WestMemphis3 Question

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  • New Mexico Posts: 168
    I agree with you lostdogsinthegarden. Props to you . What are we? Conspirators? Theorists? They were just trying to help. STOP talking about just as they are the troops fighting in another country for us. Only GOD knows the truth.
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  • New Mexico Posts: 168
    What ever led cops to weskelley. In first place? Funny how they are drawn to crimes in first place
    yatahe wrote:
    I agree with you lostdogsinthegarden. Props to you . What are we? Conspirators? Theorists? They were just trying to help. STOP talking about just as they are the troops fighting in another country for us. Only GOD knows the truth.
    .
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  • yatahe wrote:
    What ever led cops to weskelley. In first place? Funny how they are drawn to crimes in first place .

    I'm glad you think what I say makes at least a little sense :)
    They were led to Weskelley because they knew he hung around with Damien, and they just wanted more information on Damien's activities.
  • New Mexico Posts: 168
    I'm a clinical social worker and not that my degree means anything but I have took the opposition of the forfront of the band we love because of this case. And I do it alone. Let me just state, that I do not confess any man's guilt or innocence based on DNA or confessions. But even those were guilty may be set free some day. Who ever it was that did it was menta.lly ill and des pardon too.
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  • Wellington, NZ Posts: 4,501
    misskelley...
  • doompony wrote:
    misskelley...

    Touche doompony... touche.
  • New Mexico Posts: 168
    I'm obviously beyound. Spelling right now. Forgive me I've always been a bad speller.
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  • Posts: 6,657
    I've only read about half of this thread so far, so forgive me if this has already been answered, but why did they give Echols the death penalty and only give Baldwin life? Because Echols was weirder? :?
  • scb wrote:
    I've only read about half of this thread so far, so forgive me if this has already been answered, but why did they give Echols the death penalty and only give Baldwin life? Because Echols was weirder? :?

    He was the only one 18 at the time. He was thought to be more involved in the murders as well.
  • Grand Junction CO Posts: 1,356
    For those commenting on how weird Echols was, you have to remember that the whole community was full of people with little education, lots of alcohol and drug abuse, lots of mental illness, lots of family violence. The police zeroed in on Echols (interviewed him about the crime within 48 hours after the bodies were discovered) because his case worker suggested him to the police. The problem is that the police stopped looking at that point. If they had really done an investigation, they would have seen that lots of others in the neighborhood and within the families were at least as suspicious as the three that were convicted.
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  • Columbus, OH Posts: 11,254
    I bought Devil's Knot saturday night....great book...thanks for the suggestion!!!
    Let me know what you think about the book & the whole case after you read it...
    It helped me understand more about the boys as well as the trial.
    I really like the way Mara documents and footnotes all of her findings in the back of the book.
    This helped me to understand how she found the true facts of the case and how she arrived at her conclusions!
    I think I may sit down and read it again!
    Try to read this with an open mind, and if after reading this you don't think there is "Reasonable Doubt" in this case...I'd love to hear your theories. :ugeek:
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  • Posts: 6,170

    He can be super social and still have anti-social personality disorder. From emedicine:
    Antisocial personality disorder: Individuals with antisocial personality disorder display a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others and the rules of society. Onset must occur by age 15 years and includes the following features:

    * Repeated violations of the law- check.
    * Pervasive lying and deception- check.
    * Physical aggressiveness- check.
    * Reckless disregard for safety of self or others- check.
    * Consistent irresponsibility in work and family environments- check.
    * Lack of remorse- check.
    He has also killed animals in the most brutal fashion, which is also a sign of a poor prognosis.

    The boys were drained of blood. He likes to drink blood. Although that doesn't mean anything, I say lets throw him on the suspect list. Simple.

    Were they "drained of blood?" This is a good exercise in what probably went on in the juror's minds, with a little prodding regarding Damien's personality. I've done plenty of research on the case and I've never read that the boys were "drained of blood." I believe the official autopsy report states that they died of "blood loss," but that's an entirely different consideration that being "drained of blood," as if by a vampire or in a ritualistic fashion. You can die of blood loss in surgery or a car accident, but that doesn't make the death "satanic." But once we start talking about Damien's past, satanism, rituals etc, inevitably people begin to make slight alterations in the events or the language of the case (i.e. "drained of blood" vs. "died of blood loss"), and then they begin to see conclusions that aren't there. And this isn't just semantics or misspeaking; if a juror were to mishear or twist a word, as you did, and suddenly believe that the boys were "drained of blood," they will reasonably conclude that a killing is "satanic" or "ritualistic. Then, when the juror is told about Damien's personality, behavior and unorthodox beliefs, of course they'll conclude he did it. But the reality is that the facts are thrown by the wayside. This slight alteration or twist of a phrase is a great example of the little things that went wrong in this case that helped corrupt the trial and create the illusion of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
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  • Posts: 8,051
    dasvidana wrote:
    For those commenting on how weird Echols was, you have to remember that the whole community was full of people with little education, lots of alcohol and drug abuse, lots of mental illness, lots of family violence. The police zeroed in on Echols (interviewed him about the crime within 48 hours after the bodies were discovered) because his case worker suggested him to the police. The problem is that the police stopped looking at that point. If they had really done an investigation, they would have seen that lots of others in the neighborhood and within the families were at least as suspicious as the three that were convicted.


