Book Club...Tuesday? Life After Death by Damien Echols

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know that I have been a longtime supporter of the West Memphis Three. When I heard that Damien Echols was releasing a book, I was immediately interested, and picked it up as soon as I could. I finished it this morning, and walked away from it with the following thoughts. The book itself is called Life After Death, and it was released on September 18th.

The writing was phenomenal. Damien, who after seventeen years behind bars was released last August, has a definite way with words - especially for someone so soft spoken. It was wonderful to read about his childhood, though the story itself was a sad one. Most of the book was the story of his life leading up to his arrest - it was not a 'woe is me' pity party like some might expect it to be. In fact, I enjoyed not reading the ins and outs of the case all over again. It was refreshing to hear - or read - Damien be so blatantly honest about his life leading up to his arrest. This was not my first time reading Damien's words - his first book, Almost Home, was something I remember finding on eBay or a site of the like, and something I read cover to cover in one sitting.

If you are expecting a salacious memoir about seventeen years in prison, look elsewhere. The book is more a sequel to Almost Home than anything - the story of a man somewhat broken by prison life, but not broken to the point that he gave up.

For years, I have constantly felt a connection to not only Damien, but the West Memphis Three situation as a whole. As I wrote in this post a couple of days after their release, it is a situation that still brings me to tears to this day.

To see Damien out in the world and being as successful as he is is wonderful. I feel incredibly proud to be a supporter of the West Memphis Three, and could not be happier that he can enjoy the things he outlines so well in the book - winter, life with his wife, Lorri, and chasing the dream of exoneration. It is wonderful to see that he never let the years behind bars kill him inside, though they tried.

While he was in prison, I always wanted to write Damien - tell him how connected I felt, but it's not something I can do anymore, for obvious reasons - and just this once, I'll keep my words to myself, since freedom is a greater gift than any letter could ever be.

Finally Free.

I will be the first to tell you that I'm not the type to bitch about current events. This situation, however, is much different.

As someone who has followed the injustice served to the West Memphis Three for the past five years or so, Friday afternoon's news of their release came as a shock, though it was a good one. As soon as the news came down, I checked every link I could find, reading the same lines over and over again, not even realizing as tears streamed down my face.

I was happy. I was absolutely and completely in shock, surprise, and glorified happiness. I have spent years doing what I can to tell people about the case, reading up on it myself, and knowing just how unjust what those three men went through for nearly two decades was. When I heard there was a deal on the table on Friday morning, I had goosebumps.

The connection that I felt to the case was not purely through research and understanding of the injustices done to Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley. It was because I could see myself in their shoes. As a kid, I grew up listening to punk and metal music, wearing black, writing bad poetry, and allaround being a little bit scary. If the town I grew up in had been any smaller, and if something as horrific as those murders had taken place with the same police circumstances in West Memphis, I would have been typecast as the type of person to do something like that. If you did the same, it could have been you, too. That's why I read the news and could do nothing but cry. I was absolutely certain that these men would not have been absolved of their crimes until long after Damien was put to death. Then, it would have been treated as a "whoops!", as so many mistakes in the justice system seem to be these days.

While the plea deal was not perfect, it was what it took to get these three innocent men out of prison. And really, they will never live a 'normal' life, no matter how you look at it. They will forever be typecast as 'baby killers' to some, and their innocence will forever be questioned. They still have much work to do, both to get acclimated to life in the outside world, and to clear their names forever. At least now they are safe, and can all begin the healing process.

The story is not over now that the West Memphis Three are out of prison. www.wm3.org has all of the information on the case, the Paradise Lost documentaries, and what you can still do in order to help the men clear their names. There is still much work to be done. For more information, I would personally recommend checking out Devil's Knot by Mara Leveritt, it is one of the best books on the case I've read, and boasts much information.

While the West Memphis Three walk free, they will not be truly free until their names are cleared and the true murderer of those three boys is brought to justice.