Copyright 1994, The Commercial Appeal
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
March 13, 1994, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: METRO, Pg. 1B,
LENGTH: 794 words
HEADLINE: Tempers kept in check at Ark. slaying trial
BYLINE: By Bartholomew Sullivan, The Commercial Appeal
DATELINE: JONESBORO, Ark.
BODY:
The second full week in the capital murder trial of Damien Wayne
Echols and Charles Jason Baldwin produced plenty of tension and raised
voices as one victim's father and one defendant took the witness
stand.
Circuit Judge David Burnett has held most of the high feelings in
check with a mix of wit and stern asides. But he's not averse to
pulling the leg of a reporter or two. In the room set aside for the
scribblers last week, he asked, ''Did you see (co-defendant Jessie
Lloyd) Misskelley downstairs?''
Misskelley was not in the building.
The trial may end this week but reporters groaned when a schedule
of pool camera technicians was posted last week that goes through the
end of the month.
Day 10 starts Monday. 'Subtle' calls
Burnett's parenthetical remark that there is a ''subtle difference
between Wiccans and the occult, but what it is, I couldn't tell you''
produced several calls to this newspaper from practitioners of the
goddess-based Wicca creed.
Burnett also received a faxed invitation at the Craighead County
Courthouse from a Wiccan in Washington state, offering to provide an
explanation of what some refer to as ''white witchcraft.'' All he
wanted was airfare.
A Wiccan is a witch. A judge's knife
Two knives a commando-type survivalist's knife and a folding
knife have been introduced as evidence and sit a few feet from the
jury at the court reporter's desk.
During Monday's testimony by Lisa Sakevicius of the Arkansas State
Crime Lab, Baldwin's lawyer, Paul N. Ford, asked to see the microscope
slides on which clothing fibers were mounted to make a comparison with
fibers found at the crime scene. Try as she might, Sakevicius couldn't
get a box containing the slides open.
''Does anyone have a knife?'' she asked to an uneasy silence.
Finally, Burnett offered his. Defining 'occult'
The state decided early in the week that, with little physical
evidence, it might have to emphasize motive if it wants a conviction.
Deputy Prosecutor John N. Fogleman said the state will attempt to
establish that Echols is involved in the occult.
Burnett asked for a definition.
''Can anybody define 'occult?' It sounds like something bad, but
I'm not sure what it is,'' he said.
According to The Random House Unabridged Dictionary: Occult, as a
noun, is ''the supernatural or supernatural agencies and affairs
considered as a whole (usually preceded by the).'' Looking it up
Dictionaries and encyclopedias got thumbed several times in
testimony last week as witnesses began to talk of ligatures,
pentagrams, the Egyptian ankh symbol, Beltane and Walpurgisnacht,
glyphs, upside-down crosses, blood sacrifices, the Ordo Templi
Orientis and the goat-headed figure Baphomet. What's this for?
In a book of potions, incantations and prayers Echols wrote in a
funeral home visitors book, there is a love charm, a cure for worms, a
few key words for improving your chances of success, a text from The
Gospel of the Witches and a ''sacrifice addressed to Hecate . . .
goddess of the crossroads.''
In the Hecate prayer, the goddess is referred to as ''you who
rejoice to hear the barking of dogs and see the blood flow, you who
wander among tombs in the hours of darkness, thirsty for blood.''
The only really practical spell seemed to be the one for improving
the memory, but for it you'll need ''the heart, eye or brain of a
lapwing or plover.'' When you've found one of them, it says, you hang
it around your neck. Not by the book
A search of Echols's trailer home in June produced the book Never
on a Broomstick. Echols's lawyers said the jury should not just look
at the cover of the book and reach a possibly prejudicial conclusion.
They said they might want to have the whole book read into the record.
''I think that would fall under the area of a filibuster,'' said
Burnett. 'Safe' Metallica
The heavy metal band Metallica got a left-handed compliment from
defense witness Robert D. Hicks, author of In Pursuit of Satan: The
Police and The Occult, on Friday. He said the music ''does not cause
the kind of harm that's sometimes imputed to it.'' Lunar objection
The moon was full on May 5, the day the boys disappeared. There
really is no question about it, except as a legal issue. Baldwin's
attorneys objected when state prosecutors asked to put a copy of a
newspaper weather page, showing sunrise and sunset and moon phases,
into the hands of jurors.
Asked Burnett: So are we going to agree the moon was up, or not?
Ford: No, your honor.
Burnett: Objection sustained.
