Paperback: Were the West Memphis trials witch trials?
Had a jury sentenced someone to death based on nothing more than children's accusations, confessions made under pressure and prosecutors' arguments linking the defendants to Satan?
Were the 1994 trials in Arkansas like those in Salem three centuries ago?
There were the questions that gave rise to this book. The West Memphis Three. Accused, convicted...and set free. Do you know their story?
For weeks in 1993, after the grisly murders of three eight-year-old boys, police in West Memphis, Arkansas, seemed stumped. Then suddenly, detectives charged three teenagers - alleged members of a satanic cult - with the killings. Jurors sentenced Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley to life in prison and Damien Echols, the accused ringleader, to death. The guilty verdicts were popular in their home state - even upheld on appeal - and all three remained in prison until their unprecedented release in August 2011.
In Devil's Knot (2014), now a major feature film starring Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon, award-winning investigative journalist Mara Leveritt presents the most comprehensive, insightful reporting ever done on this story and unravels the many tangled knots of this endlessly shocking case. It is the first time all elements of the case have been assembled in one narrative. More importantly, Devil's Knot is an indictment of a culture and legal system that failed to protect children as defendants or victims. It is a highly recommended read.
About the author: Contributing editor to the Arkansas Times and past Arkansas Journalist of the Year, has reported for almost three decades on police, courts and prisons. Mara has written three nonfiction books about crime and public corruption and she is working on a fourth - the third book in the Justice Knot trilogy about the West Memphis Three.
The Boys on the Tracks (1998) is about murder and prosecutorial corruption in Saline County. Devil’s Knot (2002/2014) is about the deeply problematic trials of the teenagers who became known as the West Memphis Three. Dark Spell (Bird Call Press) is about Jason Baldwin’s post-conviction ordeal. The first two of these were awarded Arkansas’s prestigious Booker Worthen Prize.
Mara is the 2014 recipient of the Porter Prize. Established in 1984, the Porter Fund Literary Prize is a non-profit organization supporting Arkansas writers and poets. The Porter Prize was founded in honour of Dr. Ben Kimpel. In May 2014, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock awarded Mara an honorary PhD, hooding her as a “doctor of humane letters.”
In 2012, Mara was awarded a Laman Fellowship to continue work on Justice Knot, her trilogy about the West Memphis case and the questions it raises about the adequacy of judicial processes in the US. That year, the Southeast Region of the American Board of Trial Advocates named her its Journalist of the Year, “in recognition of her years of unbiased reporting of the facts and legal arguments in many high-profile court proceedings and her persistent efforts to explain to the public the reasoning underlying sometimes controversial court decisions.”
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