Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [117]
“Do they concur in your opinion?” Ford asked.
“They were in agreement,” Peretti answered.
The surprise testimony flew in the face of the state’s theory of the crime. It contradicted everything Jessie had said in his confession—the confession that had led to the arrests and then to Jessie’s conviction. It meant that the little boys may have been alive during the nighttime search of the woods—alive somewhere else. It called into question everything the police had surmised: about the lack of blood at the scene, where the boys were killed, and who might have been with them between midnight and dawn.
Many of the questions Peretti’s estimate raised could not now be answered. But as Lax reflected, one thing about it was obvious: Peretti’s latest testimony represented one more piece of late-coming evidence; one more element an official had withheld; one more contradiction of the police scenario—one more ambiguity in a case already riddled with them.
When Jessie’s lawyer heard that Peretti had now testified as to the time of death, he was stunned. Stidham’s mind raced with thoughts of how he could have used that information, had he had it at Jessie’s trial. The defense lawyer noted that twice during Jessie’s trial, he had asked Peretti if he could determine the approximate time of the victims’ deaths, and that each time Peretti had told the court that he could not. But now, with Jessie’s codefendants on trial, Peretti was offering an estimate—and the estimate did not fit with anything in Jessie’s confession. Arguing that Jessie had been denied a fair trial because the jurors were not told of the discrepancy, Stidham filed a motion with Judge Burnett, asking him to overturn Jessie’s conviction and grant the boy a new trial.
Damien’s and Jason’s lawyers regarded Peretti’s admission as a minor coup. On top of the admissions of foul-ups by the police and Peretti’s admission that he had treated this case differently than most, here now was the state’s own medical examiner saying the murders appeared to have been committed at least four hours later than would have been possible according to the state’s own scenario.
Fogleman was livid. Peretti’s testimony had come as an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. “I will say this,” Fogleman later fumed. “If you rely on Dr. Peretti for a time of death opinion, it’s a mistake. Dr. Peretti is another book.”268Fogleman said that he and Davis learned that Peretti planned to testify as to the time of death shortly before he returned to the stand. The two prosecutors and Peretti had been standing outside the courtroom, Fogleman said, when Peretti volunteered that he was “going to have to express an opinion.” Fogleman said he and Davis were astonished. “We said, ‘Why? You told us you didn’t have enough information.’” Fogleman said Peretti never answered his question, but that over time the prosecutors surmised what had happened. According to Fogleman, Jason’s lawyers had discussed the case with Peretti sometime before the trial, and they’d tape-recorded the session. “I’m not sure whether Dr. Peretti knew that,” Fogleman later said,
but that’s neither here nor there, because they had the right to tape-record him anyway, whether he knew it or not. But I suspect—now, again, this is suspicion—that, just in talking and playing to Dr. Peretti’s ego, you know, they said something like, “Surely you have some idea about the time of death,” and he did, and they had him on tape giving an opinion, and he was going to be faced on the witness stand with them saying, “Well, you gave us an opinion before. Why can’t you give us one now?” That’s my suspicion of what happened. I do know they taped him. They told me they had him on tape. And I know Dr. Peretti made a sudden shift in giving an opinion.