In a recent appearance before a local Lions Club in his campaign for a judgeship on the Arkansas Supreme Court, former West Memphis 3 prosecutor and circuit court judge John Fogleman dismissed new DNA evidence found at the crime scene of the three murdered children.
According to Fogleman, “They found a hair that belonged to a stepfather of one of the boys and another hair belonging to a friend of that stepfather. But, what is really unusual about finding a hair from a stepfather on his stepson? … And you know, for 15 years the defense said it was stepfather ‘A’. And the hair is from stepfather ‘B’. Hairs are meaningless. A hair from a step-dad on a stepson shouldn’t be unexpected.”
Judge John Fogleman does not have his facts correct and his comments belie his suitability for a judgeship on the Arkansas Supreme Court. He is discussing a case in which a man is on death row and two others are imprisoned for life for crimes they did not commit.
DNA consistent with that of Terry Hobbs was found at the crime scene of the murders of Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. A hair that matched his DNA was discovered in the ligature that bound young victim Michael Moore, not on his own stepson, Steve Branch, as Judge Fogleman publicly declared.
Sworn affidavits provided to the Arkansas Supreme Court by three eyewitnesses state that Terry Hobbs was last seen with the three boys immediately before they disappeared and were murdered. The eyewitnesses also state that the police did not interview them at the time of the murders although they lived three doors down from Terry and Pam Hobbs, and that there was hardly any police presence in the area and little if any investigation.
Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley had strong alibis for their whereabouts the evening of the murders. They did not know the three children, never were seen with them, did not live near them or have any connection whatsoever to their families. Their DNA was not at the crime scene. A knife was not used to kill the three boys according to the country’s leading forensic pathologists, and most of the wounds on their bodies were postmortem animal bites, completely contradicting the prosecution’s own theory of the causes of death.
“This was a difficult case,” Fogleman said. “But it was investigated thoroughly. Many people were looked at in this case. But I will say, every piece of evidence we had pointed to those three.”
“Investigated thoroughly”? “Evidence”? The only thorough investigation related to the West Memphis Three case has been the investigation of the failures of the police who investigated the murders, the prosecutors who prosecuted it, and the judge and juries whose bad decisions and misconduct led to the conviction of three innocent teenagers 16 years ago.
There is plenty of evidence of their innocence and only speculation about their guilt. Anyone who is interested in the facts should read Mara Leveritt’s meticulously researched book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three and Dr. Martin D. Hill’s careful and evenhanded analysis of all the evidence on his website www.jivepuppi.com. And if you want to judge for yourself just how “thorough” the police investigation was and how much “evidence” they gathered against Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, you can go to www.callahan.8k.com for a wealth of primary documents–police notes, trial transcripts, crime lab reports, etc. I trust that anyone who knows the facts will recognize that Fogleman was, and remains, dead wrong about the case and is not someone we can trust to guard our rights on the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Lonnie Soury, Arkansas Take Action