Fair Trial or Paradise Lost, law assignment help

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Read the synopsis of the Paradise Lost video.

Write a 1-2 page paper identifying a minimum of three issues in ensuring a fair trial to the three defendants in the paradise lost documentary once the media began coverage of the investigation. Conclude your paper with an evaluation of how much impact media had on this trial

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PARADISE LOST DOCUMENTARY SUMMARY On May 5, 1993, the mutilated bodies of three second-graders were found in a wooded area near West Memphis, Ark. A month later, murder charges were filed against three local teenagers, who were accused of killing the children in a satanic ritual. A police officer, asked how good the state's case was, said, ``On a scale of 1 to 10, it's an 11.'' But a hypnotic new documentary suggests that the community and the courtroom, inflamed by emotion and sensationalism, rushed to judgment. The film opens with sad police video footage from the crime scene, showing the bodies as they were first discovered, and then reports how wild rumors swept the area about satanic rituals, animal sacrifice and blood drinking. A month after the murders, an undersized 17-year-old named Jesse Misskelly, with an IQ of 72, was questioned by police and after several hours of interrogation, confessed that he had been present when Damien Wayne Echols, 18, and Jason Baldwin, 16, killed and mutilated the boys. Local prosecutors brought murder charges against the boys based almost entirely on Jesse's statements alone. In the courtroom, they make a poignant trio: Jesse, small and blinking; Jason, who does not testify and indeed hardly speaks except in soft, shy generalities, and Damien, intelligent and articulate, known locally for dressing in black, listening to heavy metal music and reading books on Wicca, or ``white magic.'' These three are obvious outcasts in a small, rural town where the "normal" teenager listens to country music and goes to the baptist church every Sunday with their family. There is no significant physical evidence linking them to the crime, and the crime scene itself lacks any clues that would point a finger at any of the three. Although one of the victims lost five pints of blood and the others bled freely, there is no blood at the murder site. The state's case is based on Jesse's testimony and hearsay; the defense argues that the statements made by Jesse contained only facts first supplied to him by the police, and there is a fascinating cross-examination in which a police transcript shows Jesse shifting the time of the crimes from morning to noon to after school to evening (when they actually occurred) under leading suggestions by police after hours of interrogation. Jesse, whose trial was split off from the other two, was found guilty and sentenced to life plus 40 years. He was offered a reduced sentence if he would testify at the trial of the other two teenagers, but refused. His mother says she told him she would be sitting right there in the courtroom, and didn't want to hear him lie. Interviews with the three accused defendant's also reveal to the viewer that they all claim to have alibi's for the night of the murder. At the trial of Damien and Jason, evidence of the satanic orientation of the murders is supplied by a state ``expert occultist'' who turns out to have his degrees from a mail-order university that did not require any classes or schoolwork. For the defense, a pathologist testifies that it would be so difficult to carry out the precise mutilations on one of the boys that he couldn't do it himself--not without the right scalpel, and certainly not in the dark or in muddy water. Meanwhile, we meet members of the families on both sides. Time and again, the documentary describes someone as a boyfriend, girlfriend, stepfather, stepmother, ex-wife or ex-husband; there seem to be few intact original marriages in this group. The parents of the murdered children are quick to believe the theories about the crime which are promoted by the intense media coverage, and unforgiving. One mother says of Damien, ``He deserves to be tortured for the rest of his life.'' She curses not only the defendants, ``but the mothers that bore them.'' In one especially uncomfortable scene, relatives of two of the victims take target practice by shooting at pumpkins they have named after the defendants, aiming at parts of the ``bodies'' they have not yet hit. One of these men is John Mark Byers, stepfather of one of the victims, who earlier has been seen in a video at the crime scene, re-creating the crimes in grisly detail while vowing vengeance. In the movie's single most astonishing development, Byers gives the filmmakers a knife. They turn it over to the state. Crime lab reports show traces of blood that apparently came from himself and his stepson. On the witness stand, he testifies that he beat his stepson with a belt at 5:30 p.m. on the day of his death. The welts from the belt buckle previously had been linked to the ritual killing. The film ends with guilty verdicts against Damien (death by injection) and Jason (life in prison). The sentences are under appeal. The film creates a vivid portrait of a small town rocked by a heinous crime, that is quick to point fingers at those who are different. This image is promoted by the media, which affects the ability for these three social outcasts to be given a fair trial and places pressure on the police to make an arrest.
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Outline

Paradise Lost

Three issues in ensuring a fair trial

Media coverage


Running head: Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

Institutional Affiliation

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Date

The paradise lost documentary talks about the trial of three teenagers, who were
considered different, on the ritual murder of three second graders. Once the media began
coverage of the murders, we notice certain issues that could have been done to ensur...


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