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who was accused of suffocating his brother. The following June, when theNew York Times carried a brief report about the arrests in the West Memphis case, a producer at Home Box Office called it to Berlinger and Sinofsky’s attention. “By all accounts,” they later explained, “it seemed to be an open and shut case: three blood-drinking, Satan-worshiping teens had committed a horrifying act of violence. We were intrigued, so we went down to Arkansas to do some initial research.” The more the pair looked into the case, the more intrigued they became. They decided to film the unfolding events as their next documentary project, to be pursued in conjunction with Home Box Office, a division of Time Warner Entertainment Co. Inc. When Lax learned of the filmmakers’ interest, he called to speak with them. Lax noted afterward that Sinofsky “continually assured me he wanted to present an objective film, based on the human element and not so much on the guilt/innocence issues…. Bruce said he is interested in portraying the defendants’ families and their pain, as well as that of the victims’ families…. I expressed my concerns regarding this as being two-fold. First, we have no way of knowing what the family members will say…. Second, even if the state does not subpoena the interviews and film (and I cannot believe they would not do so), and the production company does not release the film until six months after the trial, which Bruce indicated they would do, we are faced with the potential harm the film could do to our defense during the appeals and post-conviction stages.” Lax concluded his memo with the note: “I have spoken with Scott Davidson [who, with Price, was representing Damien], and he and I agree it would be better to politely decline to allow this filming and interviewing of family members until an indefinite time in the future.”

159. The girls were Holly George and Jennifer Bearden, both of Bartlett, Tennessee.

160. Lax wanted to examine the photographs that one of the police reports indicated detectives had shown to little Aaron. If one of the photos shown to Aaron had been of Damien, and if Aaron had not identified him as one of the killers, that information might be important, particularly if Fogleman were to call Aaron to testify. Gitchell and Ridge “initially attempted to inform me they had not shown any photographs to Aaron,” Lax wrote in his notes. “However, when I provided them a copy of the statement, they conferred and stated they did recall pulling photographs from various files and showing them on a board to Aaron…. Both Inspector Gitchell and Detective Ridge informed me Aaron Hutcheson did not identify any of the individuals in any of the photographs they provided. When I asked if they had those photographs available, they stated they did not and they had not made a record of which photographs were shown to Aaron.” The officers then put forth the names of several people, including Damien Echols (but not Jason or Jessie), whose photos, they acknowledged, might have been on the board.

161. Less than a year and a half before this hearing, Burnett had issued the order expunging John Mark Byers’s conviction for having threatened to kill his ex-wife.

162. Not long after Burnett became a judge, Burnett presided at the trial of fifteen-year-old Ronald Ward, who was convicted of another triple murder, this one also in West Memphis. For a time, Ward was the youngest person on death row anywhere in the United States, but then the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that Burnett had erred in allowing Ward, who was black, to be tried by an all-white jury. When Ward was tried a second time, again in Burnett’s court, before a jury that was racially mixed, he was sentenced to life in prison.

163. Mike Trimble in theArkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 22, 1994.

164. As reported by Bartholomew Sullivan, January 16, 1994.

165. The decision was based on a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court ruling based on the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled that if a confessing defendant is tried jointly with defendants he has implicated