One of the key elements to the case against Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin was the lengthy collection of documents regarding Damien's mental health and arrest record. His troubled history became one of the main tenets of the trial; the psychiatric reports were used to prove that Echols was a homicidal Satanist with vampiristic tendencies.
Why is Mascara and Murder hosting this document?
Although the subject, Damien Echols, is currently classified as a convicted murderer (pending exoneration), after reading through the stack of documentation it becomes clear that the only thing the boy was ever truly guilty of was having sex with his girlfriend in an abandoned house.
The justice system, in its infinite wisdom, continues to perpetuate the myth that women are incapable of deciding anything for themselves, including at which time they feel they are ready to become sexually active. In the case of Damien Echols and his young lover, both parties were obviously consenting; they were, after all, in a committed relationship -- insofar as puppy love goes.
The fact that Echols was 17 and his girlfriend was only 15 proved to be enough prior evidence of criminality that an Arkansas jury convicted him of murdering three local boys, and ultimately sentenced him to death.
Exhibit 500 is available from a number of online sources, however, I was unable to find it in one complete file. I took the liberty of compiling all pages of the exhibit (510 to be precise) into one PDF document for easier reading:
Exhibit 500 (PDF)
