Darryl Hunt wiped tears from his eyes as jurors stood one by one in Forsyth County Superior Court yesterday and said that he was guilty of first-degree murder.
After 15 1/2 hours of deliberation over three days, the jury returned to the courtroom at 11:38 a.m. yesterday and found Hunt, 20, guilty of murder in the death of Deborah B. Sykes, a newspaper copy editor.
Mrs. Sykes, 26, was raped, beaten and stabbed last Aug. 10 after she parked her car on West End Boulevard and began waling to her job at The Sentinel.
As the verdict was read, Mrs. Sykes' relatives sat on a courtroom bench behind Hunt. They clasped each other's hands and sobbed silently.
"What I want now is the other one," Mrs. Sykes' mother, Evelyn Jefferson, said later. She believes that it took more than one person to subdue her daughter.
Hunt cried, but otherwise stared straight ahead when the court clerk read the jury's verdict; one of his court-appointed attorneys, Mark Rabil, placed his arm around Hunt.
Hunt's supporters sobbed quietly. Others sat stunned or covered their faces with their hands.
Sentencing Hearing Begins
The jurors then stood one at a time and announced that each agreed with the verdict. The lone black juror was the only one to look at Hunt when announcing his decision.
One woman on the jury wept openly after the verdict.
The same jurors met again at 2 p.m. yesterday to start hearing testimony that will help them decide whether to sentence Hunt to death or life in prison.
The sentencing hearing will continue at 9 a.m. Monday.
The jury, which started its deliberations at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, had been deadlocked 10-2. Before jurors began deliberating yesterday, they asked Judge Preston Cornelius to explain again the legal definitions of "reasonable doubt" and "burden of proof."
Cornelius told them that the state was required to prove that Hunt was guilty. Hunt did not have to prove that he is innocent. And reasonable doubt, he said, does not mean "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
"It is doubt based on reason or common sense," Cornelius read from a notebook.
Hunt's supporters have maintained that he was charged, even though there was little evidence against him, because he is black and Mrs. Sykes was white.
The prosecutors have maintained that Hunt and probably at least one other person forced Mrs. Sykes to accompany them to a field behind Crystal Towers on the morning of Aug. 10. There, the state contends, the men raped Mrs. Sykes and stabbed her to death.
No Physical Evidence
Two prosecution witnesses said that they saw Hunt at or near the scene of the murder at about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10. One of them, Johnny Gray, said that he heard a woman screaming behind Crystal Towers and saw Hunt lying on the woman and beating her in the stomach. Gray reported the crime, giving his name as Sammy Mitchell, who is a close friend of Hunt's.
Another witness said that Hunt went into the bathroom at the Hyatt Winston-Salem on Fifth Street at about 7 a.m. that day and left blood-stained towels in the trash cans. But he described Hunt as having a hairstyle different from the one he in fact had on Aug. 10.
There was no physical evidence to link Hunt to the crime. Tests made in an attempt to match blood types from fluid samples taken from Mrs. Sykes' body were inconclusive, a medical expert testified.
The defense testimony established an alibi for Hunt and attempted to discredit statements from some witnesses. Hunt himself took the stand and denied any part in Mrs. Sykes' death. He said that investigators offered to set him free and pay him $12,000 in reward money if he would implicate his friend Mitchell in the crime.
Mitchell also testified, corroborating testimony from Hunt and others that Hunt and Mitchell were at a house on South Dunleith Avenue at the time that Mrs. Sykes was killed.
Hunt's supporters -- at least 75 who have sat through all 14 days of the trial -- believed that the state did not present enough evidence for a conviction.
At least 13 armed guards watched the courtroom spectators as the verdict was read yesterday. Reports have said that up to 100 police in plain clothes were in the Hall of Justice and on rooftops downtown watching people's reaction to the verdict.
Although Hunt's supporters sat quietly in the courtroom, they burst through the double doors into the lobby after Cornelius recessed court.
Mitchell, whose name came up daily during the trial, had to be held back by at least seven friends when he learned about the verdict.
Mitchell had been waiting in the lobby outside the fifth-floor courtroom where the trial was held. When he saw his mother, Mattie, come out of the courtroom sobbing, Mitchell became upset. As he struggled to get free of the people restraining him, Alderman Larry Little and Patrick Hairston of the NAACP pleaded with Mitchell to leave the building. "Let's keep our heads. Let's just keep our heads," Little yelled above the sounds of people crying. "Let's go to church and pray."
Hunt's supporters have often met at Lloyd's Presbyterian Church at Seventh and Chestnut streets and went there to talk and pray before the sentencing hearing yesterday.
Many of Hunt's supporters, sobbing, ran down five flights of stairs to get to the church quickly. Several women collapsed and had to be carried outside. One screamed and kicked hysterically as two friends tried to restrain her.
"I can't believe this," another woman said as she sobbed. "I can't believe that black man (the juror) didn't see the lies."
Relatives of Mrs. Sykes' waited in a room on the fifth floor for the supporters and reporters to leave the Hall of Justice. They were relived that after 10 months someone finally had been held responsible for Mrs. Sykes' death.
"It was hard to sit there looking at him," Mrs. Jefferson said of the days she had spend seated on a bench 10 feet behind the defense table.
Mrs. Sykes' husband, Douglas, said that he is surprised jurors deliberated for as long as they did.
"I think they had a strong case," he said of the prosecutors. "I didn't think they would go that long."
Mrs. Jefferson praised Donald K. Tisdale, the district attorney who prosecuted the case.
"I thought you did a good job, considering what you had to work with," Mrs. Jefferson told Tisdale after the verdict.
Neither Tisdale nor Hunt's lawyers would comment on the jury's verdict.
When court reconvened at 2 p.m. yesterday, defense attorneys began calling witnesses hoping to convince jurors, who already have said that they believe in the death penalty, to sentence Hunt to life in prison.
"I won't argue about his innocence," said attorney Gordon Jenkins. "But I will argue that he is a person worth saving."
But Tisdale is pushing for the death penalty. "He is no longer the defendant or the suspect," Tisdale said. "He is the murderer."
The defense began its argument against the death penalty by interviewing a psychiatrist who testified that Hunt is a peaceful man and incapable of inflicting the brutal wounds that Mrs. Sykes received.
Dr. Sam Manoogian said that Hunt, who has an IQ of 77, never knew his father and was raised by friends. He learned one week before she was murdered, that the woman who visited him on weekends was his mother. Hunt was about 10 at the time.
When he was 12, the man who raised him died at their home. Hunt had to ball an ambulance and make funeral arrangements, Manoogian said.
Manoogian found no evidence, the said, that Hunt is psychotic. He also said Hunt adapts easily to structured environment like a jail and "can tolerate the repetitive nature of it."
Other witnesses testifying in Hunt's behalf were Allen H. Johnson III, the executive editor of the Winston-Salem Chronicle, and Alderman Larry W. Womble, both of whom visited Hunt in jail. They said that Hunt was clam while he maintained his innocence.
Hunt's step-sister, Juanita Johnson, said he often helped her pay bills and helped take care of her children.