EXHIBIT 13
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Damien Echols Legal Defense Team Press
Conference - November 1,2007
[SLIDE: Echols v. Norris and Case No. displayed]
DENNIS RIORDAN, Lead Counsel:
...Gerald Skahan of Memphis, Tennessee, and our local counsel here in Little
Rock, Deborah SaIlings. We represent petitioner Damien Echols in the case of
Echols versus Norris. Echols versus Norris is a federal habeas corpus petition
proceeding in the Eastern District of Arkansas, here in Little Rock, arising out of
the 1994 trial -- trials, really -- of three teenagers -- Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin
and Jessie Misskelley, who were tried and convicted for the murders of three eight­
year-old boys, Steve Branch, Chris Byers and James Michael Moore in 1993.
A federal habeas corpus petition is a proceeding sanctioned by the laws of the
United States and the Constitution of the United States which gives a state
prisoner, someone deprived of their liberty, and especially a state prisoner who has
been sentenced to death -- as Damien Echols has -- the opportunity, after state
proceedings are completed, to go into federal court and file the petition
complaining that their state trial did not accord with the Bill ofRights, the federal
Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, which guarantees things like the
right to counsel, the right to confront witnesses against you, the right to present a
defense and the right to twelve impartial jurors.
To some people, these sound like technicalities. But since 1789, the founders of
this country recognized that the only way to tell the difference between a guilty
person and an innocent person with any reliability is to give them a fair trial. The
case in front of the District COUli, therefore, is primarily not about guilt or
innocence. It's about whether the proceeding in Mr. Echols' case was fair. But due
to a, quirk perhaps we call it, an exception in federal habeas corpus law, there are
cases in which the threshold question for the court is: Is there evidence, sufficient
evidence, to establish that someone is actually innocent of a crime? If that evidence
exists, it means the court can proceed in a different kind of way to consider all of
the fair trial claims that the petitioner brings. This is a case, filed on Monday, in
which Mr. Echols presented evidence of actual innocence.
Actual innocence, in a legal sense, in the federal court means the following: Is new
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evidence that was not available at the time of the offense -- when you view it with
all of the evidence concerning the case -- would a federal judge then be able to say,
with confidence, that any reasonable juror would have a reasonable doubt about the
defendant's guilt. To state it differently, is it the case that no reasonable juror
would find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And a third way, can
the judge be confident that with this new evidence, if that defendant were tried
today, he would be acquitted. And we are here today to discuss the evidence that
establishes that no reasonable juror would convict Damien Echols, essentially
knowing what we know today.
The heart of this presentation is four experts who we will be calling today who are
among the experts who provided the core of the new evidence before the District
Court. They are Werner Spitz, probably the country's leading forensic pathologist,
certainly the author of the bible of forerisic pathology in this country. Richard
Souviron, a renowned forensic odontologist, who was the key witness to the
prosecution in convicting Ted Bundy, some years ago. Tom Fedor, who is a DNA
expert, to discuss the new DNA evidence. And John Douglas, who headed the
Criminal Analysis Unit of the FBI for twenty-five years. And we will move to
them as quickly as we can.
But I think in order for anyone to have a full sense of the impact of this evidence,
they have to have some context about what happened, what led to the arrest and
conviction of Damien Echols. And once the experts have concluded, we're going to
try and move through this in a systematic fashion. There's a lot of information to
get out to you, we will throw it open for questions and answers, but we will ask
that we complete all of the experts' presentations before that begins.
But let me begin in 1993 with the alTest ofDamien Echols.
[CLIP BEGINS PLAYING] KAIT8 News, June 7,1993: Good evening, I'm Diana
Davis. And I'm Tom Brooks. In a statement given to police and obtained by a
Memphis newspaper, seventeen-year-old Jessie Misskelley allegedly confesses to
watching two other suspects choke, rape and sexually mutilate three West
Memphis second graders. [garbled name] reports. According to the published
report, Misskelley told police he watched eighteen-year-old Damien Echols and
sixteen-year-old Jason Baldwin brutalize the children with a club and a knife. The
report says Misskelley told police Echols and Baldwin raped one of the boys and
sexually mutilated another as part of a cult ritual. Misskelley is quoted as saying he
did not take part in the rape and mutilation, but that he helped subdue one victim
who tried to escape. At a press conference, Inspector Gary Gitchell said the case
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against the accused teens is very strong. [SHOWS GITCHELL, UNKNOWN
PERSON ASKS QUESTION] "On a scale of one to ten, how solid would your
case be?" [GITCHELL RESPONDS] "Eleven." [UNSEEN CROWD LAUGHS
AND CLAPS] It appears satanic worship may have played a role in the murders.
Since the very beginning of the investigation, people all around West Memphis
have come forward with stories of satanic cults. [END OF CLIP]
[SLIDE:
Misskelley Confession
- Choked, Sexually.Violated and Mutilated the BOys
- Beat the Boys With Knife and Club
- Satanic Cult Ritual]
So everyone in the State of Arkansas had been informed, beyond any reasonable
doubt, eleven on a scale of ten, that Damien Echols choked, sexually violated and
mutilated the victims, beat the boys with a knife and a club, as part of a satanic cult
ritual. The only problem is that the statement of Gary Gitchell that convinced the
citizens of this state that it was true was absolutely false. He knew, he had to know,
that then, as now, there was not a single piece of credible evidence that tied
Damien Echols to these crimes.
The two pieces of evidence that existed at that time were a statement by a woman
who was facing embezzlement charges, that she would play detective, find out
what went on in this case, she knew Misskelley and she told the police that as a
detective Misskelley had taken her, with Damien Echols, to a satanic esbat. Her
name was Vicki Hutcheson. What do we know today about Vicki Hutcheson?
Every word was a lie. A complete fabrication, a product of police pressure to get
results in the deaths of three children. [SLIDE: Arkansas Times article from Oct.
2004] That's one piece of evidence.
The second piece of evidence of course, was the statement taken from Jessie
Misskelley, which any objective observer at the time would know could not
possibly be true. Misskelley was borderline retarded. He was told to cooperate, he
could cooperate, he knew there was a reward. He was told when he said he wasn't
involved in satanic activity that he had failed the polygraph on that question. He
didn't fail the polygraph. He said that he met with Echols and Misskelley and
marched them off, uh, marched the boys off, he took them off their bikes while
they were on their way to school at nine o'clock in the morning. At nine o'clock in
the morning, those boys were in school, as they were all of that day.
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[SLIDE:
A Dozen Reasons
1. Borderline Retarded
2. Knew of Reward
3. Was Falsely Told He Failed Polygraph
4. Murders Were in Morning
5. Boys Could Have Run Away
6. Boys Tied with Brown Rope]
He said that, and this is just so telling. We debated whether we were going to show
you the proof of this. It's a picture of these three little boys bound with their
shoelaces, feet to hands in a tortured position. The police tried desperately to get
Misskelley to describe this. And finally they said, "Well, why didn't the boys run
away? If they were tied up in a way that he could run away." He said, "Oh, they
could have run away, we hit them." No human being, no human being who has
ever seen a photograph of those three boys, could say that they were tied in a way
that allowed them to run away. And Misskelley said they were tied with brown
rope, no one could not know they were tied with their own shoelaces from their
sneakers. He said one victim was choked to death. Absolutely false. None of the
victims were choked. The victims were sodomized. Even in 1994, the State's
pathologist said you cannot rape an eight-year-old boy if you're an adult and not
leave overwhelming physical evidence of it. There was not one bit of evidence that
any of these boys were sodomized.
(Part 2)
The boys, he said, were beaten with their clothes on. Badly beaten with their
clothes on. All of their clothes were recovered, there was no blood on them. He
said that Baldwin called him at noon to say that the murders were completed. Jason
Baldwin, like all of these victims, was in school at noon. And finally, they take this
statement to a judge who refuses to give a warrant, he says "You've given me a
statement that doesn't describe these crimes. They occurred in the evening, not in
the morning." They go back to Misskelley in the interrogation and tell him that he
had said that it was eight o'clock at night, which he never had. They supplied the
time. And even though we now know it was the evening and Baldwin, uh
Misskelley has described this as in the morning, there's never an explanation given
of how he ever could have run into Echols or Baldwin, whose movements during
that day were accounted for.
So when Gary Gitchell says "Eleven out often," he's talking about zero on a scale
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of ten. So, where do we go from there. The authentic assessment of the evidence as
Echols' trial began came from the prosecutors.
[CLIP FROM 'PARADISE LOST] Brent Davis: Unfortunately, we need his
testimony real bad. If it was a perfect world, we would take what we have on Jessie
and leave it and we'd go and get the other two. And get them and be happy. But it's
not. We need his testimony to be sure and get convictions on the other two. [END
OF CLIP]
What happens then, is that my friend Davis is saying that the statement of
Misskelley is not only false and unreliable, it's inadmissable against either Echols
or Baldwin. In thiscountry, you can't put in a statement like that. You have to put a
witness on the stand to be cross-examined. He is saying that unless we get Jessie
Misskelley on the stand to give a credible version of this, we don't think we can
win the case. And John Fogleman, the other prosecutor, at that point summarizes
what they have without Misskelley.
