Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [177]
The high court’s ruling merely tossed the case back to Burnett. Still, Mallett noted, it did mark the first time in the history of the trials that the appellate court had found even the slightest error. No one expected that when Burnett reissued his order addressing the defense lawyer’s points, the ruling’s effect would be any different. And a few months later, when Burnett finally issued his revised response, that assumption was proven correct. Even so, Mallett and the other lawyers were astounded when they read the new document. Instead of delineating his findings of fact and conclusions of law, as the court had demanded, Burnett had, on point after point, simply copied the attorney general’s brief verbatim and issued that as his ruling.
“This is very unusual in a criminal case,” Mallett complained. “The court didn’t make independent findings. We think this violates the principle of an independent review of the evidence.”414Again, Damien’s lawyers appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court to consider for itself whether or not Damien’s representation at trial had met the standards required by law.415
Request for a New Judge
While Damien’s lawyers focused on the issues before the state Supreme Court, Stidham found himself stymied with regard to his motion to retest certain physical evidence for DNA. In May 2001, Stidham reminded Judge Burnett of the motion he had filed six months earlier. “Your Honor,” Stidham wrote in a letter, “we still have no hearing date on our motion to retest the physical evidence in this matter.” Stidham pointed out that Jessie’s Rule 37 petition had been pending for nearly four years and that Jessie was “eager” to have the new tests conducted.
But eight more months passed without a response from Judge Burnett. In February 2002, Stidham wrote again: “Dear Judge Burnett: It has been almost a year since I requested that my Motion to Preserve and Retest Evidence in this case be set for a hearing…. May I request that it be set infront of a different judge?” Stidham added, “This case is almost nine years old and I would really like to move it along.” For Stidham, who was now a municipal judge in his hometown of Paragould, Arkansas, the fight had been a long one—and promised to be longer still. “There’s been times when I’ve wished they were guilty, so I could get on with it and put this to bed,” he said. “But they’re not.” Burnett finally responded. A tentative hearing date on the DNA evidence was set for November 2002.
After nearly nine years, frustration with the legal processes was demoralizing almost everyone involved with the inmates’ appeal. Since their convictions, the hopes of all three had hung largely on the outcome of Damien’s appeals, since a new trial for him, if one were granted, would indirectly impact the appeals of the other two as well. But by the spring of 2002, with the ninth anniversary of the murders approaching, Damien’s Rule 37 appeal and his petition for a writ oferror coram nobis still awaited rulings from the Arkansas Supreme Court.416“We’re going to try to win the case in state court,” Mallett said. Somewhat wearily, he added, “There is a federal process available, if we do not succeed.”417
The Detectives
Chief Inspector Gary Gitchell resigned from the West Memphis Police Department two months after Damien and Jason’s convictions. The forty-one-year-old detective announced that he was moving across the river to Memphis, to work for Pinkerton Investigation Services.418In August 2000, he told a reporter for the Internet magazine Salon.com, that he still “adamantly” believed in the guilt of the three accused killers. “You’ve got a lot of circumstantial evidence is what you’ve got,” Salon quoted Gitchell as saying. “There