Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

The tale of the West Memphis 3 came to an end this past year, and Joe Berlinger's and Bruce Sinofsky's advocacy doc trilogy comes to an end, as well, and quite satisfyingly. Watching this third installment is quite painful, even with the mostly happy ending, because it cuts back and forth between the past and the present, showing us just how long these men spent in jail - literally over half their lives. It's particularly touching to see Damien Echols, the only one of the three who was sentenced to death (a sentence which was never off the table until he was freed), grow from an awkward, certainly skeevy-looking teenager to an intelligent, well-spoken adult. One has to wonder what he would have been like if none of this had ever happened. This doc has a lot to cover (you could probably get the gist of the whole series just by watching this one), and in a way it feels a tad unwieldy and perhaps unfocused. But it still does a great job. I sincerely hope the WM3 can now find some peace.

Watching makes one realize that if you are poor and accused of a crime the deck is very stacked against you. Hey Heather. These men got lucky to get the attention they did. If you are from Arkansas you will be embarrassed of the childish judicial system there....

Certainly an interesting documentary about the high-profile case of the West Memphis Three (Baldwin, Echols, Misskelley), convicted of killing three young boys in eastern Arkansas in 1993. The documentary takes the side of the defense, in saying the three teenagers (WM3) were railroaded through based on flimsy evidence. The verdict in 1994 was probably unjust, given the general absence of forensic evidence at the time. More recently, DNA evidence shows no DNA connection between the three teenagers and the three young victims. On the other hand, the program excludes some of the prosecution's case, which shows blatant bias on the part of the program's producers.

In contrast, bias appears much more pronounced in the legal system in 1993, and included police coercion, sloppy police work, and obvious jury misconduct, among other problems. The small town of West Memphis was overwhelmed with emotional hysteria of family and neighbors, all wanting revenge for the killings. The police were out to convict the easiest target, and the prosecutor wanted a quick win, and was facilitated by a judge who was anything but unbiased. No DNA testing was available back then.

At one point in the program, Misskelley says he was at a Dyess, Arkansas wrestling match at the time of the murders. So how is it that the prosecutor was able to convince a jury that Misskelley was guilty? Instead of answering the alibi question, the program proceeds down a different investigative avenue.

That is one glaring problem in a program that overall does not flow well. It jerks back and forth between people and time periods. There are so many people involved in this case, it's hard to keep track of names and faces. I also didn't like the inclusion of Hollywood celebrities who, despite their lack of involvement in the original trials, think they can determine the three guys' innocence via superficial arguments and secondary sources, which reeks of celebrity arrogance.

Despite the documentary's biased point of view in favor of the WM3, and despite how the program is put together, it is worth watching. By inference, it shows how the jury system is rigged against a defendant in a murder trial. In the future, one would hope that juries will be outlawed, and replaced by forensic evidence only, correctly obtained and tested, that proves innocence or guilt. Having hysterical people render life and death decisions based on the games lawyers play is truly frightening.

By the end of this series of films by Joe Berlinger and (sadly the late) Bruce Sinofsky, we have gone through a long journey full of missed (or more accurately botched) opportunities by the Arkansas legal system on multiple fronts to find the three men (at the time teenagers) innocent. And it's hard to argue that they were, despite what comes out at the end, but I'll come to that in a moment. There's still Metallica on the soundtrack, though I wonder if 'Bittersweet Symphony' would have been too on the nose.

Part three is mostly set ten to eleven years after the events of the second 'Paradise Lost' movie, and a lot has changed in the years since the new millennium came around and things like new statutes in the state and new evidence peaks its head into existence (and better legal defenses for the three as well). But there are many surprises; the greatest and most unexpected one is a complete 180 from how one saw John Mark Byers. It may speak to the potential for the filmmakers being manipulative, going from positing him as a villain to something of a redeemed person, but it seems a little more complex than that. One may forget watching this film (it isn't mentioned directly) that at the end of part 2 Byers was off to prison.