[CLIP FROM PL] John Fogleman: So that's what we've got, but that's all,
basically, that we've got. Davis: You asked what the odds were of convicting
without Jessie, and it's, you know, fifty-fifty might be good. [END OF CLIP]
What they're talking about is there's a statement by the Hollingsworth clan, that
two members of the Hollingsworth family who said they saw Damien Echols and
his girlfriend who was related to them, Domini Teer, on that evening out on the
road not far from the crime scene. There's fibers from little childrens' clothing that
were recovered on the, at the crime scene that -- the theory being that somehow a
little shirt in Echols' home had a fiber transferred to him, and it got to the crime
scene. There were two girls at a softball game who said they heard Echols say he
killed the boys and he would kill two more. They mentioned Michael Carson, and
you'll be seeing from him, a jailhouse informant who said that Jason Baldwin made
an incriminary statement. And he said, and this is absolutely critical to what you're
hearing today, he said, Fogleman says, "We found a knife in a lake behind the
home of Jason Baldwin." The knife in the lake. So. But did Jessie Misskelley
testifY at the trial? No, he did not. He never, he had maintained his innocence after
this statement, he never testified for the State. Well if that's the case, given what
you saw, how did they get the conviction against Damien Echols? We'll be
discussing each of these things again later, but one thing was absolutely critical to
that conviction and to our presentation today. In the closing arguments --
[CLIP FROM PL] Fogleman: Is it a coincidence, this knife is found behind, in the
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lake, hidden behind Jason Baldwin's house? There are marks on Christopher Byers
where you've got like a dash, where it's a cut, a cut and open space, a cut and an
open space. And if you take this knife and do that, you can see it leaves a cut and
an open space, a cut and an open space. Now if you take this knife, Exhibit-­
Defense Exhibit 6, and even with the slightest pressure, it makes a straight line.
[END OF CLIP]
So what have you, what have you just seen. The prosecutor has said that if you
take a grapefruit and cut it with that big knife that you saw, you will get a -- that is
a fair representation of what a knife does to human flesh. He has said that there is a
certain pattern that would be made on the grapefruit same as made on human flesh
by that knife, and he concludes by saying, "So therefore, you know this knife
found in the lake was what was responsible, remember, for the sexual mutilation,
the sexual mutilation of Chris Byers." None of that was supported by any evidence
in the record. The State's pathologist said nothing more than this. That he could
identify of hundreds of marks on these bodies. He said hundreds. He picked out
two spots -- three spots -- that could have been made by a serrated knife, but any
serrated knife. He could not say, could not attribute to anything. But you watch the
prosecutor conduct an experiment which he represented to the jury proved
conclusively that the same marks on that grapefruit had been made by that same
knife on the body of Chris Byers.
Now, what do we know about what convinced the jury to convict. Remember,
Jessie Misskelley did not testify. Jessie Misskelley's statement could never serve as
any evidence in the case against Echols and Baldwin because in this country,
evidence comes from the witness stand. Every jury is told you will decide this case
on the evidence from the witness stand. But in the last couple of years, quite
fortuitously, and this is the sort of fortune that can save a man's life, we have found
the following.
We have found that there was -- even at the time, it was known that the jury put up
big sheets of factors that they considered in convicting Echols and Baldwin. And
they've been kept in evidence. And here the Echols one is, and people have
examined this for years. But no one had really asked what that might be [SLIDE:
Jury notes with blacked out line]. What was that? Why was it crossed out and who
crossed it out? Years later an investigator for Jason Baldwin named Tom Quinn
found one of the jurors who had not only taken compendious notes, but had copied
a facsimile of that list into her notebook. The crossed out item is the Jessie
Misskelley testimony.
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The same is true of the Jason Baldwin list [SLIDE: Other list with two blacked out
lines]. You will also see something crossed out on the Baldwin list. The woman's
facsimile -- the juror's facsimile -- reveals it is the Jessie Misskelley statement.
Jessie Misskelley -- uh, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were convicted
illegally in violation of every basic principle of a fair trial because they were
convicted by jurors on evidence that not only the jurors had never heard, but they
couldn't have heard. And most importantly, had that statement been admitted, those
jurors would have heard the eleven reasons why it was false. Because it was not
admitted, because it was not admitted, because the defense was under the
impression the jury didn't know about it or wouldn't rely on it. They didn't hear any
of that evidence about how false it was. All they knew was the reports in
newspapers that said consistently Misskelley identified these two defendants as
murdering and raping these three victims. So that is the trial, that is the central
claim, that unfairness, reliance on Misskelley's statement, in Echols versus Norris.
But with that, I would like to reach the question of an addition to that, the
unfairness of the trial. What is the new evidence that proves not merely that this
was an unfair trial, but innocent men were convicted. And in particular Damien
Echols. And with that, I'll tum to Don Horgan, who's going to introduce our
experts.
DONALD HORGAN, counsel:
Good Morning. I'm going to take a minute or two here just to review some of the
DNA evidence that has recently surfaced in the case. First, with a little
background. In 2001, Arkansas, like a lot of other states, passed a statute that
allows convicted criminal defendants to challenge their convictions with new DNA
evidence that shows them to be actually innocent. Under that state statute and
under an agreement the defendants reached with the prosecution, relevant items
from the crime scene in this case were tested at the laboratory chosen by the
prosecution, and that's Bode Laboratories in Virginia.
(Part 3)
In late 2005, Bode issued its first report, showing DNA profiles of genetic material
found on the victims and on other pieces of evidence from the crime scene. The lab
was later given DNA samples both from the victims and the defendants and
analyzed those. In the end, none of the Bode reports could link any of the DNA
provided by the defendants to the victims or to the crime scene. And in fact -- and
this is of great importance -- one report showed a piece of genetic material on the
penis of Steven Branch that could not be linked to any victim or to any defendant.
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In the meantime, our investigators were obtaining DNA samples in the form of
hair, cigarette butts, oral swabs, from people who had some connection to the
events. These included samples from several people, including Steven Branch's
step-father, Terry Hobbs. And later we received a sample voluntarily given by
David Jacoby, a friend of Terry Hobbs, who was with TelTY Hobbs on the day
Steven disappeared.
We gave all these samples to Thomas Fedor, who's here today. He's an
independent forensic serologist at the Serological Research Institute in California.
Tom analyzed the samples and compared them to the testing results Bode had
already given us. The result of that analysis, in May 2007, showed that a hair from
a ligature used to tie up Michael Moore could be associated with TelTY Hobbs. We
provided that result to the prosecution right after learning of it. A much more
recent analysis by Mr. Fedor showed that a hair found on a tree root, or a tree
stump, at the crime scene could be associated with the DNA samples provided by
David Jacoby. We also disclosed that result to the prosecution right after learning
it. Mr. Fedor is now going to talk a little more about the meaning of those DNA
results in a little more detail. Tom.
THOMAS FEDOR, forensic serologist:
Good morning, everyone. My name is Tom Fedor. I work for the Serological
Research Institute in Richmond, California. The Serological Research Institute is
often abbreviated, for convenience, S-E-R-I. SERI. I'll refer to my laboratory as
SERI.
[SLIDE:
Cigarette Thought To Have Been Smoked By Terry Hobbs:
- Do not exclude the cigarette smoker as the source of a ligature hair on Moore.
- About 0.12% of the population could be the source of the cigarette butt DNA.
- About 1.5% of the population could be the source of the ligature hair]
What I did -- after Bode found very important things, firstly that none of the DNA
from any of the crime scene evidence could be associated with Mr. Echols or Mr.
Baldwin or Mr. Misskelley -- Was prepare the samples Mr. Horgan indicated he
sent to me to the results that the Bode Laboratory actually got from hairs at the
crime scene. What I learned from the cigarette butt that was thought to have been
smoked by Terry Hobbs -- and I'll say thought to have been because one of them
was recovered from the front yard of his residence. Another cigarette was recoved
from an ashtray in his house. The DNA that I recovered from those cigarette butts
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does not exclude the person who smoked them from being the source of a
particular hair found at the crime scene. That hair was associated with a ligature
that bound the victim Moore.
Approximately 0.12% of the population could also be the source of that cigarette
butt DNA, in case there is any doubt about whether it is Hobbs' DNA on that
cigarette butt or not. Very few other people could have provided that particular
DNA sample. In respect to the hair that was associated with the ligature,
approximately 1.5% of the population at large could be the source of that hair. So,
what we know now are two things. Terry Hobbs could be the source of that hair on
the ligature. None of the defendants could be the source of that hair on the ligature.
In respect to items that Mr. Hogan indicated I tested from David Jacoby, the same
sort of result is found. That is, what I have are a cigarette butt thought to have been
smoked by him because someone visited his house and collected that cigarette butt.
And as Mr. Horgan indicated, Mr. Jacoby generously provided a sample of his
cheek swab, that I could test.
[SLIDE:
Results from SERI Test of Cheek Swabs from David Jacoby and Cigarette Butt
Thought to Have Been Smoked by Him:
- DNA test results from these two samples are th same and do not exclude the
cigarette smoker as the source of the tree stump hair
- About 30/0 of the population could be the source of the cigarette butt DNA
- About 7% of the population could be the source of the tree stump hair]
The results from those two samples from Mr. Jacoby were the same as each other,
confirming that Jacoby smoked the cigarette butt, if there was any question about
that. But more importantly, the DNA results from Mr. Jacoby do not exclude him
as the source of a hair found on a tree stump or a tree root at the scene of the crime.
About 3% of the population could also be the source of the cigarette butt DNA, in
case there was any question as to whether Mr. Jacoby was in fact the smoker of
that cigarette. And about 7% of the general population could be responsible for that
particular tree stump hair. None of the defendants could have been the source of
that hair. None of the victims could have been the source of either hair, because -­
as Mr. Horgan mentioned -- Bode has found none of the DNA evidence from the
crime scene connects any of the defendants to the scene of the crime. That's my
work. Thank you.
DONALD HORGAN:
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In addition to the DNA, there have been other defense discoveries that bear on the
question of actual innocence. As some of you know, a critical prosecution theory at
the 1994 trials, and Mr. Riordan mentioned this, was that the defendants used a
survival knife to inflict most of the injuries on these victims. And that they used
the knife before the children died. In late 2005, the defense hired a pediatric
pathologist to review the autopsy reports, the photographs and other evidence, to
get her opinion about the cause of the injuries. Her name is Janice Ophoven. A few
months later we learned Dr. Ophoven's preliminary conclusion and that was that
animals had actually caused most of these wounds and that they had happened after
the time that the victims died. And of course if that were true, it was a very
dramatic development, because it would expose key elements of the prosecution's
case as utter nonsense.
So we then consulted with four other renowned experts. They included forensic
pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, who is here today, Michael Baden, Dr. Vincent Di
Maio. In addition, forensic odontologists, Richard Souviron from Miami-Dade
Medical's Office -- Medical Examiner's Office, here's here today, and Dr. Wood
from Canada, Robert Wood.
