Silkprint,
You can read the actual trial transcripts and pretrial hearing transcripts at
http://callahan.8k.com/. Please be sure to read the pretrial hearing transcripts as they show the State leanings of the trial judge. However, IMO reading trial transcripts only gives a partial picture of this case.
There are many discussion boards on the Internet about the case. My favorite "supporter" board (where the posters believe that the three young men in prison are innocent) is
http://www.wm3blackboard.com. There are "non supporter" boards out there, too. The most well known of those is
http://wm3hoax.downonthefarm.org/board/index.php.
The next "event" in this saga is the upcoming evidentiary hearing ordered by the Arkansas State Supreme Court back in November, 2010. At that time, the ASSC determined (unanimously, I might add) that Judge Burnett, the original trial judge and the judge who had up until then denied all appeals, was in error when he failed to grant an evidentiary hearing because new testing of some of the biological material revealed that none of the convicted were the contributors. One of the stepfathers, Terry Hobbs, was a 97.5% (some sources say 98.5%) mtDNA match to a hair found in (or under) the ligature of one of the victims. Another hair was a 93% mtDNA match to Hobbs' friend, David Jacoby, with whom, according to Jacoby, he was playing guitars the afternoon when the boys went missing. Judge Burnett will not preside at this hearing as he parlayed his association with this case into a State Senate seat and cannot therefore perform as a judge any more.
The hearing begins on December 5, 2011, but no electronic media will be allowed in the courtroom. However, I know that the blackboard site I mentioned earlier will give daily updates from people in the courtroom. Mara Leveritt, the author of a well-researched book on the case,
Devil's Knot, will probably also be updating the public via her website.
There have been several books written on the case and many television specials have aired about it also. The most recent television special was the Aphrodite Jones
True Crime series on the ID channel. It may still be showing from time to time. It hasn't been posted on the Internet as of yet.
What brought this case to prominence was an HBO documentary aired first back in 1996,
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robinhood Hills. The filmmakers originally went to film the trial because the prosecution's case revolved around cult killings. However, during the filming and as the trials reached their conclusions and all three teens were found guilty, the filmmakers realized that a terrible miscarriage of justice had occurred. They almost didn't get permission from HBO to complete the project as it had done a complete 180. There was a follow up documentary,
Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, that originally aired, I believe in 1998, and
Paradise 3 is now in the works as is Ms. Leveritt's sequel book.
As you can tell, there is a plethora of information available about this trial. Those of us who are supporters have every hope that the upcoming hearing will be the beginning of the end to the nightmare for the three falsely imprisoned men, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley and will finally bring justice for the three victims, Christopher Byers, Stephen Branch and Michael Moore.
I have followed this case for years - at least since 1996. I am, as I stated before, a supporter of the innocence of the three young men in prison. I will be happy to answer any questions you have, but I will necessarily answer them as a supporter of the innocence of the WM3. Also, I do encourage you to visit the blackboard site previously mentioned. We discuss all aspects of the case there. Christopher's father, Mark Byers, is one of the administrators of the site and posts there occasionally as do several members of Pam Hicks Hobbs' (the mother of Stephen Branch) family.
ETA: There were originally two trials. Jessie Misskelley was tried separately and Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were tried together. Jessie, who has an IQ of 72 making him borderline retarded and very suggestible and easily manipulated, gave a statement to the police implicating himself and the other two. However, many people believe it to be a false confession. He had no attorney present; he was in custody for over 12 hours before he was finally arrested; his initial statement was so full of errors that it had to be "corrected" before a judge would issue a warrant for his arrest. He refused to testify against the other two defendants at their trial and has maintained his innocence since February 17, 1994. Right after his conviction, on the way to prison, he made another statement about the case, and an incident report about it was filed and is available on the Callahan's site. Then, after the prosecution had been harassing him about testifying against the other two for a while, on February 17, 1994, he made another statement, commonly called the "Second Confession." However, if you read the entire document on Callahan's, you will see that Jessie exhibited an antagonistic attitude toward his own attorneys. This leads me to believe that the prosecution had managed to convince him that his own attorneys were not acting in his best interest. After making this statement, he talked to his father who told him to tell the truth. He then refused to testify at the Echols/Baldwin trial and has maintained his innocence since then.
