Well I feel a little petty now....

The Moth Podcast that I mentioned here a week or so ago, posted a speech by Damien Echols, one of the "West Memphis 3" that was sentenced to death and later released after DNA evidence proved him innocent.
Powerful stuff.

I saw the first documentary about "The West Memphis 3" back in 1996 or so, and was absolutely horrified that 3 kids (they were all teenagers when they were arrested) could be arrested, tried, and convicted of murder, with such flimsy or outright made up evidence.  It was appalling to think that sort of thing was still happening in this country.
For those that don't know the story, 3 little kids were found murdered in a creek in western Arkansas and 3 teens arrested for the crime.  The basis for the arrest hinged upon the confession of one of the teens - except that he was mentally handicapped and had been confined, coerced, and threatened by the police, with out counsel (or even his parents knowing where he was was) for almost 24 hours.
You can see in the video footage made of the confession, a baseball bat in the corner of the interview room - clearly they had scared this little kid half to death to get him to confess to the crime and implicate 2 friends.
The tape of the confession, in my opinion at least, clearly shows the cops feeding him information and telling him what to say.  They even correct him when he gets the confession wrong.
In court, an "expert" on satanic cults was brought in to testify.  In his learned opinion, the murderers fit the profile for followers of satan because, "They wore black t-shirts and listened to heavy metal."
WELL, Case F'ing closed Einstien!
(by the way, if that was all you had to do to summon the powers of the devil, then most of my high school friends would've gotten lucky way more often than they did)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/18/west-memphis-three-life-after-prison_n_1800897.html

This is must reading/learning for anyone interested in the notion of justice.