Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011)

Excellent use of first person video archives to bring the viewer up to date regarding the crime, it's casualties, and developments. Smashing use of new video interviews, study of involvement and final results of the entire episode surrounding the three accused in this criminal case. The documentary is well put together. Video and sound are excellent.

This is a true historical document that shows a "Crime in America" from start to bitter end. My twenty six year as a law enforcement officer of which twenty were as a death investigator give me a unique opinion of case facts.

It was a genuinely interesting experience for me to look at this documentary from an outside perspective using no real explored physical evidence or deduction.

It intrigued me to follow the case through media coverage, photographic and video graphic statements, as well as personal thoughts, assumptions, and fabrications. This was absolutely what could be expected for the information available to the general public. I have never had to look at information in this manner of privacy and what is available for the average citizen.

Never has a documentary possessed a title of incorruptible, divine accuracy. We've reached a point in time where the West Memphis Three case was in limbo, or purgatory if you will. There was nothing to really say, and making another documentary would inevitably recap what we already know. The case wasn't moving very fast at all, and the numerous appeals requested by the three were never met by Judge Burnett.

The murders of three second graders, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, in May 1993 was horrific and shocked the entire quiet community of West Memphis, Arkansas. It was proved that belief in Satanism was occurring, and the town was hellbent and frustrated to find the heartless brutes responsible for such a heinous, unforgivable crime. Jessie Misskelley Jr. was arrested and interrogated for over twelve hours with no parent or attorney present in the room. Possessing an IQ of only 72 made it very clear that the response we were going to get would be shaky and murky. Only the last forty-five minutes or so were recorded on tape and went on long enough to show Misskelley had contradicted himself on when the murders took place.

During the confession, Misskelley claimed to be involved with Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, two other West Memphis teenagers. Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley were all arrested, tried, and sentenced to life in prison and Echols was placed on death row. However, years after their conviction new evidence came forth - bite marks on one of the victim's heads. The three took bite impressions, none of them matching the bite marks on the boy's forehead.

After being denied numerous appeals in the state of Tennessee, the men finally applied for a hearing with the new evidence in the Arkansas Supreme Court. A new hearing would be set for December 2011. Though unexpectedly, in August 2011, the prosecutors and the defense lawyers negotiated a plea that would let the men be released from prison if they pleaded guilty but could maintain their innocence. They accept and now are free on the streets after serving 18 years and 78 days.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory spends about forty-five minutes recapping the events that occurred in the first two documentaries, then works around the details developed in present day. We get well conducted interviews with all three men again, and we see how greatly their personalities and attitudes have changed towards the world around them. Jason Baldwin, who didn't speak all that much in the first two films, says some of the most compelling lines in Purgatory. One of them being "Our trial was guilty until proved innocent." Just sends a shiver up your spine.

I've been saying all along that the trial of the three boys seemed to act more on impulse and personality traits of the boys rather than hardcore, indisputable evidence from the crime scene.In Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, the film danced around the fact that Christopher Byers' stepfather, John Mark Byers, might've had something to do with the murders. He is eerie in appearance, outspoken, and very suspicious on camera. Not to mention, he changes his story multiple times on his whereabouts and his false teeth during the time of the murders.

To make a dirty sea even gloomier, Purgatory offers another option that Terry Hobbs, Stevie Branch's stepfather, could've be involved in the murders. His hair was found on one of the shoestrings used to hogtie one of the boys up, and his story, like Byers', changes drastically throughout the film. It's shocking, scary, and sometimes seemingly incorruptible in presentation.

The more I watched of each film the more I grew sympathetic and fond of the three accused. They seem like intelligent people stuck in a merciless and unfair situation. Echols, my favorite of the three, is intelligent yet eclectic - a good trait in many adolescents. Sadly, it got him in a boatload of trouble. More trouble than one could possibly imagine.

This marks the possible end to what could very well be some of the greatest, deepest, most personal and up close documentaries ever captured on film. Paradise Lost isn't only focusing on a largely unfair case, but it is showing the dangers and horrors of a biased system during a serious trial. Not to mention, when finally released they are still baring an essence of guilt. That is not right. Justice did not prevail for these poor kids. They're free, sure, but are they fully innocent? That's another question.

Starring: Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Jason Baldwin. Directed by: Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky.

There are some pretty eyeopening realizations raised by this case of the Memphis Three but for me these are poignantly tucked away in the first film. That one really was a searing depiction of ignorance and delusion worthy of Herzog, in large part because it was unfolding 'now' in some backwoods court that was deciding the lives of kids.

This has an altogether different aim. It presses a case that had by then garnered wide traction, attempts some investigative journalism about who really did it and offers a summation of a fight that was justly won, however late for these people. It was the third film at this point, everyone by now looks more accustomed to the presence of the camera, more self-conscious about us being there to see. It has closure and a moral.

So it doesn't feel like we are catching ignorance unawares and seeing it as it mangles lives. I see instead an article about how terrible it is. I'm glad that it documents what it does of course, dismayed at the redneck judge who is now in the state senate, but that's it.

A powerful, if frustrating, conclusion to the Paradise Lost films which chronicle the extremely questionable conviction of 3 high school aged young men for the horrible murder of three little boys. Despite the fact that the case against the three was absurdly weak, seeming to be based as much on the idea that they acted 'strange', or listened to heavy metal music as in any hard evidence (the strongest 'evidence' being a recanted confession given by one of the young men with an IQ of 72, who was questioned without council for 12 hours, and with no recording or transcripts of what went on in the first 11 hours. And even then, the confession was full of factual mistakes).

This third film picks up with the men having been in prison for 15 years, and finally moving towards possible exoneration under pressure on the Arkansas justice system from across the country and even the world. Mostly the film focuses on the uncovering of yet another possible 'real' killer (although the 2nd film also did so and pointed convincingly at the wrong man, showing just how hard it is to ever fully know the truth). It also shows the lengths to which those involved in the first trial, especially the judge, put their own reputation and their inability to admit error, or even questions, above a search for true justice.

The film has it's flaws; it spends a lot of time re-capping the story, and never seems to acknowledge how confusing the issue of guilt is, as the 2nd film showed in seeming to point at the wrong man for being 'weird', just as the trial did with the 3. Also the dramatic conclusion feels tacked on and incomplete – not the fault of the filmmakers, as much as of timing. The film was essentially done when the directors had to race to Memphis to film a climax that ended up more like an epilogue than it should.

But this is an important document of just how easily the legal system can fail when prejudice and self-interest come into play – as they will continue to do as long as we are human and frail creatures.

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.