On January 12, HBO cable TV will air a new doc­u­men­tary, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the final install­ment of a tril­o­gy that recounts the sto­ry of three wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed teenagers in Arkansas–Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley – known as the ​“West Memphis Three.” The young men were con­vict­ed of the 1993 rape and mur­der of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Baldwin and Misskelley received life sen­tences, and Echols was sen­tenced to death. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory shows the con­clu­sion of their case in 2011, when Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley entered spe­cial guilty pleas in which they con­tin­ued to assert their inno­cence but admit­ted the state could like­ly con­vict them again in a new tri­al. The pleas allowed Baldwin and Misskelley to be released from prison and Echols to be spared the death penal­ty, and also freed. The first two films, released in 1996 and 2000 respec­tive­ly, raised aware­ness of the case and helped spur an inter­na­tion­al move­ment to free the men. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory will debut on Thursday, January 12, at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO. See below for a trail­er to the film.

(HBO press mate­ri­als, DPIC post­ed, January 11, 2012.) View the film’s trail­er. For more infor­ma­tion about the doc­u­men­tary, vis­it the movie’s web­site. See also Innocence and Multimedia.

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