How exactly have you calculated these odds against other conceivable explanations, such as Misskelley's recollection being distorted by thau drinking whiskey and smoking pot he mentioned in is confession, and also his reported habit of huffing gasoline?"
It is abundantly obvious that you are even newer, far newer, to the case than I am - or else that you have not bothered to look at the evidence as well as its interpretations on the pro and con sites.
The problem is NOT, I repeat NOT Jessie's "wrong recollections". The problem is suggestibility and, more importantly, how much information was actually supplied by Miskelley as opposed to the police (where his answer was simply "yes" to anything those authority figures supplied him. You may not believe "The Devil's Knot" - though the author proceeded from the assumption that the police might have real evidence against WM3 and through her investigations found out there was none. In the "Devil's Knot" Jessie describes his experience, inter alia his belief that the whole interrogation was a game where the interrogators knew they were lying and they also knew he was lying - and at the end of the game he would get home).
But if you do not believe this, is it TOO MUCH to ask you to look at a scientific analysis of the interrogation, based on what information Jessie gave himself and how much was supplied by the police (where he just agreed, since he considered this as part of the game where his role was to agree). The site is
http://www.jivepuppi.com/jivepuppi_slide_presentation_23.html, but the presentation is based on Dr Roger Shuy's article in the respected journal "Forensic Linguistics" - see the last slide. You will see that Jessie was supplied virtually ALL of the details by the interrogators and just agreed to them. The moment he volunteered anything on his own, he got things badly wrong. (I'll try to post the original article here, but I am afraid it is protected by copyright - the presentation, however, is sufficiently detailed).
False confessions are usually identified by the proportion of corroborated evidence the confessor supplies himself (or, as in this case, does not supply himself). (The same is true of, say, jailhouse snitches: if they really lead to a knife that nobody knows the whereabouts of, this would be corroborated testimony, if they just say what the prosecution has said all along, this is uncorroborated testimony - as in the case of Carson).
So in the case of Jessie, the absolute majority of details, and indeed any details of any significance, were supplied by the police. If you refuse to read the presentation, I'll supply the pertinent details in the next post. (I am also thoroughly prepared to discuss the other "confessions" of Miskelley. At the moment I can only say that I feel blessed that I have no acquaintances with the IQ of 70 - I have never committed any crime nor feel like committing one, and I am also, as a result of some research, determined to NEVER speak to the police without an attorney who really has my interests at heart present - but with this kind of acquaintance one is really helpless, particularly if the biased judge rules that their "confession" is totally admissible).
The analysis presented at the address I have supplied also speaks to a far larger point in such matters. Many people on both sides say they have read all the documents on, say, callahan. One cannot check this, of course, but if one wonders how people have read ALL of these (let us believe them) and come to radically different conclusions, there is actually an innocent explanation that does not imply that some people are lying. One can, indeed, actually read all the documents, but there is also the factor of CRITICAL READING that impacts the resulting conclusions. Jessie's "confession" is a perfect case in point. One can read it and register how many details Jessie "provides", without actually noticing that most of the details are provided by the police. This is not a condemnation of anybody - we are all prone to just registering the information without noticing who the actual source is. The same applies to the notorious Exhibit 500. There is an excellent analysis of this (by no means totally favorable to Echols, see
http://www.refugeesunleashed.net/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=14786&start=25 ). When one reads the analysis, one notices for the first time - at least this is true of me - not just the information but who the SOURCE of the information is. In the case of Exhibit 500 it is amazing what a huge proportion of the evidence can be just sourced to Jerry Driver and him alone. We get a so-called "statement" of Echols and do not notice that the actual and only source corroborating the statement is Jerry Drivers (and this goes on from statement to statement, just look at
http://www.refugeesunleashed.net/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=14786&start=25). So yes, we can read a document and draw different conclusions from it if we do not actually analyse and deconstruct the document.
I would actually like to end here. The rest is typical kyleb: he or she puts the onus of proving things on everybody else but himself, which is wholly unjustified (I am refraining from more forceful, and more adequate, adjectives here). I have already had one encounter with him/her and the utter uselessness of debating with a person who takes perjured testimony or testimony by pseudo-experts as gospel truth while demanding that everybody else provide detailed proof (affidavits - which are not actually legal proof - etc) beggars belief. So one has the following:
"I'm aware of the fact that no conclusive evidence of sodomy was found, but am at a loss as to how anyone could actually prove the sodomy Misskelley described never actually happened, let alone by whom and how you're suggesting this has been proven. If I've overlooked something in this regard, please elaborate".
