Life After Death

In 1993, teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr.-who have come to be known as the West Memphis Three-were arrested for the murders of three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas. The ensuing trial was marked by tampered evidence, false testimony, and public hysteria. Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life in prison; while eighteen-year-old Echols, deemed the “ringleader,” was sentenced to death. Over the next two decades, the WM3 became known worldwide as a symbo...