State judge halts executions
At rally, Echols tells of death row
A freed death-row inmate returned Friday to Arkansas, a state he said he still has nightmares about, to advocate against multiple executions that were set to begin next week.
Damien Echols, who spent more than 18 years on Arkansas’ death row, stood on the state Capitol steps in Little Rock to criticize what he called the “conveyor belt of killing” that Arkansas put in motion earlier this year. Seven inmates were set to be executed over 11 days starting Monday, before court actions later Friday put the executions on hold.
Echols and two others — Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin — were tried and convicted in the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, and Echols was sentenced to die by lethal injection. After new DNA evidence in the case, the three men were eventually released after accepting a rare plea deal in 2011.
Dressed in black, Echols faced hundreds gathered for a rally Friday hosted by the Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. While Echols readied himself to speak, his wife, a couple of close friends and actor Johnny Depp stood behind him with their arms linked.
Echols, who now lives in New York, first told the crowd that he hadn’t wanted to come back to Arkansas.
“I still have nightmares. I still have panic attacks about this place,” he said.
But when he heard about the planned executions,
Echols said, he decided he “wouldn’t be able to live with myself” if he didn’t attempt to do something to stop them, even if his efforts were futile.
Echols described his relationships with the condemned men during his almost two decades on death row. One man has the intellect of a child, he said. Another believes his execution is a test from God to prepare him for a mission, Echols said.
Though he believes that some of the men committed the crimes for which they were convicted, Echols said, he got to know them in a different light.
“These are the people who showed me more kindness, compassion and generosity than any of the good people trying to kill them ever did,” Echols said.
He then introduced Depp as his “brother” and as one of the people responsible for saving his life. Depp, a longtime supporter of Echols, previously visited Little Rock in August 2010 for a concert put on by Arkansas Take Action, a group that had advocated for the overturning of the convictions of Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin.
The crowd strained to hear Depp on Friday as he spoke softly into the microphone, saying the possibility of death was “dangling” over Echols’ head for years while he sat in prison.
“I just don’t believe that that possibility should ever, ever, ever happen again,” Depp said.
The crowd of several hundred people burst out in “Thank yous!” during Echols’ and Depp’s speeches.
Attendees also listened to speeches from local clergy members and politicians, were led in a prayer, and clapped along to hymns like “This Little Light of Mine.”
Jon and Patricia Wilkes held hands as they approached the edge of the singing crowd. They decided to attend the anti-death penalty event because of their years of volunteering with incarcerated people, Patricia Wilkes said.
She and her husband used to work at an ecumenical prison ministry. They’d visit with inmates for 12 hours a day, three days in a row, she said.
“It’s like a retreat, except they can’t actually go anywhere,” Jon Wilkes said.
Many rallygoers chanted and cheered while holding identical blue signs with white lettering that said. “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
One woman chose a simple message for her poster. “I oppose the death penalty,” she had written in black marker on white paper. Another man opted for humor. “Executions. They are so 18th century,” the sign read.
Another attendee, Andrea Stokes, said she and her colleague, Janice Vaughn, had a perspective different from most on the planned executions. They are capital-crime public defenders who have met the condemned men and developed relationships with them, Stokes said.
The women stood shoulder to shoulder Friday and said they’d be “crying” come Monday if the executions were carried out.
On her poster, Stokes chose to quote a line from former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in his solitary dissent on the court’s 1994 refusal to hear an appeal from a Texas inmate.
“From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,” Blackmun wrote.