Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.
Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
Damien Echols says he suffered brain injuries on death row, his wife calls for end to executions
Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
Published
Damien Echols
Six years ago Saturday (Aug. 19), Damien Echols woke for the last time on the wrong side of a set of jail bars. He spent 18 years in prison, convicted of the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis in 1993. He, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., denied any involvement and there were question about the evidence against them.
Echols told Talk Business & Politics the scars from his incarceration are still real. Each day he copes with physical and psychological damage he suffered while in prison.
“I spent 18 years in prison under abject conditions,” he said. “Ten years was spent in solitary torture. The brain injury I sustained will always plague me.”
The specific injury was not disclosed. Echols wife, Lorri Davis Echols told Talk Business & Politics her husband suffers from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He has had bouts of depression, and has spent years acclimating to life outside of prison.
“It’s been a roller coaster, but we’ve worked really hard to build a new life. It was and is like starting new,” she said.
The couple lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City and have traveled the world, giving lectures at universities and other venues about a broad range of subjects including false convictions, the death penalty, and Echols’ spiritual views. He wrote a New York best-selling autobiography, “Life after Death,” and he and his wife helped to produce the critically acclaimed Showtime documentary, West of Memphis. One place he visited early this spring terrified him – Arkansas.
In April eight men on Arkansas’ Death Row were slated for execution. Echols, had he not been released, would have been included. He journeyed to Little Rock with his friend, and avid supporter, actor Johnny Depp. The trip terrified him, and he suffered from a high level of anxiety while he was still in the Natural State.
“They tried to kill me,” he told TB&P at the time.
During the last five years there have been virtually no new leads discovered by Echols or the army of attorneys, private investigators, forensic scientists, and others who worked to secure his freedom.
THE WEST MEMPHIS KILLINGS
Echols, along with Baldwin, and Misskelley Jr., were convicted of the 1993 slayings of three West Memphis 8-year-olds, Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore. The boys were riding bikes in their West Memphis neighborhood when they vanished around sunset. Prosecutors claim the boys entered a patch of woods near their homes, dubbed “Robin Hood Hills,” by locals. The three boys were bludgeoned during an attack prosecutors claimed was inspired by Satanism or a belief in the occult.
One month later the three teens, all from Marion, were charged with the murders after Misskelley confessed to the crime and implicated the others. The confession contained inaccuracies including the time and place of the murders, the manner in which they were performed, and he told police two of the boys were sexually assaulted when autopsy results showed no sexual assault took place.
Despite the inaccuracies, and no physical of forensic evidence tying the teens to the crimes, two juries found them guilty. Echols was sentenced to death while the other two received life terms.
The three teens dubbed “The West Memphis Three” languished in obscurity until the 1996 documentary “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” was released by HBO. Doubts surfaced whether the teens, dubbed “The West Memphis Three” committed the crimes.
The documentary saved Echols life, he said during a 2010 interview. The circumstantial case and the lack of evidence raised doubts among a burgeoning support group that included Depp, Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines, and the director Sr. Peter Jackson. Millions of dollars was raised in an attempt the free the men.
NEW EVIDENCE, FALSE STATEMENTS
By 2011 Arkansas officials were under pressure to release the men. A new trial was about to be ordered in the case. New DNA evidence had been discovered implicating Stevie Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs. A hair found in the ligatures that bound Michael Moore was a virtual genetic match for him, and a hair found on a tree stump next to where the bodies were dumped was a genetic match for his alibi witness at the time of the murders, David Jacoby. Hobbs and Jacoby have denied involvement in the murders.
One witness who testified during Misskelley’s trial, Victoria Hutcheson, signed a sworn affidavit saying she lied at the trial. During an interview in 2009 she told a TB&P reporter she was under pressure from police to provide evidence and was facing a credit card fraud charge. Her son, Aaron, was friends with the victims, and he claimed for a time to have witnessed the murders, but his statements proved false. She told jurors she attended a “witches gathering” or esbat with Echols and Misskelley. Testimony from another witness who claimed to have heard Echols and Baldwin talking about the murders at a softball game would have likely been disproved during a new trial, prosecutors admitted.
Prosecutor Scott Ellington agreed to release them under the terms of an Alford Plea. This unique legal mechanism allowed them to profess innocence while at the same time acknowledging the state might have enough evidence to convict them. It’s essentially a no contest plea. Ellington has said numerous times if new trials had been ordered, the men would have been freed because of the changing witness statements, new scientific evidence, and “stale evidence.”
