If you wanted a good example of how badly the US justice system can fly off the rails, you could do a lot worse than examine the case of the "West Memphis Three," three teenagers who were unjustly convicted of murdering three 8-year-old boys in Arkansas in 1993.
Prosecutors argued that Damien Echols, then 18, was the ringleader, and he was sentenced to death. It took until 2011 for him and his two friends to be exonerated (they were helped along the way by an HBO documentary and a crescendo of media attention, including awareness-raising from stars such as Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp). In his gripping memoir, "Life After Death," Echols chronicles his nearly two-decade battle to survive the hardships of imprisonment and prove his innocence.
Advertisement
Since "Life After Death" was assembled in part from notes and journal entries written over the last 20 years, it feels a bit disjointed at times. But that does nothing to detract from the power of Echols's story, which starts at a very young age. Echols was raised in poverty in and around West Memphis, Ark. His father was absent for much of his childhood and was replaced by a cruel, fundamentalist stepfather. There were frequent moves — at one point Echols and his family lived in a small apartment in the back of a church; at another, in a ramshackle house in the middle of a field.
Echols never had an easy time of it, but by the time he was in high school he had begun to carve out an identity through alternative tastes in music and dress. This made him stand out in his conservative Southern community and brought him to the attention of Jerry Driver, the local chief juvenile officer, who somehow became convinced that Echols was in a Satanist cult, despite a lack of evidence to support this.
Advertisement
In what was effectively a show trial, law enforcement used false testimony and hysteria about Satanism to win convictions that any reasonable observer could see were only compounding the tragedy of the killings themselves.
Once in jail Echols details a nightmarish life, which included beatings from guards and months in solitary confinement. Part of what helped him survive his ordeal was his retreat into meditation and various other spiritual practices. Echols, who had every excuse to cast learning aside, began devouring books, believing that an active, agile mind would help keep him sane during his ordeal.
Thanks to the work of some dogged journalists, including a documentary filmmaking crew that ended up covering Echols and his co-defendants for years, the many holes in the case against the three men soon grabbed the attention of stars like Vedder and Depp. This heightened public awareness also brought Echols into contact with Lorri Davis, who would become his wife and assist in his case (the book is dedicated to her).
Echols doesn't really go into the details of the trial itself. This is understandable — as he points out, the trial has been covered extensively elsewhere — but it is also unfortunate. The book would have benefited greatly by a fuller account (especially for those less familiar with the case), by an explanation of how an outrageous miscarriage of justice based on so much fear and prejudice and so little substance came to pass.
Advertisement
That oversight, however, doesn't make the book significantly less readable or wrenchingly compelling. Echols, still relatively young, has already lived a remarkable life, one forged in tragedy and all manner of iniquity. That he is able to write so movingly about the many trials he endured speaks volumes about his intellect and character.
Jesse Singal, a reporter at Newsweek/The Daily Beast, can be reached at jesse.singal@newsweekdailybeast.com