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SF lawyer unlocked door for condemned man

CATCHING UP: With Dennis Riordan
Julian Guthri, San Francisco Chronicle
Updated 7:59 pm, Wednesday, February 6, 2013
  • Dennis Riordan helped free the "West Memphis Three." Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle


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San Francisco attorney Dennis Riordan plays a key role in the new documentary "West of Memphis: Death Row Exoneration," opening at San Francisco's Embarcadero theaters on Friday. Along with his law partner, Don Horgan, Riordan represented Damien Echols, who spent 18 years on death row in Arkansas before he was exonerated and freed in August 2011.

Echols was the supposed ringleader of the "West Memphis Three," the teenagers convicted of a 1993 triple murder of 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Ark. The case became an international cause celebre and has been the subject of three HBO documentaries.

Q: How were you pulled into the case in 2004?

A: I got a call from Lorri Davis, who married Damien in 1999. She believed the case had to go into federal court, and they needed a federal habeas corpus lawyer. I hadn't followed the case since 1993, but knew it as a horrendous set of murders involving three teenage "satanists." I became aware that the other two defendants had also found their way to San Francisco counsel. (John Philipsborn represented Jason Baldwin, and Michael Burt, a top DNA lawyer, represented Jessie Misskelley.)

Q: The earlier HBO documentaries attracted the support of celebrities including Johnny Depp, the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines, and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, among others.

A: We are in the third HBO documentary. We were involved for 7 1/2 years of the 18-year case. In both the HBO film and the new one ("West of Memphis" was directed by Amy Berg and produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh), there is footage of the oral argument we made in the Arkansas Supreme Court that was the key to unlocking the door. They had gone 16 years without a legal victory.

Q: What did you argue?

A: We argued that you have to open this case up to all the new evidence. That started the process that 10 months later led to their release.

Q: How is "West of Memphis" different from the HBO documentaries?

A: Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings") and Walsh, his wife and screenwriter, saw the HBO documentaries. They went on and dug up people including a jailhouse snitch and got him to admit he had made up testimony against Baldwin. They did a lot of investigative things, funded the forensic pathologist and established these credible links.

Q: But what was it that got them freed?

A: It was a long process, but you can point to an accumulation of four or five discoveries. We made a discovery of a single hair in a ligature binding on one of the boys, and we matched it to a stepfather of one of the boys. The stepfather had never been investigated. His name is Terry Hobbs, and he was deposed and said he hadn't seen the kids that day. Then one of his neighbors came forward and said he'd seen him with the three boys just minutes before they were murdered.

Q: Tell me about a current case that's consuming your thoughts.

A: I'm getting ready to argue the Barry Bonds appeal next week. He was convicted on one count of obstructing justice by giving a misleading answer. I don't think there's any factual or legal basis to it.

Q: How do you handle losing?

A: That's primarily what we do. You have to try to find a way to maintain some balance between being personally involved in these cases and on the other hand being able to accept that you will likely lose at some point along the way. You develop some scar tissue.

Q: Where did you grow up?

A: New York.

Q: What did you want to be?

A: The assumption was I would be a lawyer because my father was a lawyer. After college, I didn't have the imagination to figure out something else that I would do.

Q: If you weren't a lawyer, what would you be?

A: Well, I haven't dedicated a lot of thought to that. But I have a daughter whose mother is also a lawyer. Our daughter swore she would never become a lawyer. She has become a journalist, and she spends an enormous amount of her time writing about legal stuff. In some ways, she is just so much freer to cover anything that interests her. It makes me think that would be a good thing to do.

Movie review: "West of Memphis" will be reviewed in Friday's Datebook
