On False Testimony (and other incriminating statements)

[reedus23]

One thing that strikes me about this case is the sheer (and alarming) number of statements that were taken by seriously by police, used to obtain warrants, used as a basis for arrest, and presented in court -- and which are either patently ludicrous, clearly conflicting or have been recanted by the person making the statement.

As I go about, reading and re-reading the various accounts, the various statements recanting former statements, etc... I can't help but see a terribly flawed body of 'evidence'. So terribly flawed, that I am very surprised any of it is still considered to be evidence. Of ANYthing.

If it was just one person recanting, or one conflicting statement, well, that's one thing. But of, LOOK at how MUCH of the statement evidence is faulty, or plain false.

The softball girls, the Hutchesons, Michael Carson... people who were critical to the WM3's arrests and convictions .. they do not hold water. Or have recanted. This kicks the wheels out from under a LOT of arguments for guilt.

I have a busy-busy day today, but I intend to look at this quite thoroughly, including a look at WHY people make false statements.

There were many problems with how the WMPD handled matters, but to me, one of the problems was that they were dealing with so many child witnesses but didn't treat them as children. They took these kids' stories at face value more times than not. It is difficult when dealing with kids or questioning them. There are so many dynamics at play, from fear to fantasy, but it almost seems as if they treated them just as any other witness.

 

[reedus23]

Some only see black and white. They don't see nuances. It makes discussing anything with them near impossible so I wouldn't even worry. I appreciate the discussion.

I will point out again, dealing with kids. Testimony from kids can be extremely tricky to handle and deal with. And no, I'm not saying it can't be used. You just have to handle it differently.

Personally, I wouldn't be shocked if Damien said something and I don't doubt that one or more of the girls heard something but I doubt they heard the entire conversation or the context it was in or exactly what words were used.

 

[reedus23]

Or perhaps they lied when recanting true testimony.

Or perhaps you should just disregard everything they have said because you don't know which is true and which is false.

 

[kyleb]

I've no intrest in engaging in such inanity.

 

[primitivefuture]

Or perhaps you should just disregard everything they have said because you don't know which is true and which is false.

Joyce Cureton oversaw the Juvenile Detention Center in Jonesboro, where Baldwin was held before and during his trial. Before trial, defense attorneys contacted her, hoping her testimony would help discredit one of the prosecution's star witnesses - a juvenile inmate, Michael Carson... Cureton also could have authenticated records showing that Carson and Baldwin appeared to have been alone together on only one occasion....

In her affidavit, Cureton said: "The then-sheriff, Larry Emison, instructed me to get out of Craighead County immediately. He told me I better not be in court." Cureton says she obeyed, leaving for Newport with her husband.
"I regretted leaving town to avoid testifying at Jason's sentencing," she added. "I would not have left if the sheriff had not instructed me to do so."

From the 2008 article, "Retrial sought in '94 slayings" written by Cathy Frye.

http://rugsville.yuku.com/topic/433/Arkansas-DemocratGazette

I couldn't link to the article through the Democrat Gazette since you have to pay to view it through their website.


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[Ausgirl]

^ Cureton's comments lend a bit of weight to Vicki Hutcheson's claims that she lied because she was afraid of what the police would do, if she didn't:



Hutcheson told Cazort her story, and said she wanted to do what she could to free three innocent boys from prison. Cazort asked Hutcheson if she wanted to go public with her story, and she replied that she did.

"Jerry Driver planted those boys … And I guess I implicated Jessie, because I said I know Jessie and Jessie knows Damien ...

"I guess I'm the whole reason Jessie is locked up. And that makes me very, very - I can't tell you what it does to me.

"And that's why I'm doing this now. I have to clear my conscience not just for me but for God. And I can't live like this anymore, with this on my shoulders.

"I know what I did was wrong, and I should have stood up to the police and done what was right no matter what.

"They had me so scared, and I seen what they were doing.

"I seen 'em set up three boys for murder, and not just one murder but three. And getting by with it.

"And who was I? They were going to put me right in the middle of it.

"I was scared. I mean I was scared to death."

http://www.wm3blackboard.com/forum/index.php?topic=4.0;wap2

The amount of railroading done, the witnesses threatened, the lack of investigation of better suspects, the slipshod handling of evidence, the coersion of Jessie Misskelley, the way BS was used to get warrants, on and ON, the wrongs attributed to those investigating this case are terrifying when viewed as a whole.