The consensus reached by all of those experts was again, that most of the injuries
to the skin of the victims, including the severe genital injury to Christopher Byers,
were not caused by the use of a knife but by animal predation that occurred after
death. The experts were also unanimous that none of the children had any injuries
consistent with any form of sexual abuse. And as this view was emerging in May
of this year, our experts presented those views at a meeting with the prosecution
and with Dr. Peretti, who had done the original autopsies. And we all regarded that
as a j oint search for the truth.
Finally, in September of this year, we retained another forensic pathologist, Dr.
Terry Haddix from Stanford University, to check on the validity of the animal
predation theory and our other experts' views. We gave her all of the relevant
background material. We said nothing to her about animal predation whatsoever.
And Dr. Haddix concluded that animal predation had explained many of these
injuries, that there was no evidence of any sexual abuse, and again most
importantly, that there was no evidence on the childrens' bodies consistent with the
use of a serrated knife.
Dr. Spitz and Dr. Souviron are now going to speak for a few minutes about their
findings as to the nature and causes of these injuries. One other note before they do
begin. We think it's appropriate in this setting to present only very limited
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photographic views of the injuries in order to illustrate the expert findings. But
keep in mind that Dr. Spitz's findings, Dr. Souviron's findings, the finding of every
other expert we have, is based on review of hundreds of autopsy and crime scene
photographs. And the most relevant of those photographs and other materials are
included in the federal filing that we submitted this past Monday. And with that, I
will turn it over to Dr. Spitz to be followed then immediately by Dr. Souviron.
DR. WERNER SPITZ, forensic pathologist:
Good morning. I analyzed a lot of pictures. I analyzed a lot of written material. It is
my opinion, or following on my opinions, injuries on the body surface of all the
three victims, three boys, including the emasculation of Chris Byers, were
produced by animals, after death.
(Part 4)
None of the injuries were caused during life, and none were caused by a serrated
knife, or any knife for that matter. These are not sharp injuries that have
characteristics, and those characteristics are not identifiable or synonymous with a
knife or any other sharp force type injury.
The type of animals, there are small animals and large animals. The spacing of the
wounds that -- two of the pictures I have brought here -- are not consistent with the
serrations on the skin. [SLIDE: Photos] When a dog or other camiverous animal
attacks a body after death, or before death sometimes, they scrape the body. They
move their claws on the body and try to bring the body closer to them and they do
this several times. And you have here two of the victims that have the same
identical injury and they, the spacing and the configuration of those injuries is not
compatible with a serrated knife such as this or, for that matter, any knife.
I might say to you, in a, in a, just a couple of words, when these pictures first came
to me, I couldn't understand what this issue was all about because it was so obvious
that these are animal product. And I thought by the attorneys, it took maybe
seconds to make that observation. Of course, it took a lot longer to read the
material and to identify detail, but as far as satanic, cult-type injuries, I fail to see
those in any of these victims.
There were obvious claw marks. There were, on all the victims, there was no
evidence of sexual abuse, there was no evidence anywhere of anal penetration or
mutilation or any way you want to call that. The, there was no other abnormalities
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on the bodies that would in any way conform with that which was alleged to have
occurred.
I asked just a few minutes before this meeting started, I asked Dennis Riordan if he
would allow you to view other pictures if you, he said, if you so wish, then he will
be glad to show them to you.
Thank you very much.
DR. RICHARD SOUVIRON, forensic odontologist:
Good morning. My name is Richard Souviron. I am the Chief Forensic Dentist for
Miami-Dade COunty, Florida, and have been in that capacity since 1967. I have
published in Dr. Spitz's book, also in a handbook on bite mark identification, the
degradation that occurs to humans by animals. Obviously, in my area, we see quite
a bit of degradation from sharks, barracudas, alligators, which are not involved
obviously in this case. However, we see degradation from other animals such as
dogs, number one cause, deaths that have resulted from dog bites as recently as this
year. In Naples, Florida, a jogger was attacked and killed by pit bulls. So I've had
some experience in that regard. Additionally, the bite mark evidence that I've dealt
with, obviously, particularly in cases like Ted Bundy, was human bites on other
humans. In this case, we're dealing with animal bites on humans. My opinion that
these bitemarks, and I concur with Dr. Spitz, that you don't have to be a rocket
scientist to look at these things and know that these are bite marks and that they
occurred post-mortem -- after death.
The area that I'm going to be involved with is to -- I think all of you saw the
experiment with the grapefruit, where the knife was hit into the grapefruit and he
said, "See these spaces? They match this knife." Which was quote, hidden, in a
lake. That's their job, is to be as inflammatory as possible. That knife was hidden in
the lake. Well, they found a knife in the lake that's a Rambo knife, that's what I call
it. That's the knife [SLIDE: Photo of knife] And you don't have to be a rocket
scientist, or a forensic dentist, or anything else to look at that, serrations on the
back of that knife, and see these marks on this, these two human beings, and saying
that that back end of that knife made these marks. I mean, give me a break. That is
the most ridiculous statement that I've ever heard anybody make. And to sell that to
a jury is unconscionable, in my opinion. These are scratch marks from claws from
some type of an animal, a carnivore, as Dr. Spitz says. The genital injuries, which
we cannot show you because they are so graphic and so disgusting that it's not for
television.
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[SLIDE: Forensic Conclusions
- Injuries on the body surface, including the emasculation, were produced by
animals after death
- Wounds attributed to a knife or knives are in fact claw and/or bite marks caused
by animals. None were caused by a serrated knife, or any knife.
- Byers' genital injuries were the result of ripping not of cutting with a knife. These
injuries are post-mortem animal predation.]
I have a case in which that same type of injury is documented and occurred on an
individual, and is reported in a textbook, and animals will go for the genital areas,
animals will go for areas where there's blood. So, in this particular case, in my area
of expertise, number one, there are no knife wounds on the body. Dr. Spitz didn't
say this, but he pointed out yesterday, there are no stab wounds. If somebody's
going to use a knife, what do you do with a knife, you run around and scrape with
it like this? I mean, come on. You stab with a knife. There are no stab wounds on
these bodies, anyone of the three, have no stab wounds. So, this knife didn't cause
any injuries. No knife caused any injuries. And the injuries to the body were post­
mortem, done by animals. Thanks.
DENNIS RlORDAN:
With that, let's return to this case. Remember, there were twelve obvious problems,
obvious factors, that indicated Jessie Misskelley never saw these crimes occur. But
given what we know now, how was it that Jessie Misskelley said anything about
the genital mutilation of Chris Byers? Do we have a slide, oh, I'm sorry, why don't
we go ahead with this.
[CLIP FROM PL] Scene with Gitchell on the stand. Tape playing.
Ridge: This is Det. Bryn Ridge, of the West Memphis Police Department
conducting an investigation of the triple homicide case file number 93-05-0666.
Currently in the office with Jessie Lloyd Misskelley, Jr. .. What occurred while you
were there?
Jessie: When I was there, I saw Damien hit this one, hit this one boy real bad and
then, uh, and he started screwing them and stuff. [END OF CLIP]
That is the only statement that Jessie Misskelley volunteered. I saw him hit
somebody real bad and start screwing them. We know, we know -- we knew then,
and we know even more now, that the screwing thing never happened. That it was
a fiction. But, he had made no reference to any knife. And it is Detective Ridge,
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who at one point earlier in the statement said, "Who had a knife?" And Misskelley
then says, "Well, Baldwin did." And then he says, "Well, where was he cut?"
Misskelley says, "He's cut on the face." That isn't what they're after. And it is at
that point that Ridge says, "You know another boy was cut." Ridge says, "Another
boy was cut." And he asks, "Where was he cut?" And Misskelley says, "Uh, at the
bottom." Ridge says, "Is that the groin area?" Misskelley says nothing, I don't think
he knows what a groin is. But then finally Ridge says, "ifhe knows where his penis
is." And then Misskelley says, "Oh, that's where he was cut at." And it's Detective
Gitchell, not Misskelley, who supplied the name of Byers as the boy who had been
cut.
[SLIDE: Misskelley Confession
Misskelley made no reference to a knife in his statement prior to being asked by
Detective Ridge: "Who had a knife?" Misskelley then responded that Baldwin did.
After Misskelley said one boy was cut on the face, Ridge told Misskelley that
another boy was cut and asked where. After Misskelley stated "at the bottom,"
Ridge suggested the "groin area," to which Misskelley made no reply. Finally,
Ridge asked Misskelley if he "knows where his penis is," and Misskelley agreed
"that's he was cut at." It was Detective Gitchell, not Misskelley, who then supplied
the name of Byers as the boy who had been cut.]
In other words, Jessie Misskelley never saw any genital mutilation, because there
was no genital mutilation by the perpetrator of these crimes. To the extent that his
statement includes a reference to it, it's completely supplied by his interrogators.
(Part 5)
The knife in the lake. The knife in the lake. Now let's turn back to the knife in the
lake. We had a representative of the State hold up a grapefruit as an analog to
human flesh. Our filing in federal court says that, that, that the analog of a
grapefruit to human flesh being cut is like comparing cutting chalk to comparing
cheese. It's a fraud. It can't be done. He makes the marks himself. And he describes
to the jury how they're measured, and he says, "I'm telling you. You can
superimpose them, theire exactly there." It's a classic -- there is no testimony in
the record to that. It's a classic instance of prosecutorial misconduct, in attempting
to inform a jury of facts that are unbased in the evidence. It is a federal Sixth
Amendment right violation, it is a critical claim in front of the federal court right
now.
