to prepare an autopsy report. In this particular case, were you particularly cautious about who you released that information to and when you released it?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Normally, where do your reports go to, as far as who gets a copy of it?”

“What we do in the crime lab,” Peretti explained, “is, the day we do the autopsy, we issue a sheet. It is called a ‘Cause of Death’ sheet. This sheet automatically goes to the prosecutor of the county of death, the coroner, and the investigative agencies handling the death investigation.”

Davis asked, “Did you kind of change that procedure a little bit in this case, in order to insure that the information obtained in your autopsy report wasn’t disseminated in the general public?”

“Well, what I did was—normally what we do…for example, if I do someone who died of a heart attack, I would write on it ‘heart attack, coronary artery disease.’ But because this case generated such intense media coverage, and there was rumors—a lot of rumors—people calling for all of these circumstances, I elected on the Cause of Death sheet just to put the causes of death on the sheet. I did not say anything about any of the injuries. I didn’t tell the prosecutor. I didn’t tell the police. And I didn’t tell the coroner. I just kept it to myself.”

Lax, who sat listening to the testimony, was astonished. A standard element of crime lab reporting—information that was usually “automatically” sent out—Peretti had “just kept” to himself. Lax wondered how many deviations from normal procedure could arise in a single case.

Newspapers the next day reported that Damien had spoken briefly with reporters during a break in the proceedings, before his attorneys “led him” away. The exchange was long enough, however, that Damien had managed to describe the charges against him as “bullshit” and to observe that he was finding the trial “pretty boring, most of the time.”

When court resumed, Jason’s lawyers cross-examined Peretti. Jessie’s confession was not to be mentioned at this trial, but since the arrests and the state’s theory of the crime were based on that critical but unmentioned confession, Ford wanted to explore a few of its central features. “Was there any evidence of strangulation?” he asked Peretti. “There was no evidence of strangulation,” the doctor responded.

Ford next examined the claim that the boys had been sodomized. Peretti answered that he had found no evidence that any of the boys had been raped. Had the boys been tied with rope? “No,” Peretti said, he’d found no evidence of that. As for the wounds to the boys’ heads, the doctor acknowledged that “hundreds of items” could have been used to inflict the injuries, not just the sticks police had retrieved from the site. As the cross-examination continued, Peretti also acknowledged that “any serrated knife” could have caused Christopher’s wounds.

When Ford asked if it would have taken “some skill and precision” to perform Christopher’s castration, Peretti replied, “I would think so.”

Ford then asked Peretti how long it would take a doctor such as himself, with all “the skill and the precision and knowledge” that he had, to do what had been done to the boy.

“That’s a difficult question,” Peretti replied. “It would take me some time. It’s not something I think I could do in five or ten minutes.”

“It would take you longer than five or ten minutes?” Ford asked.

“I would think so.”

“And that is in your lab?”

“I would think so.”

“With a scalpel, is that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“Now, Doctor,” the defense lawyer persisted, “if we added to the equation that you were in the dark, could you do this in the dark? You, Doctor. Could you do it in the dark?”

“It would be difficult.”

“Could you do this in the water? You, Doctor. Could you do this in the water?”

“It would be very difficult to do.”

“And if you were in the water and it was dark, it would take even longer, is that correct?”