West of Memphis (Amy Berg, 2011): New Zealand

Reviewed by Alex Canzano. Viewed at The Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Around 2p.m. on May 6^th 1993, the bodies of three eight-year old boys, who had been reported missing the previous evening, were pulled from a muddy drainage canal where they had been dumped after being brutalized and murdered. Amy Berg’s West of Memphis covers the notorious trial (known as the West Memphis Three) in which the murder of Stevie Edward Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore, in West Memphis, Arkansas, led to the wrongful incrimination and incarceration of three innocent teenagers who spent over eighteen years in prison for a heinous crime that none of them had committed. Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were given life in prison, while Damien Echols was sentenced to death.

The documentary recounts the events in gruesome detail, starting with the discovery of the bodies and all the evidence that was misinterpreted for the initial murder investigation. Followed by the shocking court trial that consisted of fictitious testimonies, false confessions and Satanist occult experts that ensured the convictions of all three defendants. Anyone unfamiliar with the saga is likely to be unsure of whom or what to believe, as the structure of the film’s story unfolds in sequence with the developments of forensic evidence and other shocking discoveries made in real life.

As more evidence was uncovered, more people began to question and protest the courts conviction, eventually reaching the support of several celebrities like New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson, actor Johnny Depp, lead vocalists Henry Rollins (Black Flag) and Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), who gained the attention of even more followers.

With further investigation into the case, later forensic discoveries point to more suitable suspects and disprove the earlier theories that put Misskelley, Baldwin and Echols behind bars. One of people brought under suspicion was Terry Hobbs, who was the stepfather to one of the victims- Chris Byers. A strand of hair was found caught in the knot of rope that one of the victims was bounded by. By obtaining a cigarette butt taken from the home of Hobbs without his knowledge, forensic scientists were successful in matching the hair with the suspect’s saliva. Hobbs was then called in for official police interrogation.

With enough evidence and support to point the blame towards Terry Hobbs, disproving critical dishonest testimonies and false confessions, the film eventually tells the eventual appealed court hearing that lead to the conditional release of all three wrongfully accused men. On August 19^th 2011 Misskelley, Baldwin and Echols were forced to sign an Alford Plea in which they eventually all agreed to do. The Alford Plea demands that each of the three defendants plead guilty to a lesser degree of the initial charge, while verbally claiming their innocence to the court. The plea acknowledges the prosecution as having enough evidence to hold a conviction but reserves the right to declare innocence. This revokes their rights to any civil action against the court for wrongful accusation.

West of Memphis documents the tragic and shocking story that recalls the failure of the Arkansas Criminal Justice System in 1993, to convict the true murderer of innocent children and instead claimed eighteen years of the lives of three undeserving youths who now can finally walk free.