In rebuttal argument, Prosecutor Brent Davis says, "Well take this knife" -- and
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you saw it, there's a sharp edge on the front and the serration is actually on the
back side of the knife. And he says, "If you're cutting the penis with the sharp
edge, then the serrated edge will be making marks on the thigh of Chris Byers." No
foundation for that in the record, it's simply not true. And I assure you,that ifyou
can stomach looking at these autopsy photos, when you see, when you see the
thighs of Chris Byers with hundreds of marks on them -- you'd still be there with a
knife trying to make that number of marks. You will see, it is truly obvious where
this predation came from. A phenomenon -- and this is attested to in the federal
writ, that, if you can bear this -- called degloving. There was a big scene in the
trial, it's in the DVD about the trial, in which the State's pathologist is asked,
"Well, how could you do that surgical operation on the penis? Wouldn't you need a
scalpel, wouldn't you have to do it in an operating room, could you do it on a bank,
could you do it in the water?" And he says, "I don't know how you could remove
the skin that way." It is well established in the medical literature that if something
like an animal pulls on the testes, the skin of the penis comes off like a glove,
leaving the corpus of the penis on the body, which is exactly what happened in this
case.
Go then to another critical piece of evidence against Echols. Bryn Ridge says,
"You know, when I talked to Echols three days after the crime, he knew that one of
the boys was cut worse than the others." Well, we've supplied the court with any
number of newspapers that reported the fact that Byers was cut worse than the
others. But the inference that Echols knew this because he was there to see the
emasculation ofByers is, as so much in this case, simply false.
And then, and then, and this is truly -- there is a study recently on wrongful
convictions, including death convictions, they list the factors that are most
common in the last two hundred cases. One is false confessions by teenagers,
mentally deficient people, or both -- Jessie Misskelley. Another one is the
production ofjailhouse informants who say, "Oh! The defendant confessed to me."
Now you can have a tape recording of that, it's credible. He says he can confess
that the murder weapon is buried under his house, they find it, it's credible. There
is no form -- no prosecutor can put an uncorroborated jailhouse informant on the
stand, uncorroborated, and know that he is, that that is not perjury. There is no one
who can possibly know if it is perjury.
Let's look at Michael Carson.
[CLIP FROM PL] Davis: Did you have an occasion again while you were in the
detention facility to ask him, was he involved in the murder of the three eight-year-
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olds?
Carson: Yes. I think it was like the next day. I believe it was the next day.
Davis: And, can you tell us what the scenar -- what was going on, what was
happening at the time that occurred?
Carson: Well me and Jason Baldwin were scraping up the cards, going ourselves
for lunch, I said, "Just between me and you, I won't say a word, did you do it?" He
said, "Yes" and he went into detail about it.
Davis: You say he went in more detail. What did he tell you?
Carson: He told me how he dismembered the kid, or I don't know exactly how
many kids, he just said he dismembered 'em. He sucked the blood from the penis
and the scrotum, and put the balls in his mouth. [END OF CLIP]
So, this supposedly happened within twenty-four hours of Carson -- who's injail
for about three burglaries, including at sixteen years old, breaking into a house to
steal guns. Comes in and says Jason Baldwin, who has made a statement to no one,
within twenty-four hours confessed that to him. Did he, does Carson go to the
police, does he mention it to the jailers, no. Eight, nine months later when Jessie
Misskelley is finally on trial, Carson comes forward for the first time to say that
Jessie, uh, Jason Baldwin told him that he put Chris Byers' balls in his mouth. You
have just seen, you have just seen someone lie under oath to send a man to the
death chamber. Lie under oath. And I won't go into detail here, but it won't be that
long before the story of Michael Carson and his years since then are told by
attorneys for Jason Baldwin. And when that story is told, if there were ever any
doubt, you will see that this is the classic form ofjailhouse uncorroborated perjury.
And, of course, the forensics make that clear. That was an animal that caused that
wound to Chris Byers.
However, however, it was that testimony that led Dale Griffis to say, "Well, this is
a satanic killing. Damien Echols was involved in it, he's a satanist and I'll tell you
that it's a satanic killing." On what basis does Mister, does "Doctor" Griffis say
this. First, let's deal with "Doctor" Griffis. Do we have a graphic...
[CLIP FROM PL]
Ford: This is a mail order coilege, isn't it? What classes did you take between 1980
and 1982 to obtain your Master's degree?
Griffis: (no response)
Ford: What classes?
Griffis: (no response at first) I testified --
Ford: I'm asking what classes, what classes did you take?
Griffis: I told you, I answered that before, none.
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Ford: You did not take any classes. Between 1982 and 1984, when you became a
Ph.D., what classes did you take?
Griffis: None.
Ford: None. Okay. [END OF CLIP]
[SLIDE: Prosecution Expert: Dale Griffis
- Claimed Wounds on Left Side of Face Indicated Satanic Murder
- Satanic Opinion Relies on Carson Perjury
- Fraudulent Credentials]
Doctor, Doctor Griffis attended Columbia Pacific University by mail, he said. A
Ph.D., a Ph.D. in cult studies from Columbia Pacific University, which was shut
down by the State of California in 1997 as a fraudulent diploma mill. Dr. Griffis
says that he knows that this is"a satanic crime because there is a wound on the left
side of Steve Branch, and left side facial wounds are satanic, as opposed to right
side facial wounds, which I assume are Christian. [laughter] And he says the other
reason that he knows, oh well he says that it's a satanic killing because it happened,
it happened in between two -- May fifth is in between May first, which is a satanic
holiday, in the Catholic school I was raised in it was the date of the beginning of
Month of Our Mary, and Walpurgisnacht and ?vane. I called Ken Lanning, who is
the FBI -- and John Douglas will talk about this more -- the FBI expert on satanic
activities then, because they were coming in from all around the country. He said
they all had calendars of the satanic holidays. He said it was over for him when he
saw a calendar of 120 satanic holidays and murders, they said, were committed
within two days of each of them, okay, multiply 120 by two or three.
He relies on Carson. Okay, Carson, he's asked, assume that Jason Baldwin put the
balls of Chris Byers in his mouth, is this a satanic killing. Yes. As Ken Lanning
said, "If they had killed these kids with a whoopee cushion, Dale Griffis would
have come in to testifY that a whoopee cushion is a satanic instrument of murder."
Here is his new book (holds up a copy of "Secret Weapons"). Here is his new
book, 2001, in which he details how he discovered that two thirteen-year-old girls
were taken over by the CIA, given electroshock treatment, and at the age of
fourteen became military pilots and committed assassinations for the CIA and then
were brainwashed to forget it. And it was only with his assistance that he was able
to recover the memories of this abuse of these thirteen-year-old girls by the CIA.
(Part 6)
This is a man who stands on the same level as those who claim that the World
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Trade Center bombing was a result of explosives in the basement. And that all of
the Jews in the building were given notice so they could out before the bombing
was committed. There is probably no greater disgrace in the history of death
penalty litigation in this country, that Dale Griffis was placed on the stand in a
death penalty case to testify and offer testimony as the basis for killing Damien
Echols. And with that, I would like to tum to someone who actually does know
something about analyzing crime, John Douglas, twenty-five years with the FBI
Criminal Analysis Unit.
JOHN DOUGLAS, profiler:
Thank you. Good morning.
We in fact were contacted in 1993. Two of my colleagues were contacted. We
primarily provided advice relative to neighborhood investigations, what types of
questions they should be asking when they went around the neighborhood
knocking on doors. We then were contacted, later during the trial, and Ken
Lanning was contacted by one of the prosecutors about utilizing satanism as a
defense. And Lanning, who's a good friend of mine and colleague, laughed at him
and said, "You better not use it. You better not use satanism as a defense, because
the defense team is going to chew you up and spit you out. Just go with your
forensic evidence, just have your, lead with your forensic evidence for the solution
of the crime." Well, as you know, there were no forensic evidence to go on, so they
fell back on satanism as a motive in this case.
The early 1970s and '80s, we began to see at the FBI Academy, police officers
coming in from around the world, the media was playing up that there were 50,000
children abductions in the United States. One out of three children were being
sexually assaulted. As a result of this type of information, I went to the National
Institute of Justice and I received two grants to conduct research. First research
was sexual homicide patterns and motives, the second research was to conduct a
violent crime study, a Crime Classification Manual (holds up copy of book), which
we're now in the second edition. The first edition, we addressed every possible
homicide we considered using satanism as a possible, you know, as a possible
category. But then we decided to go out and conduct interviews -- like David
Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, and Richard Ramirez, the Nightstalker -- which we
did. And hundreds of other cases. And the cops were kind of throwing around
words like ritual in their cases, and using it interchangably with satanic, with
satanic crimes. We did a close evaluation, we looked at these cases. Ken Lanning
and I, and my other colleagues, we didn't see one. We didn't see one case. And
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that, the first publication was in 1992. This was just published, the second edition
was just published last year, in September of 2006.
And those 50,000 kids who were being abducted in the United States, we worked
through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Protection, there's about
100 every year that are abducted. True abductions of children, stranger types of
homicides, that's all we see. All the other abductions are pretty much parental types
of abductions and we usually recover those children. So being tasked with this, I
was interested, was this going to be the first case. I knew a little bit about it, not
much about it. I didn't want to interview the subjects in the case that were
convicted. I wanted to rely just on the facts, the information. I did get to interview
some of the now suspects in this particular case.
And the Crime Classification Manual is broken down into: Group Cause, meaning ,
is there multiple offenders involved in this case; is it a Sexual Homicide, is that the
motive; is it a Criminal Enterprise, meaning that is there an angle where there's a
financial connection to the subject and the children; and the fourth one is whether
or not it's a Personal Cause Homicide. I looked at all the different categories, I
looked and reviewed the information relative to the case and pretty clearly, it was
pretty easy to me, to define this case as a Personal Cause Homicide. This is not a
homicide, either, perpetrated by a stranger. The person responsible for this crime
knew these victims, and knew these victims relatively well. The question I'd ask
myself is, if the motivation is murder, if the initial intent is murder, go ahead and
kill. Why did the subject decide to tie up the victims after stripping them down
naked. I believe the initial intent, in my analysis, was not to kill but was to taunt
and to punish. Punish these individuals. I saw criminal sophistication at the crime
scene. The tying of the wrists to the ankles. I searched cases all over the world, I
couldn't come up with a similiar types of cases.
