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State: Latest DNA doesn't clear Echols

BY CATHY FRYE

Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008

Damien Echols, convicted in 1994 of killing three West Memphis boys, hasn't proved his innocence through new DNA testing, the state attorney general's office contends in a recent filing in the 15-year-old case.

Assistant attorney general Kent Holt and Craighead County prosecutors argue that Echols - 18 when he was sentenced to death - hasn't been exonerated by several rounds of new DNA testing.

"Those unremarkable results do not (and cannot ) demonstrate his actual innocence," state the court documents, filed May 30 in Craighead County Circuit Court by Holt and Craighead County prosecutors.

The state's filing is a response to Echols' April 11 motion for a new trial. The state attorneys ask that Circuit Judge David Burnett deny the defense team's request for a new trial.

State law permits anyone convicted of a crime to ask for a re-examination of evidence if new tests or science have become available since trial. If the results can be used to prove innocence, the convicted may then ask for another trial.

An international group hoping to prove Echols' innocence raised enough money to hire six high-profile scientists in the past year. After getting the results, his attorneys, also secured through donations, filed a motion for a new trial in April.

In that motion, defense lawyers argue that DNA testing didn't turn up any genetic material belonging to Echols or the other two men convicted in the crime - Jason Baldwin, then 16; and Jessie Misskelley, then 17.

They contend that if the killings took place per the prosecutors' theory of what happened, DNA would have been left behind, both at the crime scene and on the children's bodies.

"Furthermore, a hair containing mitochondrial DNA consistent with that of Terry Hobbs, a stepfather of one of the victims (Steve Branch ), was found on the ligature used to bind another of the victims (Michael Moore ). Another hair found on a tree root at the scene where the bodies were discovered contains mitochondrial DNA consistent with that of David Jacoby." Jacoby, defense attorneys say, was with Hobbs in the hours before and after the children vanished.

Defense attorneys began pointing at Hobbs last year, using the hairs and an investigation by former FBI profiler John Douglas, to create a new theory for what happened on the evening of May 5, 1993, when Steve, Michael and Chris Byers, all 8, disappeared. The boys' bodies were found the next day, submerged in a drainage ditch in Robin Wood Hills, a wooded patch near their homes.

Douglas believes Hobbs, angry at his stepson, wanted to punish and humiliate him, but went further than he intended.

Hobbs has said in two interviews with the Democrat-Gazette that he had nothing to do with the boys' deaths.

In the past year, the scientists hired by the defense have questioned prosecutors' assertions that the children were sexually abused and killed by knifewielding satanists.

The scientists contend the boys' injuries occurred after death, as animals and aquatic life preyed on the bodies. The wounds came from claw and teeth marks, not a knife, they say. The scientists also blame aquatic life for the mutilation and removal of Chris Byers ' genitals.

In a recent filing for Baldwin, defense attorneys said they recently learned that during the murder investigation, West Memphis police consulted with San Diego police about the possibility that animal predation caused the injuries.

The attorney general's response contends that defense attorneys are relying heavily on the animal predation theory to bolster inconclusive DNA results - rather than simply providing new DNA evidence that would prove Echols' innocence. "The point is that Echols ' post-mortem animal-predation theory cannot explain the homicides - the crimes for which he must demonstrate actual innocence.

" Moreover, the state is fully prepared to present at length its own expert evidence clearly refuting Echols' incredible theory of post-mortem animal predation." Regardless, the state argues, the new test results offered to the court don't prove anything.

"The scientific conclusion that he was not the source of some DNA evidence is a far cry from the legal conclusion that he could not commit the crimes," court documents state.

The state filed several exhibits with its response, including a letter from the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory, dated May 30, that says the tissue samples taken from some of the wounds are indicative of injury before death, and therefore couldn't have been caused by animal predation.

It also contends the wounds showed "clearly incised edges," indicating a sharp instrument caused them.

Because of the judge's gag order, attorneys from either side are unable to comment.