COMMERCIAL APPEAL
Jury chosen, security tightened amid threats at Misskelley trial
By Bartholomew Sullivan
Friday, January 21, 1994
A jury of seven women and five men will hear the Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. capital murder case that began Wednesday, Circuit Judge David Burnett ruled Thursday afternoon.
The judge said seating a jury was "faster by two days" than he had expected. There was no explanation for the delay in presenting opening statements. The jury will not be sequestered.
Meanwhile, Misskelley was the subject of stepped-up security Thursday as Clay County Sheriff Darvin Stow said his department had received information about death threats against the 18-year-old defendant.
Stow said his department has received telephone calls from "people expressing concern that certain individuals might attempt something," but he would not elaborate. He said he was also told there is a $100,000 bounty on Misskelley's head.
Misskelley was brought into the courthouse Thursday in a flak jacket and handcuffs amid a phalanx of police officers.
Corning Police Chief Ronnie Stewart said his department has received requests for security around the victims' families. Stewart had to intervene when John Mark Byers, one victim's father, got into a loud discussion Wednesday with a Little Rock reporter over a story he'd written. Six members of the eight-man Corning department were assigned to the courthouse this week.
Eight-year-olds Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch were killed in May in West Memphis by what police say were members of a satanic cult. Misskelley is charged with capital murder, as are Damien Wayne Echols, 19, and Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, who will stand trial together next month in Jonesboro.
Pamela Hobbs, the mother of Steve Branch, said Thursday that she is still ''in a rage" and would "like to have five minutes with" each of the defendants. Absent that, she said she hopes the jury will call for the death penalty prosecutors are seeking.
Each juror was asked if he or she could impose the death penalty under the appropriate circumstances. Those who said they could not were excused.
"I think they deserve the death penalty," said Hobbs, 29. "We have three beautiful babies lying in the graveyard." Later, she said of the defendants, ''I feel their parents should have to go out to a graveyard just like we do."
Hobbs said all of the victims' families, who attended all or part of the jury selection that began Wednesday, have grown closer because of their ordeal. "We've turned into something of a family, not that we wanted to," she said. "We'll always have something in common."
Hobbs and her husband, Terry Hobbs, Steve Branch's stepfather who helped raise him from infancy, said prosecutors have kept them in the dark about the photographs and autopsy reports expected to be part of the state's case. Pamela Hobbs said she's afraid she may scream when the evidence is presented.
They both said they weren't prepared for a tape of Misskelley's alleged confession played in court Jan. 13 in Marion in which he described a sexual assault. "I'd thought he died suddenly," she said. Said her husband, "We'd hope the punishment would fit the crime."
Jurors selected behind closed doors range in age from 65 to 23 and include the town's postmaster, a bank loan officer, a domestic, an official with the local store-shelf manufacturer, a Wal-Mart clerk, and a factory worker who makes shock absorbers. Two are natives of Arizona. All are white. There are two alternates, both women.
Burnett sealed the brief questionnaire each was asked to fill out after Misskelley's lawyers, Daniel T. Stidham and Gregory L. Crow of Paragould, objected to their release.
Misskelley stood Thursday when the judge introduced him to potential jurors, but he did not look at them.
Reporters' questions shouted at Miskelley as he was led into the courthouse Thursday morning went unanswered.
Misskelley was on probation for assaulting a 13-year-old girl when he was arrested a month after the killings.
Stow, who agreed to house Misskelley at the Clay County Jail the night he was arrested June 4, said the former part-time auto mechanic has been a ''model prisoner."
Misskelley is in an isolation cell monitored for sound by jail officials and is permitted into a larger day room only by himself, Stow said. Stow said Misskelley bides his time reading "hot rod magazines."
"It appears he does more picture looking than reading."
Both Stow and Stewart will charge Crittenden County $50 per day for each extra officer placed on duty to deal with additional security needs, with the number varying from six to eight during the expected two weeks of testimony.
