Jefe's House

[repost from indiewire.com]

by Dana Harris

The West Memphis Three—Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelly—are free men today.

With the promise of a new trial in December, a representative for the state of Arkansas said it would be “practically impossible to put on a new case after 18 years. The sentences would be different and appeals would ensure.” He said he feared that a trial could result in the WM3 suing the state.

He said the defendants could very easily been acquitted in a new trial and added, “I believe this case is closed.”

The terms of the case allow the judgments to stand while allowing the defendants to maintain their innocence. “This is a right decision on behalf of the state, and I stand by it.”

Echols received a death sentence, with Baldwin and Misskelly receiving life sentences for their supposed roles in the deaths of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, who were found murdered and mutilated in a wooded area in West Memphis, Ark. in May 1993. At the time of their arrests, Misskelley was 17, Baldwin was 16 and Echols was 18. All three have maintained that they did not commit the murders.

In court today to witness the proceedings were Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, directors of the “Paradise Lost” documentaries that chronicled the fight to prove their innocence for nearly two decades, as was longtime supporter and Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder.   CONT’D AT INDIEWIRE>>

That’s it. I am literally never going to listen to the radio, watch TV or read news stories on the Internet ever again. Literally. I am literally going to gouge out my eyeballs with a ballpoint pen.  Literally.

NBC Dateline segment Follow the Money, 5/2/10 (rerun, originally aired Nov. 2009):

SGT. JAMES PEREZ OF FAIRFIELD, CT:  She’s so close. She could almost see the money. She can smell it, she can taste it in her bank account.

CHRIS HANSEN: The scammers managed to get Shireen to be emotionally invested here.

SGT. PEREZ: Right. They’re literally pulling the puppet strings.

No, Sergeant, the Nigerian email scammers are figuratively pulling the puppet strings, that’s your point. They did not literally have strings tied around Shireen’s joints controlling her arm, leg and head movements.

Next up, NPR’s All Things Considered segment on the government’s Minerals Management Agency (5/11/10), which sells leases for oil and gas production. 

For the exploding Gulf rig the agency gave BP a Categorical Exclusion, “which means there is no public review, no scientific analysis, no discussion of alternatives…it’s literally a rubber stamp process,” said Bill Snapes, Chief Counsel for Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

No, Bill, it’s figuratively a rubber stamp process, that’s your point. I don’t think the MMA literally inked CATEGORICAL EXCLUSION – APPROVED onto a series of BP’s mimeographed  lease documents with a big rubber stamp.

And lastly, this AP story about “Crude” documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger being ordered to hand over footage regarding a long-running legal case against Chevron in Equador (5/7/10):

Chevron lawyer Randy Mastro…said it was not a case about the First Amendment. “It’s a case about a lawyer who decided he wanted to star in a movie,” he said. “It is literally candid camera.”

No, Randy, it’s figuratively Candid Camera, that’s your point.  Was the lawyer in the documentary shown shooting a TV show hosted by a Funt and featuring actors pulling good-natured practical jokes on unsuspecting dupes?  No, Randy, he wasn’t.

[pictures via amazon.com, sentinelprint.com and seattleweekly.com]