Tuesday, August 11, 2009

West Memphis Three Update


UPDATE ON THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE RULE 37 HEARING

A quick recap for those unfamiliar with this case:

Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were convicted with Damien Echols of the 1993 murders of three West Memphis boys-- Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. It has since come to light through evidence that the West Memphis 3 could not have committed the crime in question. The evidence supporting this is so strong that the PARENTS OF THE VICTIMS believe in the innocence of the WM3 and have been vocal about their support of their release, feeling that the real killers must be brought to justice. Stevie Branch's mother has been seen wearing a FREE THE WM3 shirt, along John Byers (stepfather of Christopher Byers) who was once one of the most vocal AGAINST the WM3.

Jessie Misskelley’s local attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig, started out the proceedings by asking Judge Burnett to rescue himself, arguing that Burnett’s running for a partisan political office violates his client Jessie Misskelley’s due process. (Jason Baldwin’s attorney from San Francisco, seconded that emotion.) Burnett protested that he’d love to drop this whole thing in someone’s lap but it’s his duty to finish this and besides, he hasn’t filed to run for anything yet. This sorry excuse for a judge (remember now, they are supposed to be impartial) who has jumped at the chance to use this case to further himself. has PUBLICLY announced plans to seek a state Senate seat. Yet now expects us to believe :
"I don't have any biases, and your motion is denied,"


Kicking off the final round of Rule 37 hearings is Dr Werner Spitz, a legend in the field of forensic pathology who can literally say he wrote the book on it—Medico Legal Investigation of Death, still the largest textbook in print. Spitz has been a forensic pathologist for 56 years and performed 60,000 autopsies. Dr. Spitz is forthright, his testimony unequivocal and if you try to put words in his mouth or get to him freestyle about what might have happened on May 5th, you might lose your hand at the wrist. Judge Burnett got a little of that action when he tried…
Dr. Spitz is absolute in his conclusions regarding the cause of the death—all three drowned—and the wounds on Michael Moore, Stevie Branch and Christopher Byer: they are the result of postmortem animal predation.

The wounds as seen in Dr Frank Peretti’s autopsy photos were not inflicted by knives of any kind, certainly not the ones pretended to be evidence at Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin’s trial.
It’s time we finally learned the truth. John Philipsborn went over at least a score of autopsy photos asking Spitz what could have caused these parallel lines or what made these irregular indentations with a deeper puncture at the top and Spitz’s answer was always that they were consistent with the claws or teeth of carnivorous animal or aquatic life nipping from underneath. Spitz pointed out how easy it was to see this unmistakable bloody foam on Stevie Branch’s autopsy sheet in photo 330/48R. Yeah, too bad Dr. Frank Pertti (so called expert for the prosecution) a board certified, qualified medical examiner didn’t discover something so obvious.
And while we’re talking about what Dr. Frank Peretti isn’t… Spitz offered that the medical examiner needed to take all the injuries as a whole to reach his or her conclusions, not focus on individual ones and try to figure out what an anomaly happened-- that’s when Frank Peretti made mistakes… Big Mistakes.
Or when a not qualified, not board certified Medical Examiner tailors his conclusions to back up a false and coerced confession of a 17 year old who wasn’t even present at the crime scene, who merely regurgitated what the cops told him to say so that they’d let him go home like they promised to.
Let me break it down thusly:
None of the wounds on the boys are consistent with wounds that would have been made by the knives presented at Damien and Jason’s trial, especially the serrated one used in Fogleman’s infamous “grapefruit” presentation.

None of the wounds back-up Peretti’s conclusions and testimony.
I saved the biggest shocker for last: None of the wounds resulted from satanic ritualistic activity.
All of the state’s so-called experts testified at the two trials arrived at their conclusions based upon the ludicrous “confession” coerced from Jessie Misskelley all day long on June 3, 1993, audio taping a scant 44 minutes though they owned a video camera at the WMPD. We know now that not one thing in Jessie’s “confession”is true (since he wasn’t there to begin with) because some idiotic detectives that can’t differentiate a knife wound from a raccoon bite concocted the entire scenario. What a shame their ignorance and prejudice perpetuated itself until their shameful fiction resulted in the convictions of three innocent men that have now spent 16 years (and counting) in prison. And yet when faced with the forensic truth and especially the juror misconduct, their tactic is to delay delay delay instead of righting this wrong at long last by saying enough of this nonsense is enough.

If these men are kept in prison any longer it is a sad statement to our Justice system

AND if Judge Burnett is elected to Senate, rewarding his biased and FALSE imprisonment of three 16 year old's who are now 32, where is our JUSTICE?

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