As far as anyone but the Damien Echols legal team knows, the future of the West Memphis Three rides on a single hair. Or two. A single hair found at the crime scene has been touted as being consistent with that of victim Steve Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs. Since the hair is also consistent with 1.5% of the population - which, according to defense team forensic serologist Thomas Fedor, is a "rough match" - it means that approximately 415 other people in West Memphis could be suspects, based on that evidence alone. When other factors are taken into account, such as the classic "means, motive, and opportunity" test, that number is much lower, possibly even as low as one. Another hair found at the scene - both hairs were discovered weeks after the murders - has been similarly identified as possibly belonging to Hobbs family friend and neighbor, David Jacoby. As much as Supporters might wish this to be a smoking gun, however, it is anything but, at least according to Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel.

"I am growing increasingly frustrated by what I see of a misleading press campaign that suggests there is new DNA evidence that some way exonerates these three boys that a jury found guilty and whose appeals they all lost," McDaniel said. McDaniel says he does not see any evidence that would exonerate the three, and that he finds the confession of Jessie Misskelley, "detailed and compelling." Refusing to be intimidated by the media. McDaniel says, "I’ve seen nothing, at this point, that leads me to believe that Judge (David) Burnett should on the basis of newly discovered scientific evidence grant a new trial." Combined with Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe’s recent statement that he is not considering pardons or clemency for the three, McDaniel’s statement does not bode well for Echols, Baldwin, or Misskelley.

Columnist Mike Brummett said back in December 2007, "Beebe is too much the cautious man to free these three until and unless the argument becomes even more compelling. But Beebe also is the kind of man who would do the right thing eventually. I cannot imagine that he would let Echols get put to death. Commuting the death sentence would seem to be the least, the very least, the state ought to do. Then we could argue about whether he and the others ought to be in jail at all." (Read the entire article here)

For Supporters, clemency would spare the life of Damien Echols, but would do nothing to "Free the West Memphis Three." Inmates moved off death row tend to drop out of the public eye rather quickly. If the celebrity endorsements dry up, what will happen to the defense fund administered by Echols’s wife, Lorri Davis? Without the defense fund, or unless, as Brummett says, the "argument becomes even more compelling", Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley will become just three more indigent inmates whose legal appeals will have been exhausted.