Attorney Curtis Hitt to replace Judge Dan Stidham

Gov. Sarah Sanders has appointed Paragould attorney Curtis Hitt as the 17th Judicial District Court Judge. Hitt will replace Judge Dan Stidham, who announced in August that he plans to retire at the end of the year.

Hitt announced in July that he would seek the judge’s seat in the upcoming, non-partisan elections.

“I have enjoyed serving the citizens of Greene and Clay counties for the past 25 years and cherish all the amazing relationships I have acquired along this journey in my life from all over the state of Arkansas and the world,” Stidham said when he announced his retirement.

Stidham is famed as the lead attorney for Jessie Misskelley Jr. in the infamous West Memphis Three case. On May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys — Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch — vanished from their West Memphis neighborhood. The next day the boys were found dead in a creek in a patch of woods called Robin Hood Hills near their neighborhood.

Three teens — Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin — were charged and convicted of killing the three boys in an alleged occult ceremony. Many believed the men, dubbed “The West Memphis Three,” were innocent. No forensic evidence or DNA links them to the crime.

The three have steadfastly maintained their innocence.

Stidham told Talk Business & Politics his client confessed to the crime and implicated the other two, but he was innocent. Misskelley said the boys were choked when they were not, got the time and place wrong of where the boys were assailed, and said two of the boys had been sexually assaulted when they verifiably were not.

Eventually, the three were released from prison after almost 20 years after agreeing to an Alford plea. In recent years, Echols has fought the state to do advanced DNA testing on the ligatures that bound the boys.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered that the testing move forward in April of 2024, and earlier this year the prosecutor’s office agreed to allow the testing to move forward. The status of when the testing will be done, however, has not been released.