If the deal is consummated in a closed-door hearing at 10 a.m. in Jonesboro, Ark., the three -- death-row inmate Damien Echols, 36, and co-defendants Jason Baldwin, 34, and Jessie Misskelley, 36, who are serving life terms -- would be free after 18 years behind bars.
The three then-teenagers were convicted for the May 1993 slayings of three 8-year-old West Memphis boys, all Cub Scouts, whose nude bodies were found hog-tied in a watery ditch in West Memphis.
"I've been waiting for this day a long, long time,'' said Dan Stidham, 48, Misskelley's original defense lawyer and now a district judge in Paragould, Ark., who continues to endorse his former client's innocence. "All I asked for was truth and justice.''
The arrangement involves the three defendants pleading no contest to lesser charges in return for their immediate release, according to legal sources knowledgeable of the deal. The sources spoke on condition on anonymity because a gag order forbids parties in the case from discussing it.
The surprise announcement Thursday by Circuit Court Judge David Laser of today's previously unscheduled hearing triggered a landslide of emotion from people connected to the case that shook Arkansas with prosecutors' assertions that the slain boys were victims of a ritualistic cult murder.
Years later, documentary films aired by HBO fanned a national movement endorsing the defendants' claims of innocence. Those documentaries, in turn, attracted several celebrities who helped fund a vigorous new defense with nationally known lawyers, private investigators and forensic experts...
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