08-19-2011, 07:29 AM
'West Memphis 3' may be freed, source says
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/19/arka...?hpt=hp_c1
(CNN) -- Three men convicted of killing three West Memphis boys in 1993 could be freed at a court hearing Friday, a person close to the case told CNN.
All three of the men -- Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin, dubbed the "West Memphis Three" -- are expected to attend the hearing in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Friday.
A source close to the case said a deal is in the works where the men can be freed Friday and maintain their innocence.
The deal involves a complicated legal maneuver in which the three men would have to acknowledge that the state has evidence it could use to try and convict them.
The case has drawn national attention, with actor Johnny Depp and singer Eddie Vedder trying to rally support for the men's release.
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Echols was sentenced to death and Misskelley and Baldwin were given life sentences in the May 1993 slayings of second-graders Steven Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers. The boys' bodies were mutilated and left in a ditch, hogtied with their own shoelaces.
Prosecutors argued that the men convicted, teenagers at the time, were driven by satanic ritual and that Echols had been the ringleader.
DNA later failed to link the men to the crime, and the state Supreme Court ruled in November that all three could present new evidence to the trial court in an effort to clear them.
The DNA tests were conducted between December 2005 and September 2007, according to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
The material included hair from a ligature used to bind Moore and a hair recovered from a tree stump near where the bodies were found, court documents said.
The hair found in the ligature was consistent with Branch's stepfather, Terry Hobbs, while the hair found on the tree stump was consistent with the DNA of a friend of Hobbs', according to the documents.
Police have never considered Hobbs a suspect, and he maintains that he had nothing to do with the murders.