What I saw the offender, we call him the unsub, decide to get into the water to
secrete the clothing by pushing down with the sticks in the clothing, hiding the
clothing, along with the three victims. Using that kind of concerted effort, we're
not looking at teenagers committing crimes like this. You're looking at somebody
who's relativeiy criminally sophisticated. We're looking at somebody who's been
violent in the past, who's violent now, at the time this crime was perpetrated:> and
would also be violent in the future. So I did this detailed analysis, went to the
Inquisitor investigative, private investigators in Memphis. And what they said was
is Douglas is describing some people here that we ought to take a look at.
And 10 and behold, David Jacoby was never interviewed by law enforcement. He
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waited for the cops to come knocking on his door. Terry Hobbs was never
interviewed by the police, until we conducted interviews of Terry Hobbs. Then, by,
I interviewed him two times. I had one interview where he was very, very credible
because I didn't have any background infonnation on him. But then five days later,
when we get this more detailed information, specific information, I talked to a total
liar on a Monday night. He's a total liar, the guy I'm talking to now is being
confronted with his lies, and it's a totally different type of bird. The person
responsible for this crime can look at you right in the eye, can look at a camera and
say "I didn't do it" because he's a psychopathic personality. There is no remorse.
Anyone who perpetrates a crime like this and leaves the victims like this, in this
condition, is only concerned about himself. You can put him on the polygraph,
he'll pass the polygraph, particularly fourteen years later.
So looking at this case, to me, besides being a travesty ofjustice, this is not a
satanic murder. There's no ritual. There's no ritualistic crime going on here. I talked
to Mark Byers the other night, we talked with the families here, I told all the
families, I said, "Mark Byers' son was not targeted." Everyone thought he was
targeted. In fact, even Mark Byers would be the person responsible for the triple
homicide. The child who was targeted, was targeted by a predatory animal. That
was exposed the greatest, and where the animal could get to that child. It's equal.
There was no preferential victim at all. All three children would be attacked by
predatory animals. Yes, we do have a killer. And again, the killer went through this
concerted effort because he lives nearby. He tried to delay his identification
because he lived in the neighborhood. And he did his best to delay that by hiding
the bicycles, secreting the clothing, and also hiding the victims in the bayou. So
later on if you have any more specific questions, I'll be glad to address them.
Thank you.
DENNIS RlORDAN:
We're going to bring the experts here in a panel in just a, two minutes. But let me
conclude with a couple of other items. I mentioned before, and it was one of the
things that John Fogleman mentioned in talking to the families before the trial, that
the Hollingsworth Clan saw, said they saw Damien Echols with Domini Teer, who
they were related to, out on the road.
[SLIDE: Hollingsworth Clan
- Prosecution Said ID Mistaken
- Anthony - Ten Year Felony Probation for Sexual Abuse of Minor Sister
- Narlene - Pending Case for May 5th Accident]
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And that testimony was offered at trial. A problem with that is that the
prosecution's theory that these two people couldn't identify the person they were
related to. They were wrong when they said it was Domini Teer. And they were,
because the police verified that she was home at the time. They said you should
believe they correctly identified Echols, even though they couldn't identify their
own relative. What didn't come out at trial is that both Narlene and Anthony,
Anthony Hollingsworth, had a very strong motive to be as friendly and cooperative
with the prosecution as they could. Anthony, because in a case involving -­
prosecuted by John Fogleman the year before, 1991 -- he had received a ten year
felony probation for the sexual abuse of his eight-year-old sister. Narlene had
actually gotten into, and she said this at trial, that she had gotten in a car accident
on May fifth, the day the boys disappeared. What she didn't say was it resulted in a
pending vehicular case against her, which was resolved favorably after she came
forward and said that she had seen Damien Echols and Domini Teer out on the
road.
(Part 7)
I mention also that at the time, the police interviewed Damien Echols and his
mother. They said he was on the phone with Domini Teer. They interviewed
Domini Teer, she confirmed that was true. They interviewed Jennifer Bearden,
who confirmed that was true. Jennifer Bearden has filed an affidavit in the federal
case, now ten years later saying that she's never forgotten this case. She's now
twenty-three, she's a Criminology major, she would have no reason in the world to
continue to offer support to someone who was involved in these crimes. She said,
"At 9:30 that night, Damien Echols was on the phone with me."
So let me just conclude with -- go back to our actual innocence test. The federal
court will have to decide whether, whether today, tried today with this information,
Damien Echols would be acquitted. Well let's look at the conclusion of the
argument that convicted him back in 1993. (reads from slide) They, the defense,
makes a big deal, there's no evidence at the scene. But think about it a minute. It's
not that there's no evidence connecting their client, because what evidence was
found out there connects to one of these two, for the most part.
[SLIDE: Closing Statement
They make a big deal about there's no evidence at the scene. But think about it a
minute. It's not that there's no evidence connection their client because what
evidence was found out there connects to one of these two, for the most part. What
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they want you to do is say there's no evidence. But there's no evidence out there
that points to anybody else.. .if someone else had committed the crime then...you'd
see evidence that didn't connect. And you don't have that.]
What they want you to do is say there's no evidence. But there's no evidence out
there that points to anybody else. If someone else had committed the crime then
you'd see evidence that didn't connect. And you don't have that. (finishes reading)
There is no evidence at the crime that connects to them. There is evidence at the
crime scene that points in another direction. If this case were tried today, Damien
Echols would be acquitted. He is actually innocent, and he has a meritorious claim
for all of the reasons we have stated that his first trial was unfair. We're going to
ask our experts to come up and take seats here. In the interest of time, at least
initially, we're going to limit questions to the members of the media. We ask you to
just state your name and identify your media ...
Question: In your investigation, have you found a motive for why Terry Hobbs
might have committed the crime? (???)
John Douglas: We have specific details, yes, but (screeching microphones) ... We
did find specific details - I don't know if this is the forum that we should be
presenting some of the ... What I look for in a case is precipitating factors and
events leading up to the crime. The person responsible for the crime on May 5th,
1993 just didn't wake up one morning and decide today I'm going to go out and
kill. So what you do is you look at suspects, and if you do background checks on
any people you look for a series of events leading up - precipitating factors,
interpersonal relationships, failings in a marriage, financial problems. You'll see
this with a lot of different types of violent offenders. And you look at that. So
without being specific here, I did see these factors very obvious to me. From the
first interview that I did, because I didn't have the background information, I was
pretty much blindsided, I should have had more information going in, but I just
didn't have the opportunity. But five days later when it came up to all this other
information. Had the police back in 1993 - had they done a background check it
would have come to me or one of my colleagues and say ok what do you think of
this guy? I would say put him on the front burner - put him on the front burner.
Let's see ifhe has the motive. Let's see ifhe has the means and the opportunity.
The opportunity is critical in a case like this cause what you need to have for this ­
you don't need a lot of time, but is there a window of opportunity - about an hour,
an hour and a half which we saw with him - he has an hour or an hour and a half
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window of opportunity. That's plenty of time to perpetrate a crime. Then we saw
other statements, conflicts in statements that he gave to the police over the years
and to us. So you put him on the front burner; now it's up to the police or
whomever to come up with evidence to link him to the crime. I'm just really
directing them to a suspect, and he looked good.
Dennis Riordan: Let me say this ... Certainly as a defense attorney ... One of the
horrors of this case is that within hours of the Misskelley statement, as flawed as it
was, the State had been told that the crime had been solved beyond all question. It
was a rush to judgment, the worst kind of rush to judgment. No one is saying that
we have developed in this case evidence that establishes the guilt much less the
guilt beyond reasonable doubt of anyone else. What we are saying is that there's no
credible evidence that links any of these defendants to the crime. There is, unlike
the statement in closing argument, strong evidence which at least points strongly
away. And that is the question that we'll be addressing in federal court.
Question: Mr. Riordan, Mara Leveritt, Arkansas Times. You mentioned that the
forensic evidence that you presented to ... ? .. our State Crime Lab ... ? When you
had discussions with them have they agreed, have they (corroborated/cooperated?)
or have you reached a certain... ? ...
Dennis Riordan: We met at the Arkansas Crime Lab - I think that there was a
good deal of coverage of the meeting in May with the assumption that it involved
DNA, but it was in the fact was forensic pathologist Michael Baden who is one of
our experts, Richard Souiviron was there, Dr. Wood from Toronto, Vincent
DeMaio one of the country's leading forensic pathologists. We met with Brent
Davis; we met with Dr. Peretti; we met with members of the crime lab. We
presented information to them. There was a discussion about them making
available all cases for the last number of years that might involve bodies in water
to see if there were comparisons and so forth. We have not heard from them, as our
writ details. In early this month we sent them a renewed letter with specific
interrogatory saying, Dr. Peretti - do you agree or disagree with the finding of
animal predation and on what basis? As of yet there has not been a response to that
letter.
Question: ? from KATV here in Little Rock. My question is if you're ruling out
satanic cult as the motive, what would be your speculation ... (?)
Dennis Riordan: Well, I think I will refer to John that we will- he has referred to
information that has been looked at. The exposition of a motive certainly isn't part
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of the writ that we have filed. We've limited it to the hard evidence. All we have
said, by the forensic staff for instance, that there is a hair that is not inconsistent
with Terry Hobbs; it's in a ligature. We've said and as David Jacoby was
completely forthcoming in giving us a buccal swab - hardly the action of someone
with a guilty conscience. But it is also true, and the DNA experts will tell you this,
that there are many ways that a hair could get to a particular location and the fact
that Mr. Hobbs was in the presence of Mr. Jacoby playing the guitar the hour
before the boys disappeared can provide an explanation of transference there. But
again what we are interested in doing is establishing the actual innocence in the
legal sense of Damien Echols. And I have said this before, I've said it from my
entry into the case - the worst thing that we can do is either - because at that time
the focus was in a different direction - is get a tunnel vision about that or suggest,
or suggest - I think the greatest obstacle to our winning this case is people saying,
But if we don't stick with these three guys, who do we have? That would mean that
someone else is out there. And we don't want to lose them without replacing them
with somebody, and we have to say if we can demonstrate the actual innocence of
Damien Echols, it is not our legal burden to solve this crime. And we don't have
the resources to do it.
