by Monica Beck
In Life After Death Damien Echols writes an account of his life as a boy growing up in Arkansas during the 1970’s. Raised in a dysfunctional family in debilitating poverty. The house he grew up in was so cold that the water in the toilet would freeze. With his background it’s amazing that he never got into much trouble. Since he wasn’t an avid student and received little encouragement from home, he didn’t graduate from high school. He wasn’t an average teenager, and at the age of 18, he and his three friends were charged and convicted of the murder of three young boys. Law enforcement decided the murders were related to some sort of a Satanist ritual because bite marks were found on the bodies (years later forensics decided the bites were due to animal predation).
Unfortunately for Echols, he fit their profile to a tee. While in his teens, he wore black almost exclusively, listened to heavy metal, and therefore was considered the ring leader of the group. For this reason he was the only one to receive the death penalty. All three were considered social outcasts, and poor as well, making them perfect prey for backwoods justice. The courts had little definitive evidence in the case, but nevertheless all three were railroaded and convicted of murder. For more information about the case, labeled by the media the West Memphis Three, you can see several HBO documentaries made about them. Media attention including celebrity support by Johnny Depp, Harry Rollins and Eddie Vedder helped to popularize their cause which eventually led to their release. The latest documentary, produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Fran Walsh, was aired at the Sundance and Toronto film festivals this year. It’s titled West of Memphis see http://www.sonyclassics.com/westofmemphis/
The book begins as an auto-biographical look at Echols’ life from birth till the age of 18 when his legal troubles began. The second half of the book is written like a journal with regular entries. When all he could see from his tiny concrete cell was death, despair, and insanity he decided that he could no longer abide in a state of ‘hope’. Like Henry Miller asserts in The Cosmological Eye: “Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you.” Echols embraced this attitude and learned how to survive and even thrive on Death Row, intellectually and spiritually for many years, creating an identity for himself. Minus the illusion of hope, he spent his days and nights transcending the abysmal environment he was trapped in. He is an inspiration to all.
However, towards the end of his time on Death Row his tone changes. Desperation oozes out of the text. After 18 years on death row, and 19 birthdays, fatigue was setting in. Who wouldn’t become despondent under these conditions? In 2011 he and the West Memphis Three were released, but not exonerated. Echols is a free man today. He lives with his wife in the northeast. Echols’ well written narrative will keep your attention. It is a testament to the strength of the human spirit against all odds, and includes a scathing look at how law enforcement, the corrections system, and the legal system in this country are twisted and in need of serious overhaul.
Editor's note: Life After Death is available at the Lift Bridge Book Shop at 45 Main St. in Brockport, NY and on The Brockporter Amazon Book Carousel in the right hand column. The Brockporter book of the week is a regular feature of the Brockporter Online News Magazine which appears most Fridays. If you have a book review you would like published as part of this feature please send it to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.
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