‘ARKANSAS MAKES MISTAKES’
Echols has had no contact with officials who worked to imprison him, he said. Lorri Echols said the state of Arkansas is not only culpable in her husband’s wrongful incarceration, but it has been negligent in not finding and prosecuting the person or persons who killed the three boys. A new investigation needs to be opened, and the killer or killers need to be brought to justice, she said. Occasionally, Echols will encounter a troll on social media networks who believes he’s guilty, but most people he interacts with believe in his innocence, she said.
“In our day to day life in New York, people tend to have done their homework,” she said.
The couple has several creative projects they are working on. Echols is writing a book that will be published by Sounds True in 2018. Lorri will participate in an art show later this year in Chicago.
Arkansas officials announced Friday they plan to restart executions. Lorri Echols advises against it.
“Once again, Damien’s case is proof that Arkansas makes mistakes. How many innocent men have they executed? Is there anything else that needs to be said?”
➤ Devil's Knot (2013), by Atom Egoyan, Paul Harris Boardman (screenplay), Scott Derrickson (screenplay), with Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Alessandro Nivola. Based on the actual events of the West Memphis Three, where three young boys were savagely murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. Spurred on by the demand from a grieving town, the local police act quickly to bring three "devil-worshipping" teenagers to trial. With their lives hanging in the balance, investigator Ron Lax is trying to find the truth between the town's need for justice and the guilt of the accused.
➤ Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), by Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, with Tony Brooks, Diana Davis, Terry Wood. A horrific triple child murder leads to an indictment and trial of three nonconformist boys based on questionable evidence.
➤ Rectify (TV Series, 2013) by Ray McKinnon, with Aden Young, Abigail Spencer, J. Smith-Cameron. Daniel Holden must put his life back together after serving 19 years on Georgia's Death Row before DNA evidence calls his conviction into question.
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.
Saudi Arabia executes man for murdering Otaibah tribe woman RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has executed a native citizen. The Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia has announced that the execution of a man named Basil Bin Suhail has been carried out. Basil was executed for killing a woman by hitting her with a car.
The Osaka District Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by death row inmates that claimed same-day notifications of executions violate the Constitution — the first ruling of its kind. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against the government in hopes of sparking a wider discussion on the rights of death row prisoners. They also sought ¥22 million in compensation and plan to appeal to a higher court.
In a rare joint statement, the district attorney and the defense agreed that prosecutors withheld evidence that could point to a Rio Grande Valley woman’s innocence in the death of her toddler. A district judge who previously presided over a woman’s capital murder case recommended last week that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturn Melissa Lucio's 2008 conviction after a district attorney’s office admitted that prosecutors withheld evidence from her defense.
Programme on state television discloses new details and punishments from espionage cases as part of a campaign marking National Security Education Day Authorities in Beijing have revealed that a Chinese scientist who was convicted in 2015 of selling state secrets to foreign spy agencies was executed in 2016, one of several “shocking” spy cases.
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 15 2024: Marjan Hajizadeh and Esmail Hassaniani, a couple sentenced to death for drug-related charges in a joint case, were executed in Zanjan Central Prison. Marjan is reported to have been 16 at the time of arrest, which IHRNGO is working to confirm. If verified, she will be the first child offender executed for drug charges since 2014. She was also a child bride forced into marriage.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments centering on an Arizona death row prisoner that could set new precedent to determining ineffective assistance of counsel. A Mohave County Superior Court jury convicted Danny Lee Jones for the 1992 murders of Robert Weaver and his daughter Tisha, as well as the attempted murder of Weaver’s grandmother. A judge sentenced Jones to death for the two murders.
There’s an effort underway, in the current legislative session in Baton Rouge, to reverse course on the controversial execution method with Senate Bill 430. When Louisiana legislators approved the use of nitrogen gas asphyxiation as an execution method during a second special legislative session in February, the move attracted national attention; not the least because it has only been used in the U.S. once. That’s when Alabama executed convicted killer Kenneth Eugene Smith on January 25th of this year. Now there’s an effort underway, in the current legislative session in Baton Rouge, to reverse course on the controversial execution method with Senate Bill 430.
The Islamic Republic has executed eight more prisoners over the past few days amid a significant spike in death penalties. On April 14, 2024, Hamedan Prison executed Arsalan Hashemi, a man convicted of drug offenses, according to human rights group HRANA.
BAGHDAD, April 15 (Reuters) - Iraqi lawmakers postponed voting on Monday on a bill that includes the death penalty or life in prison for same-sex relations - a measure that diplomats from Western countries said could have serious consequences for Iraq's political and economic ties if it goes through. Parliament was in session on Monday, with the bill - an amendment to an anti-prostitution law - second on its agenda.