Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [62]
Burnett cut a familiar and genial figure at the two-story courthouse. Earlier in the summer, he and the three other judges in Arkansas’s Second Judicial District had met to discuss who would officiate in the already sensational case. The fifty-two-year-old Burnett had been selected. He was a native of the region, the son of a tire dealer in Blytheville. After high school, where he was an Eagle Scout, Burnett attended the University of Arkansas and then its school of law. As soon as he’d graduated from law school, in 1966, he’d entered the army, not as a military lawyer but as a police officer. His first tour of duty was at Fort Ord in California, where, he once said, “I was essentially the police chief for the base.” He was awarded a Bronze Star for later service in Vietnam.
After leaving the army, Burnett returned to northeast Arkansas, where he started a private practice. He soon ran for and was elected prosecuting attorney for the Second Judicial District, and eight years later, in 1983, he was elected to the bench.162
One Arkansas reporter described Burnett as “a low-intensity judge whose idea of a good time is raising prize-winning tea roses.”163Within his profession, opinions were mixed. While he was regarded in some circles as affable, smart, and one of the best of the region’s good ol’ boys, critics complained that he was still a policeman and prosecutor at heart, and one local politician called him “a political alligator.” Burnett made no secret of his skepticism toward testimony in the field of psychology. As the West Memphis case headed toward trial, Burnett was working on his thesis for a judicial master’s degree. He unabashedly told a reporter for theCommercial Appeal that his thesis centered on his belief that the expert opinions of psychiatrists and psychologists “shouldn’t be given the great weight that it’s normally given by courts, juries, and what have you.”164
The first ruling Burnett made was that Jessie would be tried separately from the two teenagers whom he had accused.165Another concern Burnett promptly addressed dealt with mental competency. Perhaps anticipating that one or more of the defendants would plead not guilty by reason of insanity, the judge noted that so far, none of the lawyers had sought mental evaluations for their clients, and he gave them fair warning. “Gentlemen,” Burnett announced, “I’m concerned with the possibility of a motion to seek mental examinations and the inevitable delay that that causes…. If you don’t request it within thirty days, you’re waiving it. You’re on notice that the court is drawing a deadline as far as that defense goes.” The deadline came and went. By then it had been decided that none of the teenagers wanted to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.166The lawyers planned to base their defenses on claims of actual innocence.
In the months ahead, Burnett would wade through a stack of motions more than a foot thick, and he’d issue more than fifty pretrial rulings. Most concerned the trials ahead. But one addressed an issue that was of personal concern to the lawyers. It asked Burnett to explain how—and how much—the court-appointed defense attorneys were to be paid. At the time, the matter was extremely murky.167The six court-appointed lawyers told Burnett that they expected to spend hundreds of hours on the case, and that they wanted the question cleared up. Jessie’s attorney argued that he was already working full-time on his client’s defense, and that not being paid would impose a serious hardship on his family and on his legal partner. Jason’s lawyer pleaded, “I don’t feel we should have to self-finance this case until it’s over and then