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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

Court Halts Execution Of Texas Death Row Inmate Larry Hatten

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HUNTSVILLE (October 13, 2014) The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Monday halted the scheduled execution this week of death row inmate Larry Hatten, 40.

Hatten, who had ordered that no appeals be filed to stop the execution Wednesday evening, was convicted of capital murder in the shooting death of a 5-year-old boy who was sleeping with his mother 20 years ago in an apartment in Corpus Christi.

The court gave him a reprieve to resolve a 1997 filing with his trial court in Nueces County.

The judges said Monday in a three-page ruling that the filing never was decided by the trial court and was never properly forwarded to the appeals court.

The appeals court has given the trial court six months to resolve the claims in the in filing.

Hatten was accused of breaking into the apartment where the boy, Isaac Jackson, and his mother, Tabatha Thompson, lived on Sept. 19, 1995 and firing six shots with a .357-caliber handgun.

Thompson was struck four times, but survived.

Her son, who was struck once in the upper body, did not.

Source: KWTX, October 13, 2014
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