    Exactly.

    I think the arguments in this thread about the troubled mental health of Echols are improving, adding a more 'informed' dimension to this discussion – it's important to keep his behaviour in perspective alongside the wider world in which so many young people live these days. It would be getting pretty ridiculous if people can't read about a very troubled, aggressive young man clearly with a lot psychological and emotional problems - without taking that as foregone proof of his guilt in this horrible murder case. I must have worked with 30 young people as troubled or more so than this - many not violent at all, some more aggressive. There are probably 20 or 30 living within a 30 mile radius of every member of this board - in the hostels, in the mental health units - places I have worked, where others here have lived and worked. The majority of these kids have been abused as children - sexually, physically, emotionally - and they are in need of a massive amount of attention, support; also of being challenged to confront their behaviour, as me and many of my colleagues, and the workers in similar fields have done over the years. A troubled history of mental and emotional health and unpleasant behaviour is all too common in these times. It is not a good indicator of homicidal behaviour however. It seems to me that if people really wanted to educate themselves about some of the issues in this case - they could do a lot worse than volunteering at their local supported housing project, and meeting some of the troubled youth of today face to face. It's not pretty, but I believe it is still the case that in terms of the numbers of 'homicides' committed by this group of young people ('known to mental health services'), the homicide rates are astonishingly low - the vast majority of homicides are committed by people completely unknown to mental health services. There is such a massive difference between 'talking' about the dark side with a relatively low level of 'acting out', and going right over the edge of it and perpetrating a crime such as this. The number of times I have ended up helping a very aggressive and verbal young man or woman to clean up their own bloodied lacerated arms, after they have turned their 'demons' in on themselves, rather than striking out at others doesn't even bear thinking about.

    The fact is that most mentally and emotionally troubled young people (and the numbers of them are increasing year on year in this era of bullying and quick-fire stigmatising), are much more likely to become scapegoats, to be victims of bullying, stigma and persecution themselves – and their own aggression is often an attempt to keep 'the world' at bay, and to express some of the pain and anguish from their own troubled past. As others have said here – it happens a lot of young people, who would have similar mental health case-notes to these. Very very few of the large numbers of such people ever go on to commit heinous crimes like the ones discussed here. Frequently it is people UNKNOWN to services that turn out to be the perpetrators of such crimes – but this fact is a lot more unpalatable, shocking and hard for us to deal with (an 'unknown' walking around 'out there') in helping us to feel at ease in our daily lives, than believing that one of the notorious local 'mental cases' is to blame.

    All I would ask is that people don't keep making this immediate 'leap' to quickly link the erratic mental health of one out of many troubled young people, to strong proof of guilt in this case; and also that if people want to learn more about these issues, maybe picking up the phone, dialling your local homeless support project, and next week getting down there and rolling your sleeves up..... You will soon confront many of these issues and individuals and recognise that things are far from black and white.


    _________________________________________________________

    [Here is some recent research which confronts this perception that mental illness is a major factor contributing to violent crime, it finds that a far more major factor, cutting across the entire population, not just people using mental health services, is alcohol and drug use]:

    'Dr Seena Fazel, a clinical senior lecturer in forensic psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist at the University of Oxford, said: "The relationship between violent crime and serious mental illness can be explained by alcohol and substance abuse. If you take away the substance abuse, the contribution of the illness itself is minimal."

    The academic said that all over Europe patients had been reinstitutionalised because of "this view that people with mental illness are a high risk … there's a lot of stigma". He said a solution would be to tackle drug and alcohol abuse across the whole population.

    Dr Fazel added: "It's probably more dangerous walking outside a pub on a late night than walking outside a hospital where patients have been released."

    He said rates of violent crime among people who were mentally ill and abused substances were no different from those among other people who abused substances.'

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/ ... ess-crimes

    _______________________________________________________________________

    ps _ I've also started looking at extreme crimes and serious mental illness - where there does seem to be a higher statistical link. The question in my mind here though, is 'do these case notes suggest that Echols was at an extreme point in the scale of severe mental disturbance?' To which my own answer is 'no, not at all - he was clearly seen as a relatively low risk by his MH workers - or he just wouldn't have been 'at large'. In the spectrum of extreme psychotic behaviour, ideas and treatment, Echols' case notes seem relatively mild to me, compared with others experiencing psychosis or other disturbed conditions
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  • can we all agree that there WAS a gunman on the grassy knoll?
  • Posts: 8,051
    can we all agree that there WAS a gunman on the grassy knoll?


