damien echols, jason baldwin and jessie misskelley. damien was sentenced to death and the others to life in prison. as the years passed, the west memphis three got attention from famous people, last month, after nearly two decades behind bars, echols, baldwin and misskelley walked free. more in a moment on that. but joining me now, damien echols and his wife lorri davis. welcome to you both. >> thank you. >> an extraordinary saga, no other way to put this, ending in the most bizarre circumstances, and we'll come to those a little later. where eventually you all admit guilt and yet you walk free, which is a bizarre twist in this tale, a weird anomaly in the legal system and will make no sense to anybody, probably least of all you. damien, let me start with you. i mean, you've lost 20 years of your life for a crime you've always said you didn't commit. >> right. >> what has it been like for you? you in particular, you were sentenced to death. you had to live with that every day that you were incarcerated. you spent most of your time in i

i should point out we asked jessie misskelley to join us, but he declined.'s called the alford plea, a very rare part of american law. and in the end you were able to proclaim your innocence while pleading guilty. i don't get it. jason, explain what this actually means. >> well, the alford plea was the only opportunity we was given to plead our innocence and get out. the way it was set up was the state didn't want to admit that they had, you know, convicted three innocent people to prison and to death. so what they put together was an opportunity to -- for them to be able to claim that, hey, we got the right guys. but the evidence doesn't, you know, prove that they're guilty. if they go to trial again, they'll win. we're giving them an opportunity to get out now to save the taxpayers some money and they can still maintain their innocence and the state can still maintain the point that they're guilty. >> you did an extraordinary thing for your friend because you could have done a deal and got out. but if you didn't take this deal, he would have been facing th