I want to take a moment to give credit where credit is due. Mara Leveritt, a master of her craft has been awarded Arkansass 2014 Porter Prize. As a journalist she has written countless articles and a few books documenting and highlighting crime and how our criminal justice system can not only get their case wrong but fight tooth and nail, using every dirty and illegal trick in the book to make certain their truth remains the only truth to survive the test of time. As I pen my memoirs I look out over the arc of my pitiful life and I can’t help but thank God and be grateful for all the people who have extended their arms to pull me out of what was surely the lion’s den. It is a miracle I am alive and free today. It is a miracle Damien Wayne Echols was not murdered by the State of Arkansas because we know the monkey wrench of truth rarely ever stops the State’s death machine. It continues its vile purpose of killing her citizens: the guilty and the innocent alike. My only regret in life is not staying in prison long enough to see our freedom won via a retrial. I know it was coming and I know it would reveal the truth of our innocence. Some people think I only have myself to blame for not staying in prison a bit longer to see it through. In a sense they are right. It was my choice to take the Alford Plea just as it was Damien’s and Jessie’s. Even though none of us deserved to spend a single moment in prison we should have been strong and brave enough to stay a bit longer and win that retrial. Yes. The Alford Plea is my only regret in life. But was I really wrong in accepting the only solution the State of Arkansas was willing to offer and support? The only solution she would place her seal upon to save an innocent life? I know “that the mission of the criminal justice system is to punish the guilty and exonerate the innocent” but when she has shown me countless times over and over again that her agents do not share this belief as they march in and empower career criminals to lie upon you, threaten young mothers with losing their children to lie on you, lose evidence and terrify everyone who knew you so they are too scared to stand up for you and the truth, all while making certain that one of their very own are leading and misleading the very jurors who are supposed to be able to see the truth in all this? I made the decision to save an innocent life. Mara Leveritt is reporting the truth. While those sworn to uphold and protect the truth are making a mockery of it right under the nose of our poor Lady Justice’s blind folded face. Lady Justice may be blind but Mara Leveritt is not. She sees the truth and she is reporting on it and will not stop until things are made right. The State of Arkansas cannot be powerless to alleviate the suffering of innocents. I love you Mara. Thank you for fighting the good fight. You are my hero. Sincerely, Charles Jason Baldwin One of the many surviving victims of the murderer of Steve Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers. maraleveritt/porter-prize-acceptance-speech/
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 15:40:32 +0000
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