Troubled: Jason's response

I have done that, but over there where it belongs. However, just for you, here's one example, relating to Jason Baldwin's "profile" according to David K:

Let’s look at these profiles, shall we?

“Sean Flynn recently wrote in GQ: ‘Jason, a slight boy of 112 pounds with small, crooked teeth and matchstick arms, went to school every day, got good grades, was a talented artist, and never did anything more sinister than shoplift a bag of chips.’ This is not true. Baldwin had a more extensive history of petty crime.

At his 2008 Rule 37 hearing, Baldwin testified: ‘My experience with the court system and lawyers before 1993 was in the juvenile system when I was around eleven. I had been placed on probation when I was 11 years old.’ (That quote is from the official Abstract of the proceedings; the exact transcript does not circulate.) The offense which got him placed on probation is unknown.”

So, you are assuming that whatever Baldwin did when he was “around eleven” was violent? Even you admit that the offense is unknown. However, for the purposes of this page, you imply that it was something worse than stealing a bag of chips.

“Blood of Innocents relates another incident when Baldwin was 12 years old:

On January 13, 1990, Jason and some other kids broke into a shop full of vintage cars and equipment. They broke the front, rear, and right-door glass on a front-end loader, two left-side door windows, and the side vent of a 1969 Cadillac, and all the glass on a 1959 Ford. Three other kids were supposedly with him. Jason, almost thirteen years old, later admitted breaking some headlights, but also pointed the finger at another kid. He was charged with breaking and entering and criminal mischief. (191)

Mara Leveritt in Devil’s Knot offers Baldwin’s less sinister account of this incident (55): the ‘vintage car shop’ was actually an abandoned building full of junkers, missing a wall and overgrown with tall grass, which neighborhood kids used as a clubhouse.”

Again, you are accepting the information from a book that was nothing more that a tabloid report about the crime over the information from “Devil’s Knot” which was a well-documented book written by a journalist from the area where the crimes occurred.

“In November 1992, at age 15, Baldwin was caught shoplifting snacks from a local Walgreens. According to Blood of Innocents, he ‘was placed on twelve months’ diversion of judgment’ requiring him to ‘stay in school and out of trouble”’(191-192).”

Hmmm . . . “shoplifting snacks” sounds a lot like stealing potato chips, like the GQ article said, to me. You have presented no “evidence” IMO that anything in Jason’s juvenile record is any more serious than stealing snacks.

“After Baldwin’s arrest for murder, a friend named Jason Crosby told police that Baldwin had robbed him in 1992.

About 1 year ago I had a knife stolen from a knife collection that my Dad had brought for me about 1½ before it had been stolen. I had heard thought rumor that Jason Baldwin had stolen this knife from me. When I asked Jason B. about the knife he said he had trade the knife & trench coat to his cousin or uncle in Mississippi for a bike. At the time the knife went missing Jason B. & Damien E. had spent the night a couple of times.”

Again, this is not evidence, it is rumor. Nothing in this report states that Jason stole the knife, just that they were suspects. The report is a bit disjointed, and EVEN IF JASON STOLE THE KNIFE, it proves nothing.

“Blood of Innocents mentions another crime that may or may not have involved Jason Baldwin

Five years before the murders, Baldwin had lived in a seedy section of unincorporated Shelby County, north of Memphis. The Shelby County Fire Department was called to the house June 5, 1987, when someone inside set fire to a bedroom with a cigarette lighter. A room burned but no one was injured. (190)”

Where is the proof that the arsonist was Jason? He has two younger brothers who could be responsible for the fire, too. Well, at least Matt could have. The younger one (sorry, don’t remember his name) was probably in diapers in 1987.

“The most damaging thing said about Jason Baldwin came from his paternal grandmother. On June 5, 1993, the Memphis Commercial Appeal ran profiles of all three accused. The Baldwin profile was entitled ‘Shy & Artistic, But Into That Devil Stuff’ and included this passage:

But in Sheridan, Ark., south of Little Rock, Baldwin’s grandmother wasn’t so sure of Jason Baldwin’s innocence.

I thought in my own mind when those boys were killed that my grandson is sorta superstitious about that devil stuff,” said Jessie Mae Baldwin. “He was always catching lizards and snakes, I thought something was going on in that child’s mind.’

Baldwin, 76, said she and her husband, Purd Baldwin, 82, learned of their grandson’s arrest from a television report Friday morning.

‘We just looked at each other and I said, “I don’t know what that boy has on his mind, killing people like that,”‘ ” Mrs. Baldwin said.”

This I have seen and addressed before. His grandmother, who sees him a few days a year, makes these statements and you slurp them up like chicken noodle soup! If you read the entire article from which you pulled this snippet, you will see that no one else thought that about Jason. No one.

“Family Life”

This entire section could be applied to thousands of kids. It doesn’t prove anything except that Jason had a hard life. IT DOESN’T MAKE HIM A MURDERER. Period.

“Jason Baldwin was the only one of the three accused killers still attending high school. WM3 supporters frequently claim that Baldwin was a good student who ‘got good grades’, but this was not true in the period leading up to the murders and arrests. The Blood of Innocents authors acquired Baldwin’s spring 1993 report card, which ‘showed him to be a rather indifferent student in most subjects. He had a D-plus in Algebra I and C’s in most other classes. However, in English, he was a borderline B student. And in art, he earned an A.’”

He was passing every class. Maybe he’s no Einstein (although Einstein failed high school Algebra several times, IIRC), but he was doing well in English and art, making C’s (which means average) in everything BUT Algebra and passing Algebra. As a retired math teacher, I know only too well that math is the subject which seems to be the hardest for many students, especially, for some reason, those with unsettled home lives and those from meager means.

“Everyone agreed that Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were best friends, virtually inseparable. Psychiatric records and witness statements make clear that Damien Echols circa 1992-93 was a deranged, violent psychopath with homicidal fantasies. There’s no way of knowing what Baldwin and Echols talked about in the months leading up to the murder, but it’s safe to say that Echols was a bad influence.

Forensic psychologist Katharine Ramsland describes a common dynamic among ‘team killers’:

Many couples (no matter what gender) tend to follow a similar pattern. Two people meet and feel a strong attraction, or they are related and have established an intimate familiarity with each other that allows them to share fantasies — even violent ones. Typically one is dominant, and that one seduces the other into sharing his or her fantasy, and then into acting it out.

Based on the incomplete information available, Echols and Baldwin’s relationship fits this pattern. Echols was the dominant personality, Baldwin the admiring follower. Echols’ violent fantasies were the driving force behind the crime. If he had and Echols had never met, Baldwin probably never would have committed such a horrific crime.”

And this means that Jason (and Damien) were plotting and planning a murder? Sorry. I don’t buy it. I believe that neither of them committed a violent crime.

“To answer an inevitable response from WM3 partisans: No, nothing on this page proves that Jason Baldwin was guilty of triple murder. There’s plenty of direct evidence of that elsewhere.”

Really? Where?

“Baldwin may well have been the shy, artistic, kind-hearted adolescent that his supporters describe. He was also a disturbed, angry adolescent with a history of petty crime, a severely messed-up home life and a homicidal lunatic for a best friend.”

This is your opinion. Mine tends to fall in line with the first statement – Charles Jason Baldwin was a shy, artistic, kind hearted adolescent who was unjustly imprisoned for over 18 years of his life. The employees at the prison were so happy for him when he walked out that they applauded.