What happened next isn't exactly a spoiler since it dominated headlines late last summer: In August, the three accused men -- Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelly -- were unexpectedly summoned for a circuit court meeting where they registered Alford guilty pleas (making sure to preface their pleas with statements maintaining their innocence) and were promptly released having been re-sentenced to "time served." It was an emotional ending to a wrenching story and Berlinger and Sinofsky (who have been following the WM3 case and filming all of the principals in this legal drama since 1994) appear on camera looking as dazed and thrilled as the men themselves.

That epilogue is the understandably the best sequence in Purgatory, but the rest of the film is fascinating as well, both as a legal procedural (the actions of the police and prosecutors involved in the original trial fall under intense scrutiny here and reveal several instances of obvious misconduct) and as a kind of a coming-of-age story, with Berlinger and Sinofsky regularly cutting between footage of Echols, Baldwin and Misskelly as frightened teenagers and the thoughtful, subdued thirtysomething men they've become. "I've had a pretty good life," a still-imprisoned Echols (the only one of the three that received a death sentence) says at one point, half-smiling in the face of his circumstances. Here's hoping that, now that he's free, he'll have an even better one.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory airs tonight at 9pm on HBO, opposite new episodes of Grey's Anatomy, Person of Interest and The Office. It'll repeat often this weekend if you just have to get your James Spader fix.

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