Free Devil’s Knot by Mara Leveritt

by a joint trial,” he denied all motions for severance. He addressed the lawyers’ concerns by advising them that “the jury, of course, will be instructed that they are to treat each defendant separately in viewing and evaluating the evidence.”
Juveniles as Adults
    Another major battle, waged by the attorneys for both Jason and Jessie—and another that was lost—concerned their status as minors. Since Jessie was seventeen and Jason just sixteen, their lawyers wanted them to be tried as juveniles, rather than as adults. Though Arkansas law allowed the state to prosecute juveniles as adults when they were accused of serious crimes, Ford argued that the court should consider Jason’s record and try him in juvenile court. “In this case, there is a bare minimum, if not an absence, of criminal activity on the part of Jason Baldwin,” Ford said. “And also, Your Honor, Mr. Baldwin is a good student. He has not been a discipline problem at home. He has not been a discipline problem in the school system. He has made good grades…all of which would indicate an ability to live up to certain codes of conduct.” But Burnett was unimpressed. “I find that the seriousness of the offense was most serious, grievous, heinous,” he said. “The fact that there were three eight-year-old boys murdered in the fashion depicted to the court, the violence exhibited—that certainly alone is enough to warrant that this charge be heard before a jury in circuit court.”
    Stidham fought the same battle for his client, only he argued that Jessie was not mentally mature enough to stand trial as an adult. “I am convinced,” Stidham told Burnett, “that Mr. Misskelley is of limited intellect.” To make the point, he called Dr. William E. Wilkins, a psychologist, to testify at one of the pretrial hearings. 179 Wilkins, who had examined Jessie, told the court that the boy’s IQ scores hovered at around 70 and that, scholastically, he had achieved a “maximum level” no higher than the third grade. “He’s never passed the Arkansas minimum standards test,” Wilkins told the court.
    Burnett asked Wilkins if he believed Jessie had developed what Burnett called “street smarts.” “Even though his intelligence capacity is borderline,” the judge asked, “did he not function in society well?” Wilkins answered that he did not. “He functioned marginally,” the psychologist said.
    Fogleman sought to counter Wilkins’s testimony by calling Jerry Driver, who recited Jessie’s record, which included the theft of band flags from the school. Fogleman then called Detective Ridge, who described the injuries he’d observed on the victims. As with Jason, Burnett ruled that due to the seriousness of the crime, Jessie would have to “answer to the circuit court as an adult.”
Location of the Trials
    None of the defendants waived their rights to a speedy trial, so Burnett announced that they would be tried early the next year. 180 By November 1993, the defense lawyers mounted a series of last-gasp pretrial efforts. They achieved partial success on only one of them: the motion to get the trials moved—at least out of Crittenden County. Jessie’s lawyers, Stidham and Crow, argued that large parts of Jessie’s confession had been printed in the Memphis Commercial Appeal and quoted repeatedly in other media throughout the district. They told the court that when they’d asked residents of the region to sign affidavits in support of moving the trials, they’d met with intense hostility. 181
    Arkansas law allowed for the trials to be moved to another county within the judicial district but Stidham asked for more. “It is quite possible,” he wrote in one of his motions, “that this case has attracted more media attention than any other criminal case in the history of the Second Judicial District, and perhaps even in the entire state.” Noting that members of Jessie’s family had received death threats, he reported, “People say we