So it is demanded that "we" "elaborate" on something "he/she" has overlooked. First off, he or she should find the things they have "overlooked" - the sources are plenty! In the particular case, the prosecutor's own forensic specialist - the one who was never accredited since he failed the requisite exams twice and then refused to take them any more - says that NO sodomy happened, of any kind, including the "kind" "described" by Miscelley, whatever that means - Jessie did not know what "groin" means and had to be asked if he knew what "penis" means (the only time when even the interrogators had to tacitly acknowledge that his IQ was not quite normal). Jessie Miskelley did not know who "Satin" was (he knew only the word "devil"), he did not know who Bill Clinton was (just elected President, from Arkansas), he did not understand that a "defense attorney" is not part of the police but is actually on his side, he did not understand what "groin" means - and I am not sure he actually understood what "penis" means, whatever he said to placate his interrogators - and the supporters are required to prove that "sodomy as described by Miskelley (sic!)" did NOT occur. The arrogance and preposterousness of that kind of demand just beggars belief! Jessie said "screw them and stuff" and the prosecutor's forensic medic said there was no screwing whatsoever, and we somehow have to prove that the screwing "as described by Jessie" did not occur. "If I have missed something, please elaborate" - yes, you have missed everything and nobody can elaborate everything! I am usually VERY cautious of using the word troll, but could anybody "prove" and "elaborate" what else we have to do with this person?
I have just run out of time and energy and indeed a sensible reason to undertake the rest of the points made by this poster. The only one I should like to address because it is not his alone - in fact it is the favorite
argument of the State (prosecution) - is the presence of funds provided by the so-called "celebrities". Now this is something that really makes my blood boil. It also indicates to me (though it does not "prove" anything and I have no affidavits to support it!) that the poster might be directly connected with the police-prosecution side of the case.
These defendants were INDIGENT for many years, before the "Paradise Lost" documentary brought attention to their case. Meaning that they had NO funds for conducting any forensic tests of their own, or hiring a detective, or hiring their own defense attorneys, or attracting any outside attention to their case. Now this kind of defendant is the dream of the prosecution - totally helpless and doomed to be forgotten. (I have NO affidavits or other proof but I would not be surprised if in many cases defendants would not be at least unconsciously selected on that criterion). They have absolutely no way of defending themselves. Their attorneys are court-appointed and often dine with the judge and the prosecutors. The attorneys' pay does not depend on how successful they are in defending the accused. In fact, it appears that the opposite is the case: Dan Sidham, who all of a sudden listened to his own conscience and the demands of decency and really understood that his client was innocent, had long delays in getting his remuneration, almost going bankrupt, and finally got 19 dollars per hour instead of 100 that was the rule. 19 dollars per hour - the wages of a cleaning woman - were decided by Judge Burnett - a horribly biased judge if there ever was one - and seen by Sidham quite justly as punishment for not towing the party line.
The only detective who worked pro bono for the case was Ron Lax, most experts turned them down (Ochse as a notable exception). These defendants were utterly expendable. So except for the "Paradise Lost" documentary, which was a total fluke and which started out with the film-makers believing they were making a film about satanic, depraved adolescents killing innocent children - a belief that the very trials belied - the defendants would have been forgotten, one of them executed - business as usual.
In other words, we have no OJ case here. We have the "usual" case (one wonders how many innocents are convicted in those "usual" cases, the Innocence Project touches only the tip of the iceberg). We have a case where the defendants were utterly helpless for quite a few years, and the State (represented both by the prosecution and the Judge, and, a peculiarity of Arkansas, also the forensic team) was fully satisfied. Innocence or guilt did not enter the picture, the important thing was to have people convicted for a crime that had sent the community into panic. It was only after the fluke of the documentary that support started to gather - do you wonder why Jason Baldwin now fights for cameras being put into every courtroom? And the end result was not "celebrities" paying for the release of WM3. The end result was simply getting the WM3 the treatment that the US, under its Constitution, owes to EVERY defendant, rich or poor. The "celebrities" did not bribe judges, they just provided money for DNA and forensic analyses that should have been the responsibility of the State to start with. Incidentally, when DNA testing started, the State promised to pay for half of it. In the end, they went back on their promise to the extent that they paid NOTHING at all - all money came from the defence. Since it went into millions, of course wealthy donors were needed. The analysis embraced a huge number of items, foreign DNA was found, DNA consistent with TH and DJ was found, but on the huge number of items no DNA of the defendants was found. While absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, in general, the absence of the DNA of ANY of the defendants on so many items where other DNA was found is very strong evidence in favor of factual innocence of the defendants.
Now all of this, or at least a great part of this, should, ideally, be available to all defendants, however indigent, and obviously to defendants with death penalty looming. In reality, it is not. Now THAT is a shame, not the fact that in this one case the tests were indeed conducted for a man on Death Row.
So excuse me but the argument that "celebrity support" got guilty men off is total BS. Actually, LACK of celebrity support gets innocent people life without parole or death penalty. That is the real shame.
