Dark Spell

by Mara Leveritt

  146 By the time of Wilson’s ruling, Riordan and Horgan had been working on Damien’s case for more than a year. During that time, they’d had to get up to speed on eleven years of prior events and work to prevent the erosion of Damien’s legal position, especially by preserving his right to seek federal habeas corpus relief. Had they not acted when they did, provisions of the federal “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act” might have made a federal appeal impossible for having been filed too late. That law, which had a tremendous—and many say detrimental— effect on the ability of federal judges to grant habeas corpus petitions was enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, in response to the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the federal building in Oklahoma City two years later.

  147 “Miscellaneous Essays and Interviews” by David Jauss. http://www.davidjauss.com/miscellaneous_essays_and_ interviews_51285.htm

  148 Burk Sauls, a co-founder of WM3.org, wrote in the book’s preface, “The state of Arkansas wants very badly to execute Damien, but even a cursory look at his case tells the rational among us that he, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, are innocent of the crime they’ve been locked up for. The three of them have come to be known as the West Memphis Three, and their cause has been embraced by people all over the world who see it for what it is—an example of how ordinary people can become victims of a system that is supposed to protect and serve us.”

  149 “Murder case draws musicians to cause,” by Stephen Koch and Max Brantley, Arkansas Times Arkansas Blog, July 21, 2005

  150 “West Memphis Free: Global event for convicted metalheads,” by Mike Miliard, Boston Phoenix, July 22, 2005 http://www. bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/ documents/04838477.asp

  151 I No Longer Face the Storm Alone, 21/31 Productions, 2005. http://www.2131-productions.com/publicitypress/

  152 The 1980 movie Brubaker was based on these incidents. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture: http://www. encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail. aspx?search=1&entryID=4923

  153 In Arkansas and some other states, all appeals return to the original judge. This means that appellants must attempt to get a trial judge to find error in a trial where he or she officiated. Success is rare.

  154 Major Payne, starring Daymon Wayans, Universal Pictures, 1995.

  155 From an email to Lorri Davis dated Feb. 27, 2006, which Davis forwarded to me two days later. Philipsborn also wrote, “In closing, let me clarify something that I have communicated with you about, Lorri, but which our supporters may not have yet had explained to them. As was the case when I was the one making decisions on all of these matters, when only Pearl Jam, Henry Rollins, and private donation monies were available, one has to be very careful about thinking of Damien, Jessie and Jason as one entity—and as a group who will all rise and fall together. The harsh reality is that this may not be the case. That is why there is a legal requirement that each defendant in a serious case has her/his own lawyer. At this point, it seems that the most logical approach is to be fully cooperative—but we do so in the knowledge that any number of scenarios could actually have occurred here. Each of the legal teams has to concentrate on one client, but the effort, at this point, can logically be joined, and joint. However, in some areas, it cannot be—and that has led, and will continue to lead, to extra expenses. Not all matters can be investigated by one firm.” In the months and years ahead, the issue of money would become an increasingly sore spot between Philipsborn and Davis.

  156 Dr. Martin Hill, email interview, Jan. 21, 2011.

  157 Lanette Grate, an instructor at the University of Central Arkansas, organized the event.

  158 The knives were delivered to Stidham after Devil’s Knot was published and optioned for film.

  159 “Dimension ties Knot, Variety.com, May 7, 2006.

  160 In addition, a question has been raised as to why Lax never obtained records of Damien’s phone calls from the night of the murders—records that purportedly could have corroborated his claim that he’d been talking with girls in Memphis. Lax recalled that one of his investigators had attempted to get those records but was told that they were not available because, though West Memphis and Memphis were located in different states, calls between the two cities were not billed as “long distance,” so calls, times, numbers and duration were not documented.

