Airdate: West Of Memphis

On Sunday SBS screens the documentary West Of Memphis which tells the untold story behind a desperate fight to stop the State of Arkansas from killing an innocent man.

Staring with a searing examination of the police investigation into the 1993 murders of three, eight year old boys Christopher Byers, Steven Branch and Michael Moore in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, the film goes on to uncover new evidence surrounding the arrest and conviction of the other three victims of this shocking crime – Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley.

All three were teenagers when they became the target of the police investigation; all three went on to lose 18 years of their lives – imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.

How the documentary came to be, is in itself a key part of the story of Damien Echols’ fight to save his own life. The documentary film reveals how close he, his wife Lorri Davis, along with his legal team, friends and supporters, came to losing that battle.

Written by and directed by Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Amy Berg and produced by first-time filmmakers Damien Echols and Lorri Davis, in collaboration with the multiple Academy Award-winning team of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh.

Sunday, 28 June at 9.40pm on SBS ONE.