On Saturday I invited Serial listeners to recall the Edgar Smith case. Smith got away, literally, with murder. He did it by convincing the media and the public (and to a lesser degree the courts) that he was innocent man, falsely convicted of brutally killing a teenage girl. After he was released he attempted another murder, confessed to the original one and went back to prison.
Now I invite Serial listeners to recall a counter example: the West Memphis Three, who were convicted as teenagers in 1994 for the murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. One was sentenced to death and the other two were given life sentences. It was alleged, on debatable evidence gained by poor police work, that the victims were killed in a Satanic ritual.
All three are now free, having given Alford pleas. These are “guilty” pleas in which innocence is still maintained. (It’s complicated. Look it up.) To make a long story too short, it is now clear that they got bum raps and that other persons are the more likely perps. The miscarriage of justice in the case is so extreme that the dad of one of the victims has taken up the Three’s cause.
I met two of the Three, plus the dad, in 2012 after a screening of the documentary West of Memphis at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. I’m sure they are innocent.
The Memphis Three’s case, like Edgar Smith’s, is irrelevant to Adnan Syed’s. (He’s serving time for murder in the case Serial explores). The jury is still in for that one, and Adnan is still officially guilty. But maybe keeping these other cases in mind will help us all keep our minds open.
Meanwhile, HuffPo has a nice set of takes by prosecutors and defense attorneys.
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