Question: ?? .. Why would you choose to layout your case in a format like this?
(microphone cuts off)
Dennis Riordan: Well let me be clear on two things. Everything that you have
heard today we laid out before we ever went to court in meetings with the
Prosecutor. And let me make it clear that I think Brent Davis, certainly since my
entry into this case, has been - that his attitude has been we do not oppose testing,
we agree with testing, in this case we want to make sure we have the right person.
And in that spirit, each time that we have come up with something that we think is
relevant, we have met with him and presented it to him - both in the forensics and
in the DNA. We deliberately have made no public statement beyond court
recordings until the time that this writ was filed. Quite frankly the reason we're
doing it in this forum is that, when we filed that writ we got perhaps 300 requests,
as we knew we would, from media outlets around the world. And the reason we
chose to do it in this form as opposed to quick, on the sidewalk interviews is that
we thought we owed it to people to do it in a serious presentation with the
substance of this evidence presented as opposed to simply making conclusionary
statements without giving people a chance to evaluate what it is that we're talking
about.
Question: (mic off) ... to taunt and/or to punish. Could you elaborate a little bit
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more on that - the intent?
John Douglas: If the motivation was to kill then do it - go ahead and do it. But to
strip the children down naked for a period of time like this and then at some point
it is my opinion that the subject begins to lose control. It could very well be
comments made by one of the children. Again I stated earlier I do not believe this
is a stranger type of a murder. And that the subject then at that point went beyond
just the taunting, the teaching these kids a lesson - he had to kill them. He had to
destroy the evidence. [End ofpart 1] And then the way, as I stated earlier, the way
they were hidden, the way the clothing was hidden, the bicycles thrown into the
bayou. I believe the subj ect came from that particular neighborhood and that's
where if this was back in 1993 I'd be steering them in that direction. And of course
parents are always considered suspects - first suspects you look at in cases like
these.
Question: Mr. Douglas, have you ever seen a case similar to this?
John Douglas: No, I've never seen a case - I've done thousand of cases and my
colleague when we were with the bureau we'd do a thousand a year. I didn't see
any case like it and particularly with teenagers. It just showed a higher level of
criminal sophistication for teenagers to do something like that. Certainly we've had
teenagers involved in killings, a lot of school shootings, but never like this at all.
And on a side note too - when I've seen cases, when I've dealt with multiple
subjects and you're offering multiple subjects in cases deals to testify against
somebody else and then they're not even going to do it, I thought that was quite
surprising too relative to their innocence. They wouldn't even testify against their
fellow colleagues - they took the time. Which was really unusual.
Question: What likelihood of hairs being transferred from a body - maybe I go
into the woods and I have a hair on my body and it's transferred to a ligature like
that? What's the possibility of that? That's what Mr. Hobbs says to us possibly
happened and the reason that his hair appeared at the crime scene.
Thomas Fedor: It's possible that someone other than delivered his hair, ifit is his
hair, to the scene. In the same way that it must be possible that Mr. Hobbs, if it was
him, transferred David Jacoby's hair to the scene. Hairs that are acquired from
somebody else - that we don't grow ourselves - simply adhere by static electricity
to our clothing and they fall off from time to time. Things can speed up the transfer
of hairs; things can slow down the transfer of hairs. Activity speeds it up; inactivity
slows it down. That sort of thing.
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Question: So would it be unusual (?) a hair in that ...
Thomas Fedor: Well, it's possible that his stepson legitimately carried Terry
Hobbs' hair to that scene - that's certainly possible. It need not require Mr. Hobbs
to be present. Although on the other hand it is possible that Mr. Hobbs and not his
stepson brought that hair to the scene. There really isn't any way to be sure.
Dennis Riordan: Again in terms of our case, anyone who posits a theory­
innocent ways that innocent people could have left evidence at the crime scene ­
has to deal with the fact that if that' s the case, if things are left that easily and are
there, how could three unsophisticated teenagers brutally murder three boys and
not leave evidence? And remember we're talking a foreign allele - which is a
genetic element - on the penis of Steven Branch.
Question: ? .. I understand that in 1993 the medical examiner said Byers bled to
death - how do you explain that? Are you saying the medical examiner was
wrong?
Werner Spitz: Yes, I think the medical examiner was wrong. I think they all
drowned. The injury in the groin area was almost bloodless or was bloodless for all
intents and purposes. And showed ripping, chewing by a predator animal, a
carnivorous animal, a large animal with evidence that this did not occur during the
life of the boy. So there could not have been bleeding from that source.
Question: ... ?... Just curious why it's taken fifteen years to get to the point where
you guys are at right now and why it took so long to draw these conclusions as to ­
and to be able to file ... ? .. in a federal court. Why did it take fifteen years to get to
this point?
Dennis Riordan: The simplest answer to that is that there was very, very little
interest in providing to three indigent kids who lived in trailer parks the resources
to defend themselves in this case. It is alleged in our petition in federal court, for
instance, that trial counsel was ineffective in the constitutional sense, enough to
overturn a conviction, for not retaining a pathologist - no pathologist. The police
arrived at that scene, declared this to be a genital mutilation - they're not
pathologists. And there was going to be no questioning of that from that point on
by the state's pathologist and there was no defense pathologist who had been
retained to combat these results. Now DNA, of course the reason that we can do
the DNA is because it did not exist at the time and Arkansas has authorized this
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because the technology has come into existence since then. But this is a case in
which the defense investigator was eventually paid $1 an hour by the state of
Arkansas for his efforts on behalf of Damien Echols. This is what happens when
you don't need pathologists because everybody knows, as Gary Gitchell did,
exactly what happens in this crime from day one.
Question: Do you believe the State has been working against what the Defense has
been trying to do by exonerating these three men of these charges. Do you feel like
as you try to proceed in the court case that they've been working against you as
much as you think they did during the trial proceedings?
Dennis Riordan: Well, Don and I came into this in 2004 and the reason for that
was the state proceedings ended then and people associated with Damien Echols'
defense said we need someone who knows the ins and outs of federal habeas
corpus, which is an incredibly arcane area. When we talked to Brent Davis with
members of the attorney general's office on Monday, Brent of course is very, very
familiar with the evidence but when you get into talking about AEDPA and time
limits and successive petitions and procedural bars very few criminal lawyers deal
with that. So it's at that point that we came into it and all I can say is that since our
entry into this case Brent Davis has maintained and continues to maintain ­
perhaps someday we'll persuade him - that these convictions are valid, but he
certainly has engaged in a cooperative effort around things like DNA testing,
certainly has made available the state's forensic pathologist for the meetings we've
talked about. So we absolutely feel that he certainly has his viewpoint on it but has
proceeded in a completely professional way in terms of the proceedings that we're
now involved in in State and Federal Court.
Question: Can you tell me about the Defense Fund? (or something to that effect?)
Dennis Riordan: Well, I'll tell you what I know about that. What I know about
that is that LOlTi Davis, the wife of Damien Echols contacted us in 2003 and said,
you know, we've been told you guys know federal habeas corpus, will you get
involved in this case? And we said we're lawyers in San Francisco, it requires ­
you're unhappy with the level investigation and factual investigation, so you need
that on the ground in Arkansas. How can we possibly do this? And she has said
work on the case and I will find a way to raise funds. And all we know is that
every now and then we contact her and say, Lorri we haven't heard from you in
awhile, and she says I'll get to work on this. I think you're aware that there's an
enormous amount of interest in this on the Internet and so forth - I think she makes
pleas there. I don't think it's a secret that when we got into the case ... well the
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DNA testing ... The reason we got the DNA testing here - there's a statutory right
to it, but generally the state will often fight a defendant because it costs a lot of
money. And the agreement was reached - the defense has funded all of this. The
DNA testing has cost the state nothing which it's usually the state that provides
this to indigent defendants. Now I don't think it's a secret that people like Eddie
Vedder have done concerts and raised a lot of money to pay for that DNA testing
and [End ofpart 2] the Bode lab doesn't know the words "pro bono" - it's very
expensive stuff. So all I know is we've been able to keep going because Lorri
Davis has continually reached out to people like that, and people like Eddie Vedder
to raise money. You know, we hired these experts. These experts testify for the
Prosecution; they testify for the Defense. If they did this pro-bono they'd be
accused of having favoritism. All we can say is they quoted us the same rate that
they would quote a prosecutor. And Lorri and others have raised the money to
bring them into the case.
Question: The attorney general's office has made a comment in the past couple of
days that this could take anywhere from months to several years just to come to
some kind of resolution. Are you guys ready to deal with that volume (?) and what
kind of battle do you have ahead of you?
Dennis Riordan: The way that this works is that we're now in - this is a little
complicated. There is a DNA action going on in state court - the DNA statute that
was passed to allow DNA testing and that is pending before Judge Burnett. What
we did, and the federal court was willing to say because that's pending you can
keep going there until it's over and then come over to federal court. We believed
that we had sufficient evidence of actual innocence that we wanted to get going on
the federal side because that's where most of our claims are. They've been rejected
by the state courts; they're pending in front of the federal judge. So we are dealing
with a state DNA action, we are dealing with a federal action. The judge in that
case will order the State to respond. Generally when you get a 200-page petition
with expert reports like this you're going to get at least several months to respond
to it and what you're then looking at is the possibility that in district court in Little
Rock - and of course it's the Judge who decides this and not any of the lawyers ­
he will come and say I think we've got factual issues about DNA that we need to
resolve, get your experts in front of me. I think this question of animal predation is
key to whether a fair trial was received or whether there is actual innocence. Let's
get these experts in front of me. Let's put Dr. Peretti on the stand under cross­
examination. Let me hear from Dr. Spitz and Dr. Souviron, and I want to see their
credentials; I want to see their credibility; I want to see how convincing their
testimony is. And very possible he's going to say you've made allegations about
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these charts, what went on in the jury room. This is very rare. But it is allowed
both under State and Federal rules. If the allegation is that that jury room was
contaminated by newspaper repmis, by information that came in from the window
as opposed to from the witness stand, he can call those jurors in and say I want to
know what went on in the jury room. And so we're talking about conceivably a
possible - and he could say I want to hear one of those issues and not the other two.
