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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 20211
[Crime]
Date Posted:
11/19/2008
11:38:59 am EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 3,385
RSS: 20,423
Comments: 5
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Damien Echols Speaks Part II
Author: Heather Crawford Source: Channel 7 News, KATV
Title: DAMIEN ECHOLS SPEAKS PART II
Fifteen years after three 8 year-old boys were killed in West Memphis. The three men charged with their deaths are hopeful new DNA and forensic evidence will set them free. And death row inmate Damien Echols is speaking out.
They are known around the world as the West Memphis Three.
Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley are serving life sentences while Damien Echols spends day in and day out on death row.
(Channel 7’s Heather Crawford) "Did you have anything to do with the murders of those three little boys?
(Damien Echols, Death Row Inmate)"I had nothing whatsoever but even being asked that is something you don't get used to. I've been asked that question by a lot of people over the past 15 years and you never get used to it. Every time someone asks you that it's like being kicked in the stomach."
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Community Thoughts: There are 5 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| I Can't Wait.. | Nov 22nd. at 8:24:41 pm EST
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Autumnfyre Spark (Port Charlotte, Florida) - Email Me
For the day justice is served in this matter.These three men have now had a majority of their lives taken away from them while the real killers are still walking around free men.Anyone who has followed this over the years knows who the real killers are.
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| ... | Nov 21st. at 7:15:09 pm EST
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Draken (Bronx, New York) - Email Me - Web
Q: Why hasn't Echols sought out a pardon from either the Governor or the President in the past decade and a half?
A: Because he didn't do it.
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| What A Shame, | Nov 20th. at 1:52:37 am EST
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RowanHawk (Scottsburg, Indiana) - Email Me
I honestly believe these boys, they were just boys at the time, were convicted simply because they were different and social outcasts. I am glad to see this case back in the news. If I recall, one of the young men confessed but wasn't that later thrown out because the confession may have been made do to pressure from the police? Someone please remind me about that.
Blessings,
Tommy
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| I Understand, I Do Not Condone | Nov 20th. at 1:46:05 am EST
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Heather Lynn Fairfield (Canton, Massachusetts) - Email Me
Like Mysteries Child, I can totally understand the dynamics that lead to the (I believe) wrongful conviction of the WM3, but likewise, that in no way implies that I condone what has happened.
(I can also look at Nazi Germany and understand the mindset and the fears that precipitated the Holocaust without supporting what was done for a single millisecond.)
I continue to hope that justice will finally prevail for these poor people and that the truly guilty will eventually be punished.
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| Bad Impressions | Nov 19th. at 1:52:23 pm EST
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Mysteries Child (Garfield, Arkansas) - Email Me
I find it very, very believable that fear-spiraling-into-panic, coupled with a fairly common teenager's (especially in the case of a down-and-out teenage boy) attitude and the desire to believe they had the nightmare in hand could be enough to convict the wrong people.
I find that believable, without bringing up any bigotry, religious or otherwise, more specific than what seems to be the very pervasive human bigotry against that which is different, that which does not make sense in existing paradigms without thought, that which can be easily dismissed as "misfit."
I remember instances in grade school in which teachers, administrators (and once the town policeman-- I flipped off a deacon's daughter after she and her friends called me names and threw rotten fruit at me) would punish me for crying or getting angry over being teased and assaulted.
We were all white (insofar as 1/4 Italian could be considered white in small-town WV circa 1985) ; at least in name and family attendance, we were all either Baptists or Methodists.
The other children all looked and acted, basically, alike, and in a way that those in authority had come to expect. I dressed funny, acted differently (even though 'differently' meant I studied more and tried harder to adhere to all the rules) , and asked too many questions. There were many of them and one of me; their parents were prominent in the community and I was the nobody child of a single mother who was herself the daughter of The Town Dago and That Weird Old Man.
In other words, they were right and I was wrong.
In another instance from MC's personal playbook, consider how often I am labeled Enemy, Spy, Saboteur, and worse in this community. Not because I've done anything to actually harm it, but because I am different. In my politics and my point of view, I am different enough to make some people uncomfortable. I choose (or an chosen by) a deity that is unpopular in this community; some of the tenets of my own path resemble those of an organized structure that is much feared around these parts.
And so I have few friends here; so I am one of the first to be jumped on.
I'm not complaining; I chose this road. I'm merely pointing out an observation about, shall we say, the fallacy of the idea that It Can't Happen Here.
This behavior, like what happened to the WM3, was/is human. So is the drive to defend a decision-- like the ruling of a court-- up to and past the point that it comes to appear to have been obviously in error.
Especially under fire, in the face of ridicule and possible reprecussions.
Check out a basic 101-level social psych text if you don't want to take my word for it.
Am I defending the court, or the State of Arkansas??? Hardly. The conviction was unreasonable. Unintelligent, unjust, and downright un-American. Their behavior since has been unconscionable, indefensible, immoral, and intolerable.
Instead, I'm arguing that reach beyond our understandable fear and anger-- understandable fear and anger not unakin to what swept a sorely disadvantaged Arkansas border town a decade and a half ago-- and learn to understand the real reasons for the behavior.
So we can teach others.
So we can teach ourselves.
So we can do our part to make it less likely that the same thing will happen again.
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