Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (31 page)

Gesturing toward Damien, Davis continued. “Well, I mean, you can judge him from the witness stand. This guy is as cool as a cucumber. He is nearly emotionless, and what he has done in terms of the satanic stuff is a whole lot more than just dabbling or looking into it for purposes of an intellectual exercise…. And I put to you, as bizarre as it may seem to you and as unfamiliar as it may seem, this occult set of beliefs and the beliefs that Damien had and that his best friend, Jason, was exposed to all the time, that those were the set of beliefs that were the motive or the basis for causing this bizarre murder.”

Then the district’s chief prosecutor summed it all up. “We have presented a circumstantial case with circumstantial evidence, and it’s good enough for a conviction,” he said. “I think Damien is the link with Jason. I think there is a connection between the two that you can consider in determining the guilt of this other defendant…. And when you go back there, sort through that evidence. Go through it carefully. Look at this knife. Look at those photos. Look at all the evidence, and piece it together, and when you do, you’re going to find that these defendants are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And you’ll feel—you can feel—good.”

The jurors left the courtroom at 5
P.M
. that night. They deliberated until 9:40
P.M
. While they were out, Damien granted a few reporters an informal interview. Ron Lax hung close by to listen. Sounding relaxed, Damien took the opportunity to knock the prosecutors’ main witness. If the jury acquitted him, he told the reporters, he planned to pursue a “mail-order Ph.D. and become an expert on cults.” He complained that he hadn’t been allowed to read books by Stephen King or Anne Rice since his arrest, and that he’d had to resort to Westerns, the only literary fare at the jail.

The next day was Friday, March 18, 1994. The jurors resumed their deliberations at 9:30
A.M
. At three-thirty that afternoon, they notified Judge Burnett that they had reached a decision. Damien and Jason were led back into court. Burnett warned against any outbursts. Uniformed police officers filed into position between the spectators and the defendants, forming what one observer called “a human wall.”

When all was settled, a hush fell over the courtroom as the bailiff handed the verdict forms to Judge Burnett. “We, the jury, find Damien Echols guilty of capital murder,” he read. And then, “We, the jury, find Jason Baldwin guilty of capital murder.” The debate about lesser charges had proven unnecessary. The jury found both Damien and Jason guilty of capital murder in the deaths of all three of the children.
²⁹⁹

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” John Mark Byers exclaimed, despite Burnett’s warning. Byers and other family members of the victims began hugging and crying. A reporter noted that “Baldwin appeared to cry as the verdicts were read” but that “Echols did not.” A hysterical Domini Teer was led from the courtroom clutching her baby.

As exultation livened some parts of the courtroom, grief subdued others. Judge Burnett told reporters that members of the jury had asked not to be questioned about their decision. The jurors’ job was not over. They still had the trial’s sentencing phase to go. It would begin in the morning. Burnett warned the courtroom, “I don’t want anybody to even attempt to talk to or interfere with any of the jurors whatsoever.” Turning to the jury panel, he added, “In fact, I’m going to have an officer escort you to your vehicles.” Deputies led Damien and Jason away. Burnett pounded his gavel, adjourning the trial for the day. The spectators rushed from the courtroom.

“Those guys took a life, let them lose a life,” Stevie’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, told reporters. Hobbs added that he wished the families could have “ten minutes alone in a room” with the defendants “to do to them what they did to the boys.” Stevie’s mother, Pam Hobbs, said, “God did get his vengeance. I’ve got to take a trip to a little boy’s grave and tell him, ‘We won. Our God didn’t let us down.’” Michael’s father, Todd Moore, said he was “completely satisfied” with the verdicts, but that they did not relieve his pain. “My son still don’t come home,” he choked. Melissa Byers called for executions. “If you take a life in a vicious murder—my child was tortured to death,” she said, “then I believe they should pay with their lives.”

Damien’s mother blamed the verdicts on the police investigation. “The lives of three little innocent boys were taken,” she said, “and the West Memphis Police Department botched it up, and they had to find somebody. So they take the lives of three more innocent boys.” Jason’s mother echoed the condemnation, saying her son had been “framed.” Noting the lack of evidence, she added, “I don’t know how a guilty verdict came about, but I know Jason is innocent.” Jason’s brother Matt told reporters, “I don’t think he’s innocent. I
know
. They’re not devil worshipers. That’s just a bunch of bull they said so they could mess up the jurors’ minds.” Domini had taken refuge in an old station wagon parked near the courthouse. Passersby saw the seventeen-year-old mother sobbing in the backseat of the car, in the arms of Michelle, Damien’s fifteen-year-old sister.

A few minutes later, Damien and Jason were escorted from the courthouse under heavy police guard. They were shackled and wore bulletproof vests. “I love you, son,” Jason’s mom called out. Jason kept walking but looked at her and quietly said, “I love you too.” One of Damien’s relatives shouted, “Hold on, there, boy. You’ll be getting out.” Damien nodded, “I know.”

“Where’s your God now, Damien?” Pam Hobbs shouted.

“I think you’re innocent!” someone else yelled.

“You’re going to fry!” another onlooker exulted.

Gary Gitchell watched as police led the convicted teenagers into unmarked cars. “I feel like we’ve definitely been vindicated in this case,” he told reporters. “We knew our case. We felt it was strong.” When asked about the absence of evidence, he explained that between the murders and the arrests, the defendants had had time “to get rid of a lot of items.” The
Commercial Appeal
reported that “Gitchell’s eyes filled with tears as he hugged Detective Bryn Ridge. ‘There’s a bonding that I can’t explain. I can’t explain it,’ he said, choking back tears.”

