free the west memphis three

[krickets]

Here's just one article that's reporting on this.

Seeing that this morning brought tears to my eyes.

Comments

[haldoor.livejournal.com]

What did they do? I'm afraid I'm not up on American news.

Okay, never mind; I read the article you linked to and got my answer! Serves me right for commenting first. A pretty tricky situation all around. What seems kind of weird about this is how small our sentences here are in comparison. A life sentence here would have had those guys all out by now.

[crickets.livejournal.com]

I think Jason and Jessie were sentenced to life plus forty years each. Which, if that's correct, pretty much equals to 80 years. Damien on the other hand was never getting out. He was sentence to death and would have been killed after he exhausted all of his appeals. He was on his last appeal.

The whole point of this is that they didn't do it. There is no legitimate evidence pointing to them and there never was. Whoever did it, is still running free. The state would have never let them out with such a weird legal deal at this point if they didn't think they would get out anyway after the re-trial. This entire deal as far as I'm concerned is an effort for the state of Arkansas to avoid lawsuits and on the part of the West Memphis Three, it's an effort to ensure their release immediately. According to what I've read, the plea they entered is kind of like a draw and it makes very little sense to me. They have to admit that the courts have evidence against them, but are still able to proclaim their innocence. So it's like half-guilty plea? It makes absolutely no sense, but from what I've heard, it's a plea that came into existence to basically deal with "complicated" trails. I am irritated that Arkansas just didn't pardon them. But at least they are once again free men. Now they have all the time in the world to clear their name.

[haldoor.livejournal.com]

Right; it did seem like a weird and rather tricky thing. Glad to hear they got out, although the whole things does seem like a cop-out, considering they are deemed to be 'innocent' by most people following (or that's how it looks. I personally have no opinion because I don't know enough about the case).

My comment was really about how lax our judicial system seems in comparison to the USA. In NZ, a person can get a 'life sentence' and be out in 17 years. Foolishly, we don't seem to have anything in place to keep convicted murderers in for true 'life' (like the 80 years you mention), no matter how disgusting the crime. In fact, the only thing that keeps people in beyond what seems like a fairly minimal period (ie 20 years or less) here is if on application for parole they are deemed to still be a menace to society - which doesn't happen nearly enough, IMO. I know it's not quite what you are talking about here, but I just wanted to point out how opposing our systems seem to be, whereby innocent people can end up in jail or on death row there for crimes they didn't commit (which isn't to say it hasn't happened here, apart from the death row thing, as we don't have it), as compared to very dangerous criminals in NZ being released to commit more crimes because their 'life' sentence is seen to be over, never mind that the victims and family of the crime have much truer 'life' sentences arbitrarily imposed upon them. 'Life' as far as I see it should be life, i.e. the life of the person committing the crime, not a standard figure.

As far as innocent people being convicted and then the conviction being overturned is concerned, we have systems in place regarding that, and certainly there are famous cases here where exonerated people have won substantial amounts of money for wrongful imprisonment after many years behind bars. It doesn't give them their life back, but it must go some way to helping them.

/rant

[liebmich.livejournal.com]

Finally. Though it's bullshit they had to plead guilty when the DNA says they're not.