Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

 

This is one harrowing thing to watch, so be warned. 

Heck, we start off with police footage of the dead bodies of three 8-year-olds, so get ready to become a whole lot more uncomfortable during the course of this documentary, but perhaps not for the reason you might suspect.

See, this documentary has no voice-over, as it only shows us interviews and especially quite a lot of footage of the trial of three teenagers accused of brutally killing and maiming those children. However, you will quickly realise something is quite amiss.

See, all of this takes place in West Memphis, in a locale that can be easily classified under 'trailer park'. So you start to get a feeling of the people society oftentimes just leaves behind. Here are three kids that don't really fit in as they tend to wear black, don't care for the usual hobbies or interests and listen to heavy metal. Because the police is both pretty incompetent and tensions are rising quickly, they needed a scapegoat and who better than three outcasts?

If you think I'm exaggerating about the police incompetence: believe me, it's not even close. Solid leads to a completely different person that could have been responsible for the killings is blatantly ignored, evidence is never sent through processing and some of it was actually lost. It gets quite painful for the police, actually.

Things get even more bizarre during the trials, as complete liars are heard as witnesses (and it is obvious they are lying), prosecution 'experts' are completely debunked and new evidence is brought up.

So why did these three kids still get convicted of murder?

Two reasons, mainly. The first one is because the police clearly coerced a mentally challenged boy (Jessie Misskelley Jr) into a confession, even if any reasonable person could understand from a mile away that he juist said what he said because he thought that was what the police wanted to hear; and second, because in biblethumping Shitsville USA anything and anyone that doesn't conform, gets sentenced under the idiotic guise of occult practices and Satanism.

It's horrible to watch as even though the defense can easily poke holes in everything and anything the prosecution has (which is very little and no evidence save a forced confession from a kid that's - do not forget - mentally challenged) these boys still are found guilty of murder. 

You should really watch this to discover how absurdly fucked up a justice system can get. But be warned: it is not comfortable viewing.