    lol - probably more easily than reaching a simple agreement on this case. If we could agree that there is enough evidence for a fair retrial, that would be quite an achievement!
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  • vant0037 wrote:

    Were they "drained of blood?" This is a good exercise in what probably went on in the juror's minds, with a little prodding regarding Damien's personality. I've done plenty of research on the case and I've never read that the boys were "drained of blood." I believe the official autopsy report states that they died of "blood loss," but that's an entirely different consideration that being "drained of blood," as if by a vampire or in a ritualistic fashion. You can die of blood loss in surgery or a car accident, but that doesn't make the death "satanic." But once we start talking about Damien's past, satanism, rituals etc, inevitably people begin to make slight alterations in the events or the language of the case (i.e. "drained of blood" vs. "died of blood loss"), and then they begin to see conclusions that aren't there. And this isn't just semantics or misspeaking; if a juror were to mishear or twist a word, as you did, and suddenly believe that the boys were "drained of blood," they will reasonably conclude that a killing is "satanic" or "ritualistic. Then, when the juror is told about Damien's personality, behavior and unorthodox beliefs, of course they'll conclude he did it. But the reality is that the facts are thrown by the wayside. This slight alteration or twist of a phrase is a great example of the little things that went wrong in this case that helped corrupt the trial and create the illusion of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

    Perhaps they weren't "drained of blood." But Damien likes to drink blood after cutting people, and the children were cut up pretty good. The reason Damien makes a good suspect has nothing to do with satanism. I don't suggest that the killings were done in a ritualistic, satanic manner. I simply believe that the murders were committed by a psychopath, which I'm sure you would agree with. Damien has been diagnosed with psychosis. Mixed with his anti-social personality disorder, his taste for human blood, and how his name was the first to pop into peoples heads for possible suspects, I say put him on the suspect list. It makes sense.
  • Posts: 8,051
    I say put him on the suspect list. It makes sense.

    Er, yeah - they did that!

    He probably was a reasonable suspect.

    My growing beef with this thread however is the complete mixture of informed and uninformed judgements, the conflation of very different categories of mental distress or disturbance, and a general oversimplification of very complex issues of personality and the psyche.

    There is such a huge and qualitative difference between psychosis and psychopathy that I really don't like to see them bandied around together. It's becoming quite painful reading for me - I have done a lot of work which aims at improving understanding and reducing unfair stigma towards mental illness - and this thread is pushing all the wrong buttons currently, in a case of 'where do you begin......'

    I should probably piss off and read something else. My conclusion from getting quite superficially involved in this case is that there are more than enough grounds for a retrial. Most of the rest is becoming very counter-productive and often stigmatising speculation. I'm wondering if these WM3 threads would sit better in the 'moving train' section.
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  • tremors wrote:

    Er, yeah - they did that!

    He probably was a reasonable suspect.

    My growing beef with this thread however is the complete mixture of informed and uninformed judgements, the conflation of very different categories of mental distress or disturbance, and a general oversimplification of very complex issues of personality and the psyche.

    There is such a huge and qualitative difference between psychosis and psychopathy that I really don't like to see them bandied around together. It's becoming quite painful reading for me - I have done a lot of work which aims at improving understanding and reducing unfair stigma towards mental illness - and this thread is pushing all the wrong buttons currently, in a case of 'where do you begin......'

    I should probably piss off and read something else. My conclusion from getting quite superficially involved in this case is that there are more than enough grounds for a retrial. Most of the rest is becoming very counter-productive and often stigmatising speculation. I'm wondering if these WM3 threads would sit better in the 'moving train' section.

    Yes, a moving train would be a better forum for this topic. And psychosis has a large spectrum of disorders, and most of them are completely harmless. However, this does not apply to anti social personality disorder. There is no unfair stigma there.
  • Posts: 6,657

    He was the only one 18 at the time. He was thought to be more involved in the murders as well.

    Good point about him being the only one who was 18. Do you (or does anyone) know whether it was legal to give 17-year-olds the death penalty in AR at that time?

    I don't get why they thought he was actually more involved in the murders than the other two.
  • Posts: 8,051

    Yes, a moving train would be a better forum for this topic. And psychosis has a large spectrum of disorders, and most of them are completely harmless. However, this does not apply to anti social personality disorder. There is no unfair stigma there.

    You at least tend to use terms advisedly - I think a moving train might help us all reflect a bit more before posting whatever jumps into our heads. Another problem is that in the current age many of these classifications are themselves subjects of intense debate and renewed scrutiny - so even if we agreed on one classification, there are probably 5 or 6 informed experts who would question its validity.

    This level of detailed assessment of Echols' and Miskelly's actual 'conditions' will no doubt form a large part of a retrial - a discussion about which it would be hard for any of us here to be qualified to accurately comment on, especially until we see quite how defence and prosecution focus their attention.

    For these reasons I think it would more fruitful for us to focus on whether or not there is adequate evidence for the WM3 to be granted a full retrial....
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