Debbie Joy

“Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have promised to continue to fund efforts to prove the convicted men’s innocence, including more scientific “evidence testing and further investigation which will hopefully lead to the unmasking of the actual killer.”246 Because the West Memphis Three were released before the evidentiary hearing could be held, the new evidence already gathered was never given its day in court. This evidence, in addition to the evidence that Misskelley’s confession was false, now constitutes the bulk of the West Memphis Three’s case for exoneration. Despite all of the new scientific evidence, which wholly discredits the Salem Witch Trial–like “evidence” used to convict them, Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley remain convicted murderers today. They are free of their prison cells, yet they remain imprisoned by their legal status as convicted murderers. Jason Baldwin once said, “I know one thing, and that is how long is too long to keep an innocent person in prison: one minute! One minute is too long to deny an innocent person his freedom.”247 When they were finally released, on August 19, 2011, eighteen years and seventy-eight days after they were arrested, Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley had each”
― Damien Echols, Life After Death