For Mara Leveritt, a contributing editor at Little Rock's alternative newsweekly the Arkansas Times, who is herself working on a book about the case for Simon and Schuster, the courtroom focus on Echols' beliefs transformed the proceedings into something of a witch trial.

"The admission of that kind of testimony was to my mind pretty unusual for a court of law," Leveritt says. "To bring in 'experts' in the occult, for instance, and end up with prosecutor Fogleman's statement that it's not wrong to wear black, read certain books from the library about paganism and the occult or listen to heavy-metal music, but you put all that together and you see there's 'no soul there.' That tenor of the prosecution coupled with the publicity that surrounded the case -- immediately after the arrests West Memphis was the scene of many churches holding meetings where they brought in religious experts on Satanism -- certainly created the climate where the convictions were made possible."

Leveritt notes a "profound change" in the time she has been following the case from a common knee-jerk reaction that Echols and the others were guilty to the introduction of substantial doubt. In spite of that doubt and the efforts of many to free the WM3, does Leveritt believe there's a chance Echols may still be executed?

"I certainly do," she says. "Shoot, I've seen a lot of executions out here. And I know that once the initial trial takes place, all appeals are against great odds after that."

But there are also several factors in Echols' favor at this point. "PL2" was a far more exculpatory film than the first, and it throws greater suspicion on victim Chris Byers' stepfather, John Mark Byers -- portrayed in both films, variously, as erratic, drug-addled and knife-toting. Whatever the truth may be, the film makes Byers, a buffoonish character who seems to have leapt straight from the pages of a Faulkner short story, look guilty as hell. And some believe a more convincing circumstantial case could be made against him than against Echols and the others. Byers is currently in jail on drug charges, but he's not on death row. Echols is the man with that distinction, though at times it seems as if Echols' primary sin was being weird in a small town.

Echols also has as his counsel Houston attorney Ed Mallett, a veteran defense lawyer with experience in appealing death penalty cases. Prickly and precise, Mallett is the sort of lawyer you'd want on your side if you were in Echols' place. Though Mallett's Rule 37 appeal to trial Judge Burnett was denied, the next stop is the Arkansas Supreme Court. If that fails, there will be a federal habeas corpus petition, and perhaps an appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ironically, one of Mallett's points in the Rule 37 appeal was that the first HBO film helped taint his client's case. He argued that the lack of funds provided to the defense by the state of Arkansas led Echols' counsel to engage in an unholy alliance with filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky, who provided much-needed financial support to the defense.

"The lawyers let the cameras into the courtroom because HBO agreed to pay the expenses of the defense which the state of Arkansas refused to pay," says Mallett. "The result was to create a certain kind of circus atmosphere, which I think you can perceive by watching the first movie."

Sinofsky accepts Mallett's legal strategy, but believes that his film has had a positive impact. "If Joe and I hadn't made these films," says Sinofsky, "Damien would be dead already."

Echols says he's appreciative of the films and notes that he "probably would've been convicted anyway," without the involvement of the filmmakers. But he also states that HBO's presence "definitely impacted" the way his attorneys acted in the first trial. "I think it made them take things not quite so seriously as they should have," he says.

For the time being, Echols leads his life as best he can. He reads, meditates, takes college correspondence courses and tries to answer his voluminous mail -- sometimes up to 125 letters a day. Last December Echols was married in a Buddhist ceremony to a woman from New York who now lives in Little Rock and visits him once a week for a "contact" visit (just touching -- it's "contact," not "conjugal"). And this September he's scheduled to receive ordination from a Buddhist priest who's coming from a Japanese monastery to perform the ceremony.

"I only use the term Buddhist because it gives people a handhold," Echols says, explaining his dedication to Zen. "The thing I've learned is that it's all pretty much the same. It's like everyone's going to the same well, but coming away with different water."

As for the likelihood of his release, Echols remains philosophical. "I know I'll get out. This may sound kind of morbid, but I'm on death row. So at least I know that one way or another I will get out. Either I'll walk out or they'll carry me out. I kind of like that idea more than [sitting] in prison for 50, 60 or 70 years and never knowing what's going to happen tomorrow."

Recent Stories