WCS 2012 Review: ‘Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory’

The final part of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s documentary offers a bittersweet ending to the story of the West Memphis Three.

In 1994 three teenagers were arrested for the murder of three eight-year-old boys in a suburb of West Memphis, Arkansas. They were characterised as Satanists because they liked to wear black clothes and listened to heavy metal music, and the murders were ascribed as ritualistic killings. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky first explored the case in their documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.

The expert testimony and the clearly forced confession of the barely mentally competent Misskelley imprisoned the trio despite their claims of innocence, and no physical evidence linking them to the murders. The documentary raised public awareness of the case, and numerous high-profile people stepped in to try and see justice done. A second Paradise Lost was made in 2001 to keep the case in the public eye and to explore other possible suspects.

Now, we have the final instalment of the story. For 18 years their appeals for a retrial based on new evidence and proof of jury misconduct were denied by the judge who tired the case. When he was removed from the position, the new judge agreed to re-examine. Supporters of the West Memphis Three paid for the legal expertise needed, but before a retrial could be scheduled, the trio got a court date and were released. The catch? They had to plead guilty to the crimes.

So, while proclaiming their innocence, all three plead guilty and were freed. This keeps the State from having to pay hefty reparations to the trio for 18 years of wrongful incarceration. It also means whoever did commit the crime walks free, and there is some pretty sharp finger-pointing going on in this film…

While the outcome is, I suppose, a happy one, I can’t help but feel intense anger about this case. Three young men have lost a huge chunk of their lives to this case. And what would have happened to them if Berlinger and Sinofsky had not taken such an interest in the case? They’d still be in prison, or in Damien Echol’s case, dead.

This is the power of documentary filmmaking. Errol Morris saved a man from death row with his film The Thin Blue Line, and here, Berlinger and Sinofsky’s persistence has done the same. Yet the victory can’t be anything other than bittersweet given that the true killer is still free, and the West Memphis Three had to admit guilt in order to gain their freedom. Is that irony?

8.5/10