  161 Investigator Sandra C. Siligato found that Hobbs had had several encounters with Tennessee police and courts in the years after the murders. The most serious occurred on Nov. 11, 1994, eight months after the trials, when Hobbs shot Pam’s brother-in-law in the abdomen during a fight. Jackie Hicks, Jr., was admitted to a Memphis hospital in critical condition. Terry Hobbs was charged with simple assault and given a six-month, suspended sentence (Jan. 12, 1995. Shelby County Criminal Court, charge of aggravated assault, Indictment Number 95-07669). On Feb. 20, 1996, the charge was amended to simple assault and he received six months in jail, all time suspended, and was placed on eleven to twenty-nine months of probation. While that incident was widely reported, future police run-ins were not. According to another complaint, Pam Hobbs called police to the couple’s house, in August 2003, claiming that “she was afraid to go home alone because she had recently reported her husband to DHS [Department of Human Services] for physical and sexual abuse of their fourteen-year-old daughter.” When officers entered the house they found “a plastic bag of marijuana under the mattress in the defendant’s bedroom which the daughter, Amanda Hobbs, pointed out to the police.” Police arrested Hobbs again. Three months later, he was found guilty of possession of a controlled substance and fined three hundred and fifty dollars. (Shelby County General Sessions Criminal Court, Booking No. 0312345). At that time, Amanda was fifteen, her half-brother Stevie was dead, and her family was coming apart. When Pam and Terry divorced in 2004, Terry was living in Memphis, Tennessee, and Pam in Blytheville, Arkansas. At Amanda’s request, the court awarded custody of Amanda to her father. But within months, Terry Hobbs called police to report that Amanda had run away at around one o’clock in the morning. Police noted that Hobbs “stated the victim (Amanda) had been having a hard time emotionally, so they were up until midnight talking, at which time, she took a shower and he went to bed. Complainant thinks victim then left out of her bedroom window.” The incident report said that Terry Hobbs wanted Amanda “transported to juvenile court if found,” (Memphis Police Department/Shelby County Sheriff ’s Department – Central Records, Incident Report No. 0412000361ME). A few weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Hobbs reported that Amanda had run away again. This time he told officers that he had given Amanda one hundred dollars to go Christmas shopping and that, after she’d left the house, she’d called him to say she was not coming home (Ibid. Incident Report No. 0412010222ME).

  162 Personal correspondence.

  163 “The Court of Public Opinion: Examining Pretrial Coverage of the West Memphis Three,” A Donaghey Scholars Final Project, Dec. 12, 2006.

  164 Some opponents of the War on Drugs, including me, see prisons as the best illustration of how doomed that effort is. If prisons, where inmates are guarded and monitored and where everyone entering is searched, cannot eliminate illegal drugs—or weapons, for that matter—what hope does such an initiative have in an environment that’s supposed to be free?

  165 A howl went up among some supporters when I reported Jason’s arrest and detention. Some wrote that I was being disloyal to the men’s claim of innocence, or even intent on harming Jason.

  166 Hobbs offered an account of his actions on the night Stevie and his friends disappeared, starting between three and four P.M., when he believed he arrived home from his job at the Memphis Ice Cream Company, where he was a route deliveryman. He described dropping Pam off at work at 4:30 and then beginning to look for Stevie, who was supposed to have been home by then. According to the report, Hobbs said he searched that evening with his friend and co-worker David Jacoby, as well as with Pam
’s father, Jackie Hicks, Sr. “He stated that they did search in the Robin Hood Hills area, and this was the first time he had heard of Robin Hood Hills. When people told him that he needed to search in Robin Hood Hills, Terry did not even know where or what that was. “He specifically recalled that they walked from behind the Blue Beacon [truck wash] through a trail and then at some point, he had walked down the trail towards where the boys were found, but not all the way to the ditch. He stated that after he began walking down this trail, the ‘hairs on my arms stood up,’ so he immediately turned around and walked back to where David and Jackie were. He told David and Jackie,

  ‘There’s somethin’ down there,’ but none of them proceeded to walk back down the trail.” After discovery of the bodies the next day, Hobbs said neither he nor Pam was informed about how the victims were killed. All they knew was that Stevie had been hit in the face, he said, “because they could see that at the funeral.” Geiser’s report continued, “Terry talked about seventy items of evidence that were sealed’ and wondered what the state was waiting for to introduce this evidence. We have no knowledge of this and told Terry that we did not.” Terry mentioned to the investigators, however, that he had “recently had lunch with Gitchell” in Memphis. Geiser wrote, “It is Terry’s opinion that the crime occurred late in the afternoon or early in the evening. He said he felt it was much earlier than the state tried to prove, but he could not explain the various ‘sightings’ of the three boys up until 6:30 P.M.”