Maybe that changed him. Or just ten years and that monumental press conference with the host of legal experts - one from the FBI and one involved in the Ted Bundy case - can change a person's mind. But one of the things that's so absorbing this time around is how Byers, previously a Character with a capital C (one may or may not think watching part 2 he'd be capable of the crimes, it's left up in the air almost by how forceful he was in it), uses his knack for being outspoken for the side of the innocent, which he believes now they are (the dead wife is not mentioned, but that's another story altogether).

If there's one small criticism of the film is that there's a lot of footage from the past two films, with the first one shown from the original negatives (hence why they look so scratchy). But I think it's a necessary narrative angle since by this point there may be people coming to this documentary who may have not seen the other films in a while (or, presumably given the nature of channel-flipping TV and ADD) to bring things up and make it a complete narrative. I actually appreciated the use of footage here more than in part 2, and it helped to make a point-counter-point method for the first half of the film; so much time has passed, after all, that the new experts and lawyers and people of that nature could comment on this or that that was presented before, from the alleged occult symbols (basically debunked here as BS) or, most of all, the lack of DNA.

There's so much that comes down in this film that if one comes away at the end and still thinks Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley killed all three of the boys in 1993 then, well, at the least there's little room for any reasonable doubt in your mind based on ALL of the evidence (and as the chapter heading goes here, All is All). But perhaps the thing that will make me revisit this film over time is the fact that the potential - actual - killer comes up as a *different* father, Terry Hobbs, and while on the surface seeming to be less of a Force of Nature like Mark, he's actually an even more fascinating person to just stare at. Which, by the way, you get a lot of time for; via deposition videos, the audience basically gets to see up front what this guy is all about as far as his actual character. I really loved how the filmmakers didn't have to dig too deep to find moments that revealed this person in a whole new light than one saw in part 1; indeed I want to revisit that first part almost immediately to see if any of the signs were there (those little smirks, the bullish expressions) and if they were hard to miss.

Ultimately the West Memphis 3 were freed, but it was based in layman's terms on the justice system saying 'eh, get the hell out of here.' The Alford Plea let the men out, all now in their 30's, but the catch is that they can say they're innocent but plead guilty. One of the things that makes the form of documentary filmmaking so unpredictable and so vital and, in moments like these, so highly charged that it would be difficult to possibly take as a drama, are the turns a story could take. And yet in the Paradise Lost series, all the way through the end of this saga, there's this sense that the entire Justice system, from the police to the prosecutors (probably they come off not quite AS bad as everyone else, but close enough), to the jurors (or that one juror for sure) to the unmovable judge himself, it's all set up to say 'we are right, and you are wrong.'

There are incredible and serious implications and questions that are raised due to what can be read very easily in this story, and a lot of it has to do with class (would these men have been put away if they came from families outside of trailer parks and low-incomes) and status (the 'black-Satan-occult BS). It's a sobering, harrowing, tragic story, and it's all told by these directors with clarity and focus and urgency.

The filmmakers return to update the case of the West Memphis Three. In 1993, three boys Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers were murdered in the woods. In 1994, three older boys Damien Wayne Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley were convicted for those crimes. The first half of this movie basically recaps the first two documentaries. John Mark Byers, stepfather of Christopher Byers, makes peace with Echols and is now convinced of their innocence. In turn, Echols apologizes for accusing John. For me, the most damning is the accusation against the jury foreman Kent Arnold. There is new DNA evidence against Terry Hobbs, Steve Branch's stepfather, but it's not that convincing for me. The Three is able to win a legal victory and after their judge moved on as a State Senator, the guys finally accepted an Alford plea essentially guilty but maintaining their innocence.

Is this justice? It's hard to say. The most obvious problem for the justice system and this movie as a drama is that nobody is in prison for the boys' murders. For a documentary, that's always the limitation. The real world doesn't always have a neat happy ending. They are able to point the finger at Terry Hobbs but the second movie pointed the finger at Byers. There is nothing done against the various people who did harm against justice in this case. It is able to wrap up the odyssey of the West Memphis Three but justice for the murders may never be done.