But you're talking about a potentially complex evidentiary hearing which is almost
like a trial except a different set of players testifying and offering evidence in
federal court. So what is fair about the attorney general's report is that if he said
I've seen ten death cases and they take several years to resolve in federal court,
he'd be accurate. We certainly want to press forward. We don't think this is the
end of it. We have done DNA testing and we mentioned the foreign allele on Steve
Branch's penis. It's one allele - you can exclude people from being the contributor,
and all the defendants have been excluded by Bode. But on one allele you can't say
who it is. But that's what they call STR testing, and Tom can tell you it's
something Tandem, etc. But there's now a form ofmini-STR testing that's been
used in the World Trade Center and they have from incredibly small - and Tom can
address this - amounts of DNA material been able to get fuller profiles then
anyone ever imagined before was possible. And maybe if you just want to take a
second to comment. ..
Thomas Fedor: If I may. DNA technology is about to change again quite
significantly in that techniques have been developed to work with samples that are
even smaller and more degraded then the samples that we can work on today
successfully. And given the small amounts of DNA that could not have come from
the victims that was recovered from the scene, this new technology I think holds up
promise of developing further characteristics of this DNA that clearly doesn't
belong there. With the hope that perhaps we can develop more than one allele,
more than several alleles and perhaps get enough information with this new
technology on these very, very small samples of DNA to actually name an
individual as the source. At the moment that is still a promise more than a reality.
My own laboratory has not yet instituted or implemented this new mini-filer
technology it's called because it is more miniaturized than the current technology.
And my understanding is that the Bode DNA laboratory is getting ready to
implement this new technology, so I think we're going to see some startling
developments ...
Question: ... ? .. Bod~ ... ?
Thomas Fedor: Yes, actually because in my own view I think that that parti cular
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substance, whatever it is, has much greater potential for identifying a person than
the hairs that I've been looking at so far.
Donald Horgan: But there are additional materials at Bode that cannot be
analyzed with their present testing protocol, but that would be subject to further
analysis with this type ...
Question: ... ?
Donald Horgan: Well for instance the ligatures themselves have been looked at
and, unfortunately, it looks like there's a lot of mixed profiles on the ligatures, so
it's not necessarily clear that if you were to do a more sophisticated testing
approach on those it would ever disclose anything. But a number of other items
that are listed on the Bode report -:- and that's included in the federal filing you can
look at - and in the STR section of that report we would likely go back to Bode
and ask if there's anything more to be drawn from many of those other materials.
Dennis Riordan: Let me clarify one thing which is that the hairs that Tom referred
to and the statistics that he used are probabilities - they can sometimes be startling
probabilities - but they can only be probabilities because it's the maternal DNA
that they call mitochondrial DNA it's common to a maternal line and therefore
people in that maternal line will share it. You can never say it is a single
individual. The STR technique that we've referred to here - when I referred to an
allele, a single allele was under the STR method, but the STR method if you get
sufficient information can point to one individual in the world or one in a billion.
So the development of - I think it's fair to say Tom that no matter how
sophisticated mitochondrial techniques get, they may get better in terms of the
probabilities you'll never be able to list an individual. But the STR and greater
accuracy there could conceivably take a very small amount of material and allow
you to pinpoint an individual.
Thomas Fedor: Dennis has obviously been doing his homework because he's
exactly right. The particular genetics of the DNA that's contained in hairs like that
was recovered from the ligature are such that the DNA testing of those hairs does
not distinguish between, for example, Terry Hobbs and all of Terry Hobbs'
siblings, and Terry Hobbs' mother and all of her siblings, and all of Terry Hobbs'
children and their cousins, etc. It's inherited through the maternal line strictly and
that means that anyone member of that matemalline could also be the source of
say the ligature hairs as say Mr. Hobbs is. So there's no way from that particular
evidence to ever individualize for example whether it was Mr. Hobbs' or Mr.
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Hobbs' brother ifhe has one, for example.
Question: You're saying that ( ... ? .. ) becomes available, more testing could be
done in this case. If this writ fails it's not over yet (7) and is there a point where
you say we've done all we can do here or how many years are ... ?
Dennis Riordan: Well, the best we can answer that question in one sense - Don
and I are going to be on this case until Damien Echols is executed, God forbid, or
Damien Echols walks out of prison. [End ofpart 3J You are right that under
procedural rules were this writ in front of the district court to fail it gets
increasingly difficult to mount another legal challenge to it, but on the other hand if
we had a mini-STR finding that allows us to pinpoint a particular individual who
contributed that allele then you may be getting up to the kind of evidence that ...
The whole actual innocence thing that I talked about is a way of overcoming the
procedural of obj ection (?) - it's too late - like the question there it's now thirteen
years down the line - it's too late now to find out we're wrong about Damien
Echols. Actual innocence gets you past that and the more actual innocence that you
can prove, then the more willing a court is to forgive things like procedural delays.
Question: I spoke with Terry Hobbs' attorney and he implied that this filing, this
timing this forum is a publicity stunt to maybe get press for a movie in the works?
What's your reaction to that?
Dennis Riordan: Damien Echols is sentenced to death. IfDon and I didn't exist
there would absolutely be an effort by someone in capital cases to represent him in
that context. Actually I'll give you a better answer, ok. There has been an attempt
to make a movie about this case, and we have written the people who are involved
in it and said we'll kill you - with evidence - with evidence. Let me clarify what I
meant to say. We will kill your project and you are foolish to attempt this because
you have no idea what's going on in this case and thus, to this stage, we've been
successful. And the last thing we want in this case is a movie. And I can assure you
- I will be glad to assure you - that if we can win this case we will never be
involved in a movie. Our concern is here - we're death penalty lawyers, we've
litigated serious issues like this in many cases and I have never in a death penalty
case been able to mount anything like the showing of actual innocence that we
think has been shown and we believe will continue to grow in this write?).
Question: What does your client Mr. Echols, what does he think about (... ? .. )?
Dennis Riordan: Don and I met with him on Monday. He knew that we were very,
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very close to filing this and he said I haven't been able to sleep all week and I said,
I assure you, neither Don nor I have slept all week either. We were up to 3:30 on
Sunday morning preparing the final arguments for the filing on Monday. You
know he's - when I first met Damien and all of this DNA stuff was under way, and
I find out I'm representing a client who is immersed in DNA testing, which for all I
know - he wants me to come in and say he's innocent and for all I know, after I
say that, we're going to get a DNA test that points right at him. And I tried to feel
him out about that. And Damien Echols has from day one said forensics, DNA,
everything - don't avoid anything, don't worry about turning over a rock. I want it.
I want it. I want it. And has never ever conveyed any uncertainty. There are DNA
cases and we've had them where people talk about they want DNA and they want
DNA and they want DNA and then you have a private meeting with your client
and you know you say this stuff actually works. It really works. And you've been
telling your mother "and your sister that you're innocent and they believe it and
they support you. Do you really want this DNA test? And they say no, no - I'd
rather just go on maintaining my innocence with my mother and my sister. He has
been unequivocal that the more investigation that is done the more - the absence of
evidence against him will become apparent.
Donald Horgan: And he does believe that now things are moving forward after so
many delays.
Question: How many times have you prevailed in cases with like evidence for
someone on death row?
Dennis Riordan: I alluded to the fact before that federal courts usual talk about
actual innocence - I mean not about actual innocence, but about unfair trials. And I
have prevailed in a fair number of cases - both death cases and murder cases which
are non-death cases over a 30-year career. I have never made an actual innocence
claim, because an actual innocence claim is relatively new. It was in 2006 that the
United States Supreme Court decided a case called House vs. Bell and said that
Mr. House had come up with enough new evidence to constitute actual innocence
and, therefore, he could bring all of his claims even thought the state was saying,
no, no there's problems, they're untimely and so on. I will tell you this - we argued
this in the writ - this showing is stronger - is considerable stronger than the
showing, we believe, in House vs. Bell that was declared by the United States
Supreme Court by a 5-4 decision to be sufficient to constitute actual innocence.
Question: ... ?... habeas corpus?
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Dennis Riordan: .,. certain claims that we've made that the state will have to
admit are valid in federal court. There are other claims, for instance the unfair jury
- and they will say no, no, no it came too late and they didn't get a hold of that in
2004 so you the federal court can't hear it. But if the court finds actual innocence
and says, no if I find actual innocence I can hear anything. I can hear anything.
And that's the significance of the actual innocence claim. In death penalty
litigation, removing all procedural defaults, eliminating all state arguments that it
took too long is an enormous, enormous step and an enormous advantage for a
litigate.
Question: ... ? Over the course of time it seems like ...? .. family members have
popped up as suspects in this case, so I have to ask if you guys are simply trying to
prove that Damien and these other boys did not do this why is there so much focus
on Terry Hobbs. Is there really significant enough DNA evidence that can point to
Terry Hobbs, especially when the fact that the hair in the shoe string could have
come from inside the house. I'm just stressing some of the things that I've heard
from folks in the region who are familiar with the story. Is this evidence enough to
say Terry Hobbs could have really done this?
Thomas Fedor: The two hairs that I know about - the one that could have in fact
come from Mr. Hobbs and the one that could have in fact come from David Jacoby
- constitute what I call weak evidence. Because there are other people it could
have come from and there isn't any way to really prove our selection of possible
sources for that hair. I don't think - my personal opinion - I don't think that that
hair evidence would be enough to convict Mr. Hobbs or Mr. Jacoby or anyone that
would be in a similar situation because it's simply not strong enough. The
percentages I gave of people who could be the source of those hairs are 1.5% of the
population in the respect to one hair and 7% in respect to the other hair. That's not
pmiicularly strong evidence and especially in the context of what most people are
accustomed to with DNA testing. These odds are considerably weaker than what
we would call an STR DNA test that virtually provides a (? source?).
