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same to him. He later explained that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been sentenced to a single day in prison, because “the truth was not found out and proclaimed to everyone.” He could not believe the verdict. The word “guilty” rang in his ears. He’d told himself that the trial would finally bring the truth to light. He believed that God had supreme control, and thus that everything would turn out right. That faith had carried him—and now it was dashed. He recalls that he entered a state of shock and found it difficult to breathe or speak. When Judge Burnett asked if there was any reason the sentence should not be imposed, he had wanted to answer with a scream. Instead, he had felt powerless, crushed, as though a vise was being tightened around him. He’d had to force out his tiny statement: “Because I’m innocent.”303 Jason: Sixteen and

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two The Drug Informant LIFE AFTER THE TRIALSremained hard for the families of the victims, including little Aaron Hutcheson. Though he was not a direct victim, in that he had not been killed, his involvement in the investigation had certainly exposed him to the crime’s horrors. Even after the trials, his mother’s interest in the case continued, and thus so, to an extent, did his own. After the trials concluded and the defendants had been locked away, Vicki Hutcheson contacted Ron Lax, the Memphis private investigator, several times to report that she was “bothered” about parts of the investigation. In April 1994, a few weeks after Damien and Jason were taken to prison, Lax paid a call on Hutcheson in the apartment where she now lived. During the visit, Lax later wrote in his notes, “Vicki turned to me and asked who had received the reward money. I told her I did not think anyone had and she stated she felt she should have since her son’s voice is what ‘broke the case.’ S

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three The Public IN1997, PAMHOBBS, the mother of Stevie Branch, filed a $10 million lawsuit against the documentary filmmakers, alleging that they had breached an agreement not to show graphic material in the film.371The lawsuit was decided in favor of the filmmakers. Two years later, in September 2000, Hobbs again protested the commercial use of images from the police file, this time after someone offered crime scene and autopsy photos for sale on the Internet auction site eBay.372 One young supporter e-mailed Arkansas’s governor, Mike Huckabee, who is a Republican and a Baptist minister. An aide who identified herself as the governor’s “criminal justice liaison” replied. After noting that the governor could not reopen a case or have any investigation done, the aide continued: “I do want to assure you that DNA testing was done, and that a match was found among the men convicted.” The statement was flagrantly misleading. It could only have referred to the DNA test conduc

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four A Decade Behind Bars THE HORROR THAT UNFOLDED ONMAY5, 1993, ended life forever for Christopher, Michael, and Stevie. The trials ended life in the free world for Damien, Jason, and Jessie—and put Damien on a list of men awaiting execution. But outside the stillness of the cemeteries and beyond the walls of prisons, participants in the drama surrounding the murders carried on with their lives. Within weeks of his dual victories in the sensational West Memphis trials, deputy prosecuting attorney John Fogleman was running hard for circuit judge. Though some voters considered his campaign ad—on a billboard near the Blue Beacon—tasteless, Fogleman’s claim on it, that he could “make tough decisions in tough cases,” proved powerful at the polls. As the three convicted teenagers were being introduced to prison life, John Fogleman was stepping up to the bench, where he’d serve with Judge David Burnett. During the next several years, Judge Fogleman had little to say publicly a

Chapter Twenty-Four