The
Arkansas Times
reporter covering the trials observed:

Nothing about the trial had proceeded smoothly, nor would the sentencing that began the next day. Before the final phase of the trial began, Burnett—as he had so frequently—asked the jury to step outside while he consulted with the attorneys. When the jurors had left the room, Burnett explained that he had received reports that the jury foreman and his daughter had received death threats from “someone connected to Damien,” and that another juror had received what she described as a “crank call.” Before asking the jurors to leave the room, Burnett had presented them with a general question, asking whether all still felt that they could be impartial. All the jurors had said yes, and now Burnett was reporting to the lawyers that he was “confident and satisfied” with their responses. But Jason’s lawyers worried that the contacts may have tainted the jury. At their request, Burnett called the jury’s foreman back into the room and questioned him directly. The foreman acknowledged that in the middle of the trial, a member of his family had received a threat, which he had “discussed indirectly” in the jury room. He said the episode had prompted “probably a ten-second conversation” and that the matter “wasn’t brought up again.”

Burnett said again that he was satisfied. But the defense attorneys were not. Noting that a threat had been made and that it had been discussed among the jurors, they argued that the possibility of taint on a jury that was weighing life or death was unacceptable. They moved for a mistrial. Judge Burnett denied the motion, telling the lawyers that they could appeal the matter if they chose. In the meantime, he announced, “We’re going to proceed.”

The trial’s sentencing phase was like the guilt-or-innocence phase, but shorter. Here, the prosecutors would present evidence that tended to increase, or aggravate, the crime’s enormity, in order to call for the most severe punishment. The defense, on the other hand, would present evidence to lessen, or mitigate, the circumstances, and plead for a merciful sentence. In Damien’s case, attorney Scott Davidson would be asking the jury to sentence Damien to life in prison rather than to death. He called a few witnesses to describe difficult circumstances in Damien’s childhood, but the defense team expected Dr. James Moneypenny, a psychologist from Little Rock, to be its most important witness.
³⁰⁰
Moneypenny had interviewed and tested Damien, and reviewed many of his records. “I notice that there is a packet of information there in front of you,” defense attorney Davidson said. “Are those the records that were compiled in this case?” It was a simple enough question, but Lax, who was sitting in the courtroom, heard it with a sinking heart. He knew what was in those records. And he knew that, now that Damien’s own defense team had introduced them into the trial, they were fair game for the prosecutors—if the prosecutors wanted to explore them. “That’s right,” the psychologist replied.

Davidson proceeded. He asked what the psychologist had concluded from the reports. Moneypenny offered his opinion that Damien suffered from “a severe mental disturbance” that was characterized by depression, and that underlying his depression was “a pretty disordered personality structure.” He described Damien as having “a pervasive or all-encompassing sense of alienation between himself and the world,” along with “a very painful sensitivity to things like betrayal, hypocrisy, lies—all things that might be hurtful or harmful to a person who’s extremely sensitive as a result of what has happened to him.” He attributed Damien’s “disordered personality structure” to a failure to bond as a child.

Moneypenny elaborated.

As a result, the psychologist said, Damien had developed some irrational and delusional ideas.

But the doctor predicted that Damien could be “treated successfully” in prison, where “there would be a sense of stability.” He explained that he’d once asked Damien what he would teach his son, if he had a chance to raise him. “I would teach him that he was special,” Damien had replied, “and I would teach him that he may not be the same, but that don’t mean you’re wrong.” Moneypenny considered that to be “a real reflection” of Damien’s needs as well.

When Fogleman rose to cross-examine the psychologist, Lax sank in his seat. His fears had been justified. “In your review of the records,” Fogleman began, “did you review his records from the East Arkansas Mental Health Center?” Moneypenny said that he had. Fogleman pointed to the folder in the psychologist’s lap. “Could I see that, please?” he asked.

Theoretically, these were confidential records—records that the prosecution should not have seen. “Of course,” Fogleman later said, “we didn’t know what was in the records.” But now that Damien’s own defense attorneys had introduced the records, and the prosecutor was free to explore them, Lax expected the worst. He shuddered, wondering only how effectively Fogleman would use the information contained in the files. Fogleman later said that he had never seen the files before, but as the prosecutor flipped through the pages Moneypenny had handed him, it appeared to Lax that the prosecutor knew precisely what he was looking for.

“Are these in chronological order?” Fogleman asked the doctor. Moneypenny said he did not know.

While Fogleman searched, Jason’s attorney asked for another consultation with Judge Burnett. He objected on Jason’s behalf to what was transpiring. Noting that Damien’s medical records had been privileged until “the mental capacity of the defendant was placed at issue” here in the sentencing phase of the trial, Ford argued that the records had the potential to be “extremely prejudicial” to his client. “Jason Baldwin’s life is on the line,” Ford told Judge Burnett, “and these statements that are going to be brought out may, in fact, take his life without any opportunity whatsoever by counsel for Jason to have ever obtained these records…. We are totally and completely handcuffed…. We did not know that the psychology of Damien would be placed in issue. We’ve never had an opportunity to review these records. We are totally and completely helpless, yet his life hangs in the balance.”

Ford asked Burnett to instruct the prosecutors “to make no reference to these records,” but Burnett declined, though—again—he told Ford that he would instruct the jurors that the records were to apply only to Damien. Again, Ford moved for a severance, and again he was denied.