  167 “Charlie Frago, “Prison officials confirm staff firings, demotion,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 3, 2007.

  168 I was one of that event’s organizers, and I spoke at it. “Our message to the courts is that we wanted justice when the children were murdered, not scapegoats,” I said. “To the extent that the West Memphis Three have been wronged, we have all been wronged. We want justice, and you have not delivered it. Mistakes, as they say, have been made.” In a spirit of acknowledgement, I admitted mistakes I’d made in Devil’s Knot, including mistakes regarding the heritage of prosecutor John Fogleman, whose office was around the corner from where we all stood. I said I did not think admitting those mistakes weakened my book, rather that I believed the book’s integrity was strengthened by their acknowledgement. “That is all we ask today of this state’s justice officials,” I said, “from this courthouse and judicial district to the offices of the state Supreme Court. Act responsibly and review what was done in this case . . . We know that attorneys for the convicted men are meeting with court officials, seeking a re-examination of this case. We stand outside the court, demanding the same thing.” KAIT, a Jonesboro television station that covered the event, led its report with the voice of Kelly Duda, a Little Rock documentary filmmaker, telling the crowd, “Now, when people all over the world hear the words ‘West Memphis,’ they think of the murders of three little boys and the wrongful convictions of three other boys.” Two days later, organizer Amanda Lamb wrote to participants, “Standing for justice is something many of us try to do every day. It is not, however, a daily occurrence that we have such an opportunity to publicly stand in solidarity with so many stouthearted individuals, and visibly demonstrate our devotion to this single concept. Dr. Martin Luther King defined justice as ‘love correcting everything that stands against love.’ Although the West Memphis Three case is the epitome of horrible injustice, it has encouraged positive action by human beings towards other human beings. Above all other definitions, I do believe that justice IS a work of love.”

  169 Hobb’s first wife, Angela Castleberry, lived in Arkansas. According to Geiser’s report, Castleberry had met Hobbs when she was fifteen years old and both of their fathers were Pentecostal ministers. She knew him for about four years before they were married in the late 1970s. When she became pregnant, Castleberry said, Hobbs stopped going to church and began having affairs, drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. He also began beating her, mostly slapping, sometimes punching. After their son Bryan was born, Castleberry said, Hobbs began partying with college-aged adults. She said she found marijuana and various pills underneath the seat of their car. During this time, Geiser reported, Hobbs was still physically abusing his wife “and on one occasion he beat her and strangled her, causing her to lose consciousness. When she awoke, Bryan, who was not even two years old, was over her, crying and trying to wake her. She noticed that she was extremely bloody, so cleaned herself up, and she and Bryan left the apartment.” Castleberry then filed for divorce and was granted custody of Bryan, but she said that Hobbs often failed to pay child support. “It was interesting,” Geiser wrote, “because Angela would sometimes make statements such as ‘he beat me,’ and ‘he did not take care of our son,’ but then would later state that he was a good father.” Elsewhere in the report, Geiser noted Castleberry’s remarks that, as an adult, her son Bryan had become “very controlling, like Terry”; that, “she had heard that Terry had also abused Pam”; and that “there is no way that Terry could ever harm a child.” Also Castleberry mentioned that, while they were married, Hobbs had broken into a woman’s house and assaulted her and that Castleberry believed he’d done this “because this woman had tried to help Angela during a previous altercation between Angela and Terry.” Geiser found the 1982 arrest report from the police department in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It stated, “Subject admitted entering the complainant’s residence and putting his arms around her as she came out of the shower. Subject was issued misdemeanor citation.” The report indicated that the case was dismissed as Hobbs had agreed to counseling. Geiser then interviewed Mildred French, the woman who had filed the complaint. French reported that she had caught Hobbs “on several occasions looking in through her windows and additionally had caught him looking in the windows of another neighbor, a young female who was a nurse. On the day of the assault, French stated “that she had come home and specifically recalled locking her front door as she was already fearful of Terry, since he had been peeking in her windows. She had gone upstairs to take a shower and when she came out of the shower, Terry was in her bathroom and grabbed her from behind with his hands on her breasts. She immediately screamed, at which time Terry stated to her, ‘Shhh, one of your cats got out and is on the street and is dead.’ Mildred yelled at Terry to get out of her house, at which time he immediately ran down the stairs, out her door and into his house next door.” The report continued: “Mildred, of course, described Terry as a ‘pervert.’ She also stated that prior to this she had heard approximately three substantial arguments go on in the Hobbs household. In these arguments Terry was always yelling at and slapping Angela. In one of the arguments, she heard Terry yelling and slapping Angela and also heard the baby crying. The baby abruptly stopped crying, which concerned Mildred, so she went next door to make sure the baby was okay. Angela eventually answered the door and told Mildred that everything was fine, but this seemed to aggravate Terry. She believed he had come into her house on this date because she had earlier intervened on behalf of Angela and the baby.”

