• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 715 0

where Jessie’s trial was about to begin. One of them asked prosecutor Fogleman about some of the questions that had been raised at the pretrial hearings. Citing professional ethics, he said he could not discuss the police investigation, the rumored lack of physical evidence, or attorney Stidham’s contention that Jessie’s statement had been coerced. “I can’t comment on specifics,” Fogleman said, “because I sincerely want these defendants to receive a fair trial.” He added, however, that he had “never seen a police department work any harder on a case” than the West Memphis police had worked on this one.198 On January 17, the day before jury selection was scheduled to begin, Fogleman released more documents to the defense attorneys. Most of them showed how the police had been working to bolster their case as the two trials drew near. Among other activities, the records

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen The First Trial WHILE THE FUROR OVER THE BLOODSTAINED KNIFEplayed out behind the scenes in the Clay County Courthouse, the life-and-death drama of Jessie’s trial was unfolding in the courtroom. Heat in the building was cranked up high as the region coped with a rare winter storm. Outside the one-story cinder-block courthouse, the streets of Corning sparkled under a coating of ice. Usually, this corner of northeast Arkansas, nestled into the Missouri boot heel, didn’t experience severe winter weather. But this January of 1994 was an exception. Just before the trial began, bitter cold had swept through the Mississippi River valley, cracking trees and making travel hazardous. Even now, on January 18, as heavily armed sheriff’s deputies led Jessie, hunched and handcuffed, from a squad car into the building, broken tree limbs still littered the lawn. Stidham expected a fight as intense as the weather. He’d battled unsuccessfully to keep Jessie’s confession out of the trial.

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen Thein Camera Hearings STIDHAM WAS FAR LESS CONFIDENTthan his client. He recognized, as he began his defense, that he faced several hurdles. Some, like the trouble he expected with Jessie’s alibi, he’d seen coming for several months. Others that lay ahead would take him by surprise. The problem with Jessie’s alibi had arisen the previous summer, when Stidham was first appointed to the case and believed that Jessie was guilty. At the time, Stidham was communicating with Fogleman, hoping to work out a plea bargain in which Jessie would get a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony that would convict Damien and Jason. “It was about that time,” Stidham later recalled, when Mr. Misskelley Sr. began to raise issues about Jessie being in a different county on the night of the murders.222Jessie Sr. began to hold almost nightly news conferences on the front porch of his mobile home, and basically, laying out his [son’s] alibi. That was making the prosecuting attorney very

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen The Allegations of Official Misconduct TODD ANDDANAMOOREwere characteristically reserved as they left the courthouse. They did not speak to reporters. Pam Hobbs, Stevie Branch’s mother, expressed her hope that Jessie’s life in prison would be a long and tormented one. The Byerses, as usual, were unrestrained. Expecting that Jessie would end up at the infamous Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction, they described in rough and suggestive detail the future they wished for him there. “I hope he never sees sunlight again,” John Mark Byers said. “Life plus forty—that’s fine with me. That means Cummins keeps his dead ass forty years after he dies.”233Melissa Byers, with dark circles under her eyes, ranted in front of the cameras. “This doesn’t change anything,” she said. “Christopher’s dead. And he was tortured to death by three murdering bastards on a ditch bank. He was eight years old, and guilty is guilty, and I hope the little sucker, when he hits Cummins,

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen The Witness List AFEW DAYS BEFORE the start of Damien and Jason’s trial, theMemphis Commercial Appeal reported that a “club