Dennis Riordan: I agree with Tom - and here's the significance of that. If Terry
Hobbs or someone was tried on this evidence, a lawyer would be up there saying
how many people are there in West Memphis or in Memphis? 1.5% of them that's
thousands of people - that's a reasonable doubt. But the significance of this for,
because the judge is going to say would Damien Echols be acquitted? Would a
reasonable juror find Damien Echols guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? A defense
lawyer gets up there and says there is not one piece of evidence that points to
Echols in nearly as strong a way as the others that might point to Hobbs. So that is
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the - from that point of view, from that point of view [End ofpart 4J, if the
Prosecution's saying that we found that fiber at the crime scene that could have
come from a shirt that Echols' little brother had or it could have come from any
other shirt in Wal-Ivlart. And you compare that on the one hand to a scientific
percentage that limits down to a relatively small number ofpeople, one of whom
had the opportunity as John said and was in the area - without indicting Terry
Hobbs, a reasonable jury is not going to say that's proof beyond an reasonable
doubt as far as Damien Echols is concerned. And you add it to the grapefruit
experiment - a Prosecutor saying that I have demonstrated to you that these marks
are the marks on the body of Chris Byers - was just rubbish. It was absolute,
unmitigated rubbish that experiment.
Question: So is the evidence in connection to Terry Hobbs in and of itself or is
that mention to show the innocence of Damien Echols?
Dennis Riordan: Unlike other theories - may be so-and-so, may be a family
member - they're a bad guy, they've got a drug history - all we know is that a
report arrives from a scientific lab that says your client has no evidence at the
crime scene. We have located someone who is consistent. By the way, that
someone who is consistent is someone who certainly was in the area. I mean do we
not present that? Is that not a compelling argument for a judge trying to decide if
Echols would be convicted? I'm just telling you that absent the kind of prejudice
that was generated in 1993, a competent trial lawyer could not lose Damien
Echols' case today, because there's not a single piece of credible evidence that
connects him to the scene and anything that they say is credible is far outweighed
by things that could point in other directions. No reasonable juror would find guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt. Conversely, any reasonable juror were this case tried
today would have a reasonable doubt. The jury would acquit.
Question: So the DNA evidence indicates that not necessarily that it's likely that
Hobbs did it, but just that it is evidence that it's more likely that Hobbs could have
done it given that hair then perhaps that Damien could have done it. So the point of
bringing it up isn't to say that Hobbs did it but is to say that there's more evidence
- or one could think it could might more likely that Hobbs did it versus Damien
because there's no evidence there are all.
Dennis Riordan: You know if you were to have a crime and an eye witness was
able to identify the model of the car seen leaving the crime, and it was a very rare
model- very, very few people have it - 1% of the population has it. And it so
happens that a potential suspect is one of the relatively few people who have that
HOBBS 00143
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car, same model, same type, very rare. What Prosecutor wouldn't stand up in front
of a jury and say that's a powerful piece of circumstantial evidence? A defense
attorney would say it's not conclusive. But it certainly as part of a mosaic would be
a powerful piece of evidence. And if you accuse someone else of the crime what
defense lawyer wouldn't say they don't have anything that links my guy to the
scene - what about the guy who owns that very rare car. And that's what we're
talking about here. And as I said before the last thing as defense lawyers we would
intend to do is indict and convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt of this case.
The evidence as to Hobbs, even less so to Jacoby, I don't think should be viewed
that way, but is it evidence that would lead any reasonable juror to acquit Damien
Echols? Yes, I it would.
I think we're about at the end of the day. You've been very patient. It's an
. extraordinary, extraordinary case, and we thank you for the opportunity to bring
this information to you today. [End ofpart 5]
HOBBS 00144
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E HIBIT 14
Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 38-6 Filed 08/21/2009 Page 37 of 162
·"'
t.
•.•
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF PULASKI COUNTY, ARKANSAS
.
. q t1'- DIVISION
DEFENDANTS
VS.
PLAINTIFF
CASE NO. (! IJ-()J -1 3 () 3 ~LE25/11125/08 16; 35: 42
Pat O'Brien P~i Circuit Clerk
NATALIE PASDAR., Individually;
CR78':1 'ff
NATALIE PASDAR, EMILY ROBINSON
MARTHA SEIDEL d/b/a DIXIE CmCKS
TERRY HOBBS
COMPLAINT
COMES NOW the Plaintiff, Terry Hobbs, by and through his attorney, J. Cody Hiland,
and for his cause ofaction against the Defendants, states as follows:
I.
JURISDICTION
1.
Plaintiff is a private citizen and resident ofMemphis, Tennessee.
2.
Defendant, Emily Robinson is a citizen and resident of San Antonio located in
Bexar County Texas.
3.
Defendant, Natalie Pasdar is a citizen and resident of Austin located in Travis
County Texas.
4.
Defendant, Martha Seidel is a citizen and resident of Austin located in Travis
County Texas.
5.
Each of the above referenced Defendants, d/b/a Dixie Chicks, have systematically
and continuously done business in Arkansas by promoting and selling music in Arkansas at
retail, over the internet and by performance in Arkansas.
6.
The Court has jurisdiction over the parties and over the subject matter of this
Complaint, and venue is proper in this Court.
Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 38-6 Filed 08/21/2009 Page 38 of 162
n.
FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
7.
That the Plaintiffwas the stepfather of Steve Branch, now deceased.
8.
That on or about May 5, 1993, the bodies of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and
Michael Moore were discovered in Robin Hood Hills located in Crittenden County Arkansas.
9.
That Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore were severely beaten
about their heads andfaces and brutally murdered.
10.
That Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were charged and
convicted of the murders of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore.
11.
That the convictions of Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley aIld Jason Baldwin
have not been reversed on direct appeal.
12.
That Damien Echols has been unsuccessful in seeking a retrial based on what he
has characterized as "new" DNA evidence believed to be sufficient to cast doubt on his
conviction.
13.
That the case involving Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin
(hereinafter referred to as the "West Memphis Three") has attracted national attention focused on
the sufficiency ofthe evidence used in achieving the convictions.
14.
That on or about November 26, 2007, Defendant, Natalie Pasdar recklessly
published or caused to be published malicious, libelous, slanderous, and false statements
concerning Plaintiff over the world-wide internet via an open letter on the Defendant Dixie
Chick's website.
Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 38-6 Filed 08/21/2009 Page 39 of 162
..
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15.
That Defendant's letter, when taken as a whole, accused Plaintiff of committing
the murder of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. A copy of the letter is
attached hereto as Exhibit "A",
16.
That the aforementioned libelous, slanderous, and false statements by the
Defendant were republished by numerous media outlets and prominently viewed websites
including, but not limited to, Fox News, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis Tennessee,
People, Huffington Post, Free Republic and ABC News.
17.
That on or about December 19, 2007, Defendant, Natalie Pasdar was a
featured speaker at a "Free the West Memphis Three" rally on the steps of the Arkansas
State Capitol in Little Rock Arkansas in which she reiterated her position that the recent
DNA and forensic results had "given this case wings" and made other statements that
amounted to a false and reckless claim that Plaintiff committed the murders of Steve
Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore.
18.
That the Defendant's Little Rock Arkansas appearance and statements
attracted significant media attention and were widely printed, disseminated and broadcast
to an expansive audience.
19.
That Defendant's
repeated
libelous publications
concerning
the
involvement of the PI~ in the murders of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and
Michael Moore were not based on fact and, in fact, were false and reckless at the time of
publication.
ill.
CAUSES OF ACTION
A.
Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 38-6 Filed 08/21/2009 Page 40 of 162
DEFAMATIONlLffiEL
20.
Plaintiffs re-allege paragraphs one through nineteen as if fully set out herein.
21.
The acts of the Defendants as set forth hereinabove are libelous and libelous per
se and defamed Plaintiff, causing him to suffer personal injuries, injury to his reputation and
professional and business damages for which he is entitled to recover compensatory and punitive
damages as determined by a jury.
B.
INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS/OUTRAGEOUS
CONDUCT
22.
Plaintiffs re-allege paragraphs one through twenty-one as if fully set out herein.
23.
Plaintiff alleges that the aforementioned wrongs constitute intentional, reckless
andlor negligent infliction of emotional distress and are actions that are so outrageous in
character, and so extreme in degree, as to be beyond the pale of decency and to be regarded as
atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society, thereby resulting in severe emotional,
mental, and physical injuries entitling Plaintiff to recover compensatory and punitive damages to
be determined by the jury.
C.
FALSE LIGHT INVASION OF PRIVACY
24.
Plaintiffs re-allege paragraphs one through twenty-three as iffully set out
herein.
25.
The acts of the Defendants placed the Plaintiff in a false light and were a false
light invasion of Plaintiff's privacy as recognized in Arkansas.
Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 38-6 Filed 08/21/2009 Page 41 of 162
o
<,
26.
Defendants gave publicity to matters concerning the Plaintiff which were false
and/or which placed the Plaintiff before the public in a false light, which were and are highly
offensive to any reasonable person, and the Defendants had knowledge or should have known
that the publicized matters were false or each and all acted recklessly and with reckless disregard
as to the falsity of the matter they were publicizing and the false light in which the Plaintiff
would be and was placed.
27.
As a direct and proximate result of the wrongful acts of the Defendants herein,
acting in a manner specifically designed to harm and damage the Plaintiff and his person, did, by
invading his privacy and casting him in a false light commit the tort of false light invasion of
privacy causing the Plaintiff to suffer mental and emotional distress and other special damages
which he is entitled to recover.
IV.
DAMAGES
28.
Plaintiffs re-allege paragraphs one through twenty-seven as if fully set out
herein.
29.
As a direct and proximate result of the wrongful acts set forth hereinabove by the
Defendants, the Plaintiff, Terry Hobbs, a respected, private citizen, was injured in his person and
business and in his personal and business reputation.
30.
As the direct and proximate result of the false, malicious and libelous information
published by the Defendants about him, Plaintiff has suffered embarrassment, humiliation, and
severe psychological, emotional, mental trauma, loss of income and other comPensatory
damages in an amount to be determined by a jury.
31.
Plaintiff is entitled to recover punitive damages.
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