  170 A transcription of the entire interview can be found at: http:// callahan.8k.com/pdf/pam_hobbs_interview.pdf.

  171 As the interview was ending, Mitchell asked Hobbs if there was anything he could add that might help police “follow up on this investigation.” Hobbs answered that he wasn’t sure it meant anything, but that he’d seen a picture of Damien Echols sitting on his couch at his house with Chris and Mike and Stevie. He asked the lieutenant, “Have you seen that?” Mitchell said he had not and asked Hobbs where he’d seen that picture. Terry said he thought Gary Gitchell had it, though he added that he didn’t know how Damien “got with our couch and that picture got done.” A bit later, Hobbs told the officer that he and Pam had sold their rights for “a Hollywood movie.” When Mitchell asked, “You said they bought your rights?” Hobbs said, “I think I made a big mistake.” A transcript of the entire interview can be found at: http://callahan.8k.com/pdf/t_hobbs_interview.pdf.

  172 “Death Penalty Debate : How to Treat
Youngsters Who Murder,” by Barry Siegel, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 1985. http://articles.latimes.com/1985-11-03/news/mn-3894_1_ death-penalty-debate.

  INDEX

  The page numbers below relate only to the printed book.

  Access Hollywood, 131

  Acheson, Dean, 131

  Akin, Tammy, 177

  Allen, Mike, 103, 171

  Arkansas Act 1780 (allowing DNA testing), 129

  Arkansas Judicial Council, 150

  Arkansas State Police, 34, 50, 150 discovery of lake knife, 34, 50 investigating West Memphis Police, 150

  Arkansas Supreme Court, 3, 5–6, 9–10, 88–91, 95, 104, 120, 123, 125, 127, 134, 136–37, 150, 156, 160–61, 163, 171, 173–74, 215–16, 220, 224, 231, 239, 246, 253–54, 257, 260, 263, 270 finds that Fogleman denied fair trial (Ward v. State, 1987), 9–10, 216 finds Fogleman in error for withholding evidence (Strobbe v. State, 1988), 10, 216 affirms Misskelley conviction, 89–91 affirms Echols conviction, 123, 134 accepts Echols’ Rule 37 petition, remands for written findings, 134, 136–37 denies Echols’ petition for writ of error coram nobis, 160, 263 accepts Burnett’s written finding on Echols’ Rule 37 petition, 160–61, 246 denies motion to consider jury misconduct, 171–74 rejects issues raised concerning Misskelley statements, 220, 225