Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [137]
With that, Price took his seat at the defense table beside Damien.
Jason’s Closing Argument
Jason’s lead attorney, Paul Ford, continued the attack in his closing argument, especially with regard to the police. Recalling a string of gaffes, including the delayed searches of the victims’ homes, the sticks Ridge recovered from the woods more than three months after the murders, and the lack of blood at the scene, Ford derided the investigators. “They’ll stick to their story,” he said, “no matter how preposterous it is to believe.”
Ford also asked the jury to question why Inspector Gitchell had scarcely appeared at the trial. “He’s in charge,” Ford pointed out, “but he was a nonexistent factor in this trial. He didn’t tell you anything.” And yet, Ford noted, just a week before the arrests, Gitchell had written in his letter to the crime lab that he and his detectives were “blind-folded.”
He reminded the jurors of Dr. Peretti’s admission that he himself would have found it difficult to perform the castration done on Christopher Byers quickly, in the dark and in water. “And they want you to think a sixteen-year-old boy did it, when their own medical examiner, who is skilled as a physician, would have found it hard.” As for Michael Carson’s testimony about Jason’s alleged jailhouse confession, Ford asked the jurors to remember that at sixteen, Michael already had two felonies. “He’s a burglar,” Ford argued. “He steals guns. He destroys people’s houses that he breaks into—and in the second conversation he’s ever had in his life with Jason Baldwin, Jason Baldwin spills his guts.”
Turning to the credentials of the state’s expert, Dale Griffis, Ford chided,
He didn’t go to college, he went to the post office. And so he’s qualified to come in here and tell you things. But despite all of his hyperbole, there’s no physical evidence to link Jason. There’s no books. There’s no pictures. There’s no drawings. There’s no nothing that linked Jason to these “occult trappings,” which the prosecutors say is the reason this crime occurred. If they’d had it, they’d have brought it….
Then they tell you satanic panic. Yeah, that’s a scary thing. But it’s a scarier thing to convict someone with no evidence. If you can’t figure it out, if it doesn’t make sense, you call it “occult killing” and find somebody to fit the suit. They’re blindfolded. They can’t figure it out. Let’s call it “occult killing” and find somebody weird. Find somebody who wears black. But they let one thing go by the wayside, and it’s that there’s nothing that links Jason to these activities….
Ford pointed to Damien. “That’s what they want right there; guilty by association. Because he’s sitting over there with Damien, they want you to convict him.” He ended by pleading with the jurors. “Take the blindfolds off,” he said, “and look at it the way it really is. And send Jason Baldwin home.”
“Something Strange Going On”
But Prosecutor Davis had the last word. “What I think is a key in this case is not just who killed these boys,” he began, “although that’s the real issue you all have to decide. But I think also important is what type of person was involved in these murders that could turn these three innocent-looking little eight-year-olds into the mutilated bodies that we’ve seen in these photographs. Because what type of person could do that is at the very center of this case.”
Noting that the defense had made “a big deal” about the absence of blood at the scene, Davis introduced a new scenario—one that had not been mentioned either in any of Jessie’s statements or in testimony at