[book_talk] Devil's Knot
- From: "Bonnie L. Sherrell" <blslarner@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Blind Chit Chat" <Blind-Chit-Chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Books for the Blind" <Books4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Blind Book Lovers Cafe" <bblc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Book Talk" <book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 21:29:14 -0800
_Devil's Knot_
by Mara Leaveritt
published 2002
movie released 2013
starring Colin Firth as Ron Lax and Reese Witherspoon as Pam Hicks
Hobbs
As many know by now, I began following the West Memphis Three case in
1999. My stepson, who was staying with his dad and me for a few
months, had been advised by a friend to rent a video of "Paradise Lost:
The Robin Hood Hill Child Murders" and to watch it. He started it, and
then came into the office where I was reading email and his dad was
napping and asked me to watch it with him. "You won't believe this!"
he said, and he was right.
By 2001 I was an active member of an email discussion list regarding
the case and a member of the WM3 Discussion board as well. I was
convinced of the innocence of the three young men charged and convicted
of killing three little boys in May of 1993, and I remain so convinced
to this day. In 2011 in a surprise move the state of Arkansas agreed
to release the three men who were convicted of the crime as teenagers
from prison, if they would accept an Alford plea. This is a very
strange legal move intended to close cases with the individual charged
with a serious crime claiming actual innocence while admitting that the
state could probably obtain a guilty conviction should the case go to
court. The presiding judge agreed to vacate the convictions of Jessie
Miskelley, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols (nee Michael Wayne
Hutcheson) in return for them accepting the Alford plea, and they would
be released with no restrictions on their travel with sentences reduced
to time served.
Usually Alford pleas are offered to individuals before the case goes to
court, and the defendants are people no one really believes should go
to prison to begin with. Maybe the crime is petty, or the victims are
believed by most people to have deserved what they got. Never before
were three individuals charged with such a horrendous crime against
three eight-year-old boys offered the chance to change their original
pleas of innocent to guilty via such a plea agreement so long after
their trials, one of whom had spent eighteen years on death row after
his conviction, and walk out of prison basically free men. The day
after being released from prison Damien Echols, for example, boarded a
jet bound for Wellington, New Zealand, where he became the guest of Sir
Peter Jackson and his consort, Fran Walsh, and where he was allowed to
serve as an extra in the Hobbit films. He's returned to the States,
and he and his wife, who married him while he was still on death row,
settled in New York. There are still people intent on seeing the
Alford plea guilty convictions vacated as well and the case reopened
for proper investigation. I am one of them, although I admit I am not
as active in pursuing this goal as I once was. At least Jason, Damien,
and Jessie are now free. But is the one who really killed Steve
Branch, Michael Moore, and Chris Byers ever going to be properly
identified, tried, and hopefully convicted?
I don't know, and the chances this will happen shrink every day the
state of Arkansas refuses to admit the case presented against Jessie,
Jason, and Damien was crap to begin with.
I first read the book _Devil's Knot_ by Mara Leaveritt in early 2003, I
believe, not that long after it was published. It was a powerful
indictment of the legal institutions in Arkansas that named Damien
Echols the prime suspect in the murders of Chris, Michael, and Stevie
starting the day the bodies of the three children were found, even
though there was absolutely no piece of physical evidence tying Damien
to the crime at all. Ms. Leaveritt carefully documented every
indication as to where the investigators and prosecutors went wrong
from beginning to end, and managed to indicate most successfully that a
far stronger circumstantial case could be made against John Mark Byers,
Christopher Byers's flamboyant adoptive stepfather, than had been
presented against Damien, much less against his codefendents, Jessie
and Jason. Certainly until November of 2007 I believed that Mark Byers
was the strongest suspect in the case. I now know that there is even
stronger evidence against Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of victim Stevie
Branch, but I suppose that that is neither here nor there.