Is this normal, for Arkansas? Is this behaviour uncommon?

 

[primitivefuture]

^ Cureton's comments lend a bit of weight to Vicki Hutcheson's claims that she lied because she was afraid of what the police would do, if she didn't:



Hutcheson told Cazort her story, and said she wanted to do what she could to free three innocent boys from prison. Cazort asked Hutcheson if she wanted to go public with her story, and she replied that she did.

"Jerry Driver planted those boys … And I guess I implicated Jessie, because I said I know Jessie and Jessie knows Damien ...

"I guess I'm the whole reason Jessie is locked up. And that makes me very, very - I can't tell you what it does to me.

"And that's why I'm doing this now. I have to clear my conscience not just for me but for God. And I can't live like this anymore, with this on my shoulders.

"I know what I did was wrong, and I should have stood up to the police and done what was right no matter what.

"They had me so scared, and I seen what they were doing.

"I seen 'em set up three boys for murder, and not just one murder but three. And getting by with it.

"And who was I? They were going to put me right in the middle of it.

"I was scared. I mean I was scared to death."

http://www.wm3blackboard.com/forum/index.php?topic=4.0;wap2

The amount of railroading done, the witnesses threatened, the lack of investigation of better suspects, the slipshod handling of evidence, the coersion of Jessie Misskelley, the way BS was used to get warrants, on and ON, the wrongs attributed to those investigating this case are terrifying when viewed as a whole.

Is this normal, for Arkansas? Is this behaviour uncommon?

There is another Cathy Frye article, "Baldwin lawyers fire salvo of papers" available in the same link I posted earlier. That article is a summary of allegations of the state withholding evidence with regard to Jason Baldwin. I think you'd be interested in it if you haven't already read it.


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[Ausgirl]

Thank you, PF.

Just adding here that I wouldn't trust Hutcheson to tell me whether it was day or night, but all the same she isn't the only one saying pressure was on them to play ball.

Sometimes I feel like this crime is hardly about those three little boys at all. Not here, because it's WS and people do care here. I mean, all the rest, all the political BS on every level. From day one, probably.

 

[kyleb]

From the 2008 article, "Retrial sought in '94 slayings" written by Cathy Frye.

Cureton also could have authenticated records showing that Carson and Baldwin appeared to have been alone together on only one occasion....

http://rugsville.yuku.com/topic/433/Arkansas-DemocratGazette

Cureton's faith in her staff's record keeping was belied by her own rule 37 testimony where she revealed under cross examination:

There was an occasion on which one juvenile had been discovered to have committed suicide, but the juvenile’s death had not been ascertained before several hours had passed. So there were times when things happened that the staff did not monitor.

Also, the notion that she was run out of town by the Sheriff so she couldn't testify at trial is obviously false, as in her Rule 37 testimony she said "I was outside of court when Michael Carson testified." The reality of the situation was also revealed under cross examination where she said "It was the Sheriff who asked me to leave the county after Paul Ford had asked me to be available to testify at the sentencing hearing" which of course was after Baldwin was already convinced, and it only makes sense for a Sheriff to not want his bedazzled employ trying to help win a lighter sentience for a convicted child murderer.

Just adding here that I wouldn't trust Hutcheson to tell me whether it was day or night, but all the same she isn't the only one saying pressure was on them to play ball.

Hutcheson's story of being coerced into fabricating her testimony doesn't hold any water in light of the fact that Misskelley's lawyer Greg Crow preempted her testimony by saying "I anticipate she’s going to testify that she saw him at some alleged cult meeting after the murders", which he'd have no means of knowing if it wasn't true.

 

[Ausgirl]

Hutcheson's story of being coerced into fabricating her testimony doesn't hold any water in light of the fact that Misskelley's lawyer Dan Crow preempted her testimony by saying "I anticipate she’s going to testify that she saw him at some alleged cult meeting after the murders". which he'd have no means of knowing if it wasn't true.

I think it's a pretty easy bit of guesswork, myself.

 

[kyleb]

Care to elaborate on how you figure it would've been easy to guess what Hutcheson actually wound up testifying to rather than perhaps: claiming she attested an esbat with Misskelley and Echols before the murders, or one with Baldwin there too, or that she saw the three walking into the woods together on the day of the murders, or that Misskelley confessed to her?

