The Empathy Exams

Jamison recounts the trilogy of documentaries titled Paradise Lost, telling the story of the West Memphis Three. She begins by describing footage of police removing the bodies of three dead boys from a pond. Stephen Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore were murdered and abandoned in the woods. Jessie Misskelley Jr., Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols were teenagers who were accused, tried, and convicted for their murders. The teenagers were first suspected because they were accused of being Satanists for their love of heavy metal music and their goth-like appearance. Jamison gives away the ending of the last film and explains that, before the final documentary was released, the once-teenagers were freed from prison.

Jamison describes the poverty-stricken West Memphis and the many people who struggle to make ends meet there, including the battles with addiction and the perception of its populace as “white trash” (163). She details Misskelley’s confession and calls out the inconsistencies within it, noting that of his 12-hour interrogation less than an hour of it was recorded. Misskelley is small in stature and seems emotionally immature. Jamison describes Baldwin and feels conflicted because the documentary presents the evidence as insufficient to convict the boys, but her own uncertainty makes it hard to dismiss their guilt entirely.