in september, judge david burnett, who preside over both trials ruled he would not hear any new evidence in the case. so damien echols is now appealing his case to the arkansas supreme court, which has previously upheld the conviction. this is the first time that the arkansas supreme court is going to interpret the dna statute. so it s going to have enormous implications for anybody who comes in their wake. i m thinking about when we argue this in the arkansas supreme court, the approach we want to take, justices, you may be aware that this specific case has garnered a lot of interest, but the interests at stake here are a lot broader than the three individuals before the court, even though one of those literally has his life on the line. good morning, your honors. if it please the court, obviously, since my client is sentenced to death, the resolution of this case is of
paramount importance to him. but the interests at stake here are far broader. and that is because we are dealing with pure questions of law about the interpretation of what i ll call the dna statute. what is the meaning of this arkansas statute? there is language in that statute that says if the dna evidence excludes the defendant as the source of the dna, which it did in our case, then the trial court has to consider all the evidence whether it was admitted at trial or not to see what a reasonable juror would do today. this statute was passed to exonerate the innocent. the state has really proposed an orwellian interpretation of the term all. all simply means all. the state took the position that in weighing all the evidence, what the statute meant to say was that the court consider only all the evidence of guilt, but not the evidence