Tonight I finally watched the movie "Devil's Knot" starring Colin Firth
and Reese Witherspoon. Ms. Witherspoon did a wonderful job playing
Steve's mother Pam, and for the most part as I watched the movie I felt
as if I were indeed watching the real Pam Hobbs, now Pam Hicks once
more since her divorce from Terry Hobbs. I've watched so many
interviews of Pam and have corresponded directly with her enough to
feel that they did a wonderful job in choosing the actress to portray
her, although I have to admit that Ms. Witherspoon appeared a good deal
more articulate than the real Pam is.
Colin Firth did one of the best acting jobs I think I've ever seen of
him, and particularly as I did not see Firth himself in the character
he portrayed. He was able to convincingly portray an American private
investigator, with no trace of his natural British accent or the
physical movements I've come to know in him in such roles as the father
in "Nanny McPhee" or Prince Albert/George the Fifth in "The King's
Speech" or Harry Bright in "Mama Mia." I've not seen much of the real
Ron Lax, so I can't say that he caught the character as spectacularly
as did Reese Witherspoon, but I was truly impressed. If' I'd not known
that it was Firth from all the hoopla of him being an Academy Awards
winner I wouldn't have easily recognized him.
I had been wondering how they would do the adaptation of the book to a
screenplay, as Leaveritt's work isn't a story so much as a dissection
of the case as it was presented in court and a sharp look at the real
evidence as it was known at the time the book was being written. Our
perceptions of the case changed so radically in 2007 when true forensic
experts gave their opinions of the physical evidence as shown in the
autopsy photos, basically indicating that the forensic scientists and
the medical examiner had botched the case fully and that the
prosecutors had twisted everything to fit their expectations of the
case instead of making their case reflect the evidence.
I found that the screenwriters simply ditched much of the book,
focusing primarily on Lax's findings as an investigator and on Pam's
reactions as the mother of one of the victims who ended up questioning
the verdicts given as a result of the trials. They downplayed Mark
Byers's often over-the-top behavior, and also downplayed Terry Hobb's
tendency toward abuse, making it appear that Terry and Pam cooperated
with the police investigation when in truth Terry whisked Pam and their
daughter Amanda off to her father's place as soon as the bodies were
found and took off alone to Missouri, well out of reach of the West
Memphis Police Department until after it was plain that the detectives
had convinced themselves that devil-worshiping teenagers must have
killed the three children and they were focused primarily on a high
school dropout named Damien Echols. They also indicated that the
defense lawyers paid a lot more attention to Lax than they did. The
one lawyer who did rely heavily on what Lax could find out was Dan
Stidham, primary counsel to Jessie Miskelley. Ford and Price, leading
counsels to Damien and Jason respectively, usually brushed aside what
Lax tried to tell them. Lax and his assistant were intent on
uncovering the truth, but they fought an uphill battle all along the
way. Although there is no question that Mara Leaveritt cites their
work frequently in her book, they were certainly never the leading
characters one sees in the movie.
I did appreciate how they caught the courtroom politics, including the
tendency Judge Burnett showed toward belittling or hiding possibly
exculpatory testimony. One thing that did make me laugh was when the
lack of true expertise of Dale Griffis was brought out in the
courtroom, although they show this being done in front of the jury
where in real life the jury was off in the jury room when that fact was
brought out, and they were allowed to hear his testimony ignorant of
the fact that the guy had no valid credentials or experience at all to
give evidence as he did as to the nature of the occult.
Casting was great, and they did their best to capture the primary
features of the various people involved in the case. The kid who
portrayed Damien looked least like him of the three teens, although he
was as articulate as is the real Damien Echols. As for how they got
the guy who played Mark Byers--I am amazed at how much he looks like
the real man. At least they toned down the Arkansas twang enough to
allow me to handle the dialogue--when I listen to audio tapes of John
Fogelman it drives me crazy, as he epitomizes the worst excesses of the
local dialect and pronunciation. They stuck very true to the trial
transcripts, so I didn't have many moments of thinking, "But it didn't
happen that way!"
The movie isn't the most riveting, and I doubt it's going to be
nominated for any awards. But I found it cogent and a good look at how
the case was manipulated and why so many people all over the world came
to insist that the state of Arkansas let Jason, Damien, and Jessie out
of prison.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise
cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
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