 

[Ausgirl]

Care to elaborate

Nope.

 

[kyleb]

Well the obvious explanation is that Crow didn't have to guess, because Miskelley told him what Hutcheson had seen, and that also explains why Crow went on to argue:

If she wants to testify that she saw him with Damien, that’s fine, but all this cult stuff - - I don’t think there’s been a proper foundation laid for it. It is prejudicial and we would strongly object.

And later elaborated:

the prejudicial effect of this type of testimony in front of your average American juror is obvious. Very few members of American society are anything but Judeo-Christian ethic.

Which of course is a reasonable argument in general terms, but not when the situation was as Davis described:

in their entire cross examination of the officers yesterday they kept asking, “Do you have any evidence that Jessie was involved in cult activity? What evidence do you have?”

So the defense made Hutcheson's testimony relevant by denying the cult activity and went on to corroborate it by accurately predicting what she'd say.

 

[reedus23]

Well the obvious explanation is that Crow didn't have to guess, because Miskelley told him what Hutcheson had seen,

Link?

So the defense made Hutcheson's testimony relevant by denying the cult activity and went on to corroborate it by accurately predicting what she'd say.

That is about as much of a stretch as I've seen. And that's saying something.

 

[primitivefuture]

Michael Carson - also admitted it was false.

It seemed obvious from the beginning that he was lying. His own father's first instinct was to ask him if he would take a lie detector test. And then his story about what Jason told him changed between his first and second interviews. Then there's the Danny Williams letter. And now he has recanted.


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[Ausgirl]

The amount of desperate BS used to convict the 3 astounds me. I think the whole Hutcheson debacle says a LOT about the quality of police work that went into this case, personally. Which is a pity, for many reasons including that no-one is now in prison for these murders, and no-one is keen on investigating the crime, so... what? too bad, so sad? I am sure if they went about re-interviewing some of the "alibis" of other suspects all these years later, they might get some different answers. But that is not going to happen.. so we'll never know.

What a farce. I am disgusted by the lot of it.

For all I know, Echols et al MAY indeed be guilty. The fact they're out because of crappy police and prosecution work doesn't mean 'innocent' in my eyes. It just means they should never have been brought to trial in the first place, without a solid, properly conducted case against them.

The worst part is that I also think there's every chance a proper investigation may well have brought somebody else to the stand.

But -- we'll never know. Good one, Arkansas.

 

[primitivefuture]

The amount of desperate BS used to convict the 3 astounds me. I think the whole Hutcheson debacle says a LOT about the quality of police work that went into this case, personally.

Agreed. It's maddening.

"They put the recorder under the bed," she says. "It was a fancy one with several reels of tape so that one would begin when the other was filled."

Police suggested she tell Damien she was interested in becoming a witch, and that she check out books on witchcraft from the library to leave in prominent places in the trailer. (She didn't have a library card, so one of the detectives lent her his.)

Hutcheson turned the recorder on when Damien showed up a few days later. Hutcheson says he just laughed when she said she wanted to become a witch.

She told him she had heard that he liked to suck blood. Damien said he encouraged such stories as a "mechanism" to keep people from prying into his life.

"What's a mechanism?" she asked. She says Damien replied, "It means leave me the **** alone."

Damien never said anything incriminating during the conversation, Hutcheson says.

The police retrieved the tapes the next morning, and asked her the following day to come to the police station to listen to portions of them.

"They would play parts of the tape and then stop it and ask me a question like, " 'Well what did he mean by that?' "

She said West Memphis Det. Bryn Ridge changed the tapes while Gary Gitchell, the department's chief detective, asked the questions.

"The quality of the tape was excellent," says Hutcheson. "You could hear Jessie, you could hear me, you could hear my roommate Christy. You could hear Damien excellent because he was sitting right next to the lamp."

But, according to the West Memphis police, the tape was of such poor quality it was not usable. Later, the police said they lost the tape.

http://m.arktimes.com/arkansas/complete-fabrication/Content?oid=1886107


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[kyleb]

So, can anyone provide an explanation for how Crow could've accurately predicted Hutcheson's testimony without Misskelley telling him what she saw?

 

[Ausgirl]

Yeah, I already did, kyle.

You just didn't like the answer I gave.

 

[kyleb]

The issue is you've provided absolutely no reasoning to support the notion that Crow could've guessed the details of Hutcheson's testimony with such accuracy.