CRITTENDEN COUNTY, Ark. – Damien Echols and his legal team petitioned the Crittenden County Court Monday to allow for new DNA testing of evidence from the murder scene where three West Memphis boys were killed in 1993.
In 1994, Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley were charged and convicted of the murders of three boys in West Memphis.
All three men were released in 2011 after the state offered a rarely used Alford Plea deal where they were asked to state that they would maintain their innocence concerning the crime but claimed that the prosecution in the case had enough evidence to convict them.
The plea was offered as the three defendants were launching an attempt to present DNA evidence and have it tested.
The petition made Monday involves new technology that has become available to test DNA found on the bindings of the three murdered children.
According to the petition, the advanced M-Vac technology would be used to test the biological materials left behind by the killer(s) of the boys.
Echols legal team made recent claims that Crittenden County Prosecutor Keith Chrestman was refusing “to cooperate with new DNA testing.”
This comes just one month after the bindings and other evidence, thought to be destroyed, were found.