Comparing The Murder Of Damien Echols, Misskelley And Jason Baldwin

Imagine, suddenly being put on trial and locked away for 18 years and 78 days for a crime you did not commit. This is exactly what happened to Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin when they were convicted for the murder of three young boys: Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch. When the bodies of the boys were discovered immense pressure was put on the police and they needed to act quickly. The teens were the obvious and safest choice as they were seen by the community as weird and mischievous. Not to mention there were many rumors saying the group was involved in a satanic cult which supposedly led to the three young boys’ demise. Police used many tactics during the investigation and eventually got one of the boys

For instance, when Dr. Ofshe says, “Mr. Misskelley describes that what he learned to do was to feed back to the interrogators what they were telling him happened and he sought to avoid making mistakes because when he made mistakes they would make him go back through the entire story and they would not believe him when he repeatedly told them that he was working with Rickey Deese that day and he knew nothing about the crime” (Ofshe). Jessie felt hopeless, like the only way out was to confess to the murder whether he did it or not which is incredibly unjust. Their tactic was to put so much pressure on this innocent 17 year old boy with an IQ of just 72 until he finally just couldn’t take it anymore, which honestly seems like a form or torture in a way. Also, another good point made by Ofshe is, “The statement about the time at which this crime occurred is a statement that comes up and is manipulated eight different times over the course of this interrogation and over the course of those eight manipulations one sees a pattern of unrelenting pressure on Mr. Misskelley” (Ofshe). Doing things like manipulating a statement eight times to get a response you know won’t be true is foolish. A good interrogator can get someone to admit to anything if they used the right tactics, and to do this to someone that is mentally handicapped just shows how messed up these techniques