LITTLE ROCK — Little Rock author Mara Leveritt said Wednesday that she has filed a formal complaint asking the Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct whether Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel and one of his deputies violated their constitutional duties in supporting the jury verdicts against two men who along with a third man were known as the West Memphis Three.
Leveritt said in her complaint letter, posted on her website last week, that by defending the guilty verdicts, McDaniel and Deputy Attorney General David Raupp were violating their duty to “maintain and defend the interests of the state.” She asked the committee to investigate “impropriety, in violation of the state’s Rules of Professional Conduct,” by the two attorneys, and said prosecutors and attorneys general must not defend a convictionthat was reached unfairly.
She said this is because of what she described as “unrefuted evidence” of jury misconduct in a 1994 trial that resulted in one sentence of life in prison for one of the defendants and one death sentence for the other defendant.
“Is it his duty to support a verdict in a trial even if it’s illegally obtained, just because the state won? Or is it higher than that?” she said in an interview.
A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office said McDaniel had no comment in response.
McDaniel has said his office is constitutionally bound to defend the verdicts. After the state Supreme Court ruled last year that the Craighead County Circuit Court must consider DNA and other evidence and then decide whether Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley should receive a new trial, McDaniel said his office would “fulfill its constitutional responsibility to defend the jury verdicts in this case.”
Leveritt, who is not an attorney, said in her letter that defending the state’s interests should be interpreted as the office’s “larger responsibility to the citizenry to its collective interest in justice.”
The convictions were for the deaths in 1993 of three 8-year-old boys who were mutilated and drowned. Echols, 18 at the time, was sentenced to death, and Baldwin, then 16, received a life sentence. Misskelley, who confessed and was tried separately, also received a life sentence at 17.
Leveritt has written a book on the subject and has called for the convictions to be overturned.
A circuit judge scheduled a hearing to determine whether Echols needs a new trial to begin Dec. 5 of thisyear.
Circuit court filings on behalf of Echols allege jury misconduct, including that the jury foreman at the original trial brought up Misskelley’s confession during jury deliberations. Misskelley had refused to testify and was tried separately, so details of his confession were barred from being mentioned during the trial of Echols and Baldwin.
The Supreme Court said that a juror-misconduct allegation may or may not be relevant in determining whether a new trial would result in an acquittal, and can be considered in deciding whether to hold a new trial.
The Committee on Professional Conduct maintains that everything submitted to it is confidential, at least initially, and Executive Director Stark Ligon said he could not confirm whether the letter from Leveritt had been filed. Ligon said that Leveritt could be held in contempt of court for publicizing the letter.
The standard grievance form includes a notice that “all information you submit to us and we submit to you is confidential under Supreme Court Rule,” and that anyone violating the rule can be found in contempt of court and punished by fine or jail.
Leveritt said the contempt notice was a “threat,” and said she would assert her constitutional right to freedom of speech.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 05/12/2011