West Memphis 3 reject defense project's help
By Marc Perrusquia (Contact)
Friday, January 25, 2008
It's been a rough first month for a nonprofit organization that aims to raise defense funds for the West Memphis Three.
First, the West Memphis 3 Innocence Project Inc. learned the convicted killers it wants to help won't accept their money.
Then, the organization encountered a legal obstacle -- a cease and desist letter from the New York-based Innocence Project, which claims its name has been illegally used.
"These individuals are not connected or affiliated with me or my case in any way, and I will not be accepting anything from them," death row inmate Damien Echols said in an e-mail circulated this week to friends and supporters.
Echols, 33, is one of three convicted in the 1993 slayings of three 8-year-old boys found nude and hogtied in a drainage ditch.
The West Memphis Three have gained celebrity status among Hollywood actors, musicians and others who believe they were wrongly convicted.
Supporters raised hundreds of thousands of dollars before a splinter group calling themselves the West Memphis 3 Innocence Project formed a rival fund-raising organization.
Leaders of the new organization contend funds haven't been shared equally among all defendants and say the chief fund-raiser -- Echols' wife -- hasn't given any public accounting of the money.
The assertions stirred fiery responses from Echols and co-defendant Jason Baldwin, who's serving a life sentence, and have triggered a legal warning from the Innocence Project in New York.
"This is an unauthorized and illegal use of the Innocence Project's name," Innocence Project spokesman Eric Ferrero said Thursday.
Founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld to exonerate wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing, the Innocence Project has a national network of some 40 local organizations that legally use its name, but the Arkansas organization isn't one of them.
Ferrero said the Innocence Project has sent a cease and desist letter to the new group advising it to change its name or face legal action. There has been no response, Ferrero said.
West Memphis Three Innocence Project president Kelly Duda said he hasn't received the letter. Duda said he was "cautiously optimistic" that handling and accounting of funds controlled by Echols' wife, Lorri Davis, can be improved.
Duda's group took another blow this week when attorneys for all three defendants issued a statement supporting Davis.
"We have complete confidence that Lorri Davis and others who have organized past fund-raising efforts have done so with integrity and with the aim of seeing justice done," said the statement from lawyers Michael Burt, Dennis Riordan, Donald Horgan and John Philipsborn.
Echols was less diplomatic in his e-mail from prison: "By making false accusations against my loved ones, my friends and the supporters who have gone out of their way to help me for many, many years the operators of the wm3ip website have caused me tremendous grief."
-- Marc Perrusquia: 529-2545
