Arkansas Supreme Court rules in favor of West Memphis Three in ongoing DNA battle

The Arkansas Supreme Court has reversed a Crittenden County judge's ruling on DNA testing in the West Memphis Three case, opening an avenue for modern testing to be done.

In June 2022, a Crittenden County Circuit Court judge denied the request to test DNA with the M-Vac method which releases and captures cells through wet vacuum principles — meaning it loosens DNA that might not have been valid for a test before.

The ruling also came with a dissenting opinion from Justice Barbara Webb.

The request was brought by Damien Echols, who was convicted of capital murder by a Jonesboro jury, along with Jason Baldwin, for the brutal 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis.

Victims Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore had been stripped naked, hog-tied, severely beaten, and left to die in a creek that led to a drainage ditch, according to The Commercial Appeal archives.

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The case caught the public's attention as details became available. At the same time, pressure was mounting for West Memphis, Arkansas, police to solve the case — and they pointed to Echols, Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley as primary suspects. All three were teenagers at the time.

Misskelley was tried in a separate court, in Clay County, where a jury found him guilty as well.

Echols was sentenced to death in the initial case, but later appealed and the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled the court that convicted him had made an error, requesting that the court consider a motion for a new trial.

In years since the trials, evidence viewed as flimsy has come under scrutiny by celebrities, legal experts, and media — spawning a slew of documentaries and novelizations of the case.

The case was ultimately re-opened, and in 2011, the three were released after entering an Alford plea — which allows defendants to acknowledge that there is enough evidence to convict them, but not admit guilt.

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In years since the plea, Echols has sought to exonerate the trio and believes modern DNA testing would do so.

The state has argued that the Alford plea the trio entered prevents them from appealing, similar to how a guilty plea does. The Arkansas Supreme Court, however, disagreed with that argument.

Echols, through his attorneys, argued that he is able to bring the petition for new DNA testing "that may become available through advances in technology to demonstrate the person's actual innocence." The court agreed with Echols' arguments.

"Here, the plain language... unambiguously permits 'a person convicted of a crime' to petition for additional DNA testing to demonstrate the person's actual innocence pursuant to Act 1780," the Arkansas Supreme Court wrote in its ruling. "This language imposes no requirement that a petitioner must be in state custody to seek relief pursuant to Act 1780, and we decline to read such a requirement into the statutes."

Webb, in her dissenting opinion, said Echols' conviction "did not rely on DNA evidence," and as such the court's interpretation was incorrect because Echols' actual innocence could not be shown through DNA evidence.

"The majority's decision obliterates any sense of finality in our criminal justice system," Webb wrote in the dissenting opinion. "Their interpretation of Act 1780 means anyone who has ever been convicted of a crime — whether or not they be in state custody — can seek DNA or other scientific testing even if such testing would not prove that individual's innocence. That is the case here. Echols' first conviction did not rely on DNA evidence. Rather, the jury was presented with evidence that Echols knew facts about the case that were not public knowledge; fibers found on the victims' clothes were microscopically similar to clothing found in Echols' home; multiple witnesses testified that Echols confessed to the murders; and multiple witnesses placed him near the crime scene at the time of the murders. DNA testing cannot prove Echols' innocence."

Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. HPe can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, or (901)208-3922, and followed on X, formerly known as Twitter, @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Arkansas Supreme Court reverses DNA ruling in West Memphis Three case