DNA test that fail to connect Darryl hunt and two other prime suspects to the murder of Deborah Sykes aren't enough to win hunt a third trial, Judge Melzer A. Morgan Jr. ruled yesterday.
Anger and tears flowed from the dozens of Hunt supporters who have fought a 10-year battle to prove his innocence. Defense attorney Mark Rabil called Morgan's ruling "fairly ridiculous."
The Rev. John Mendez said that evidence doesn't seem to be a factor in the case anymore.
"It's clearly an act of arrogance that is reflected in racism," he said.
Throughout its history, the Hunt case has deepened racial divisions in Winston-Salem. Supporters have said that Hunt has been railroaded because police were too quick to arrest a black man and charge him with a white woman's murder.
Sykes' body was found in a field off west End Boulevard on Aug. 10, 1984. She was raped and killed on her way to work at The Sentinel, a now-defunct newspaper.
Hunt was convicted of first-degree murder in 1985 and was awarded a new trial in 1989. In 1990, jurors convicted him again. He is serving a life prison sentence.
After Morgan's decision, District Attorney Tom Keith reversed the earlier contention of his assistant, Eric Saunders, who had argued on Monday that the DNA test must have been somehow contaminated.
Keith said that he believes the tests are valid and that he will now try to determine who left sperm in Sykes before she was killed - in hopes that the person will bolster the case against Hunt and his co-defendant, Sammy Mitchell. Mitchell has never been tried.
Morgan's decision will now go to the N.C. Supreme Court, which already has Hunt's appeal. Christie Cameron, the court clerk, said that the court will try to rule before three justices step down on Jan. 1.
Two justices were defeated in recent elections, and Chief Justice James Exum is retiring. the new, more conservative court is expected to be less receptive to murder appeals.
If the current court is unable to decide the appeal by Dec. 31, the new court may need to rehear some arguments, Cameron said.
Mendez, the Rev. Carlton Eversley, former Alderman Larry Little, Khalid Griggs and other supporters vowed to continue their fight for Hunt.
During the hearing, Mendez called Morgan, Keith and Saunders "evil, ungodly people," and bailiffs made him leave the courtroom.
Some of the supporters gathered at Emmanuel Baptist Church, where Mendez is the pastor. They announced they will hold a meeting to discuss Hunt at 7 p.m. Thursday at Dellabrook Presbyterian, where Eversley is the pastor.
Morgan's 12-page order said DNA tests showing that Hunt wasn't the source of sperm found in Sykes' body would not have changed the guilty verdict in Hunt's 1990 trial.
"The newly discovered evidence only establishes that the defendant did not deposit this sperm in the victim," Morgan said. "It does not eliminate the defendant from other participation, even more limited sexual participation."
Morgan considered the fact that jurors used four theories to convict Hunt of first-degree murder: participation in rape, sex offense, robbery and kidnapping. Under state law, any killing during another felony is first-degree murder.
"The newly discovered evidence does not bear on kidnapping or robbery or homicide," Morgan said. "While the state's theory on rape and sexual offense is somewhat weakened by the DNA evidence, its case overall is not fatally flawed."
Prosecutors had argued for years that Hunt had acted with Mitchell and possibly others. Prosecutors and Hunt's supporters have said that Johnny Gray, also known as Johnny McConnell, was probably involved. Gray called police on the morning of the killing to say he had witnessed the crime.
DNA tests performed at Roche Biomedical Laboratories last week found that sperm from Sykes' body didn't belong to Hunt, Mitchell, Gray, or Sykes' husband, Douglas Sykes.
Keith said that initially he was stunned by the news that the DNA wasn't Mitchell's after defense tests ruled out Hunt, but he said that after a few days of thought he began to view the case differently.
"I think our case is stronger now than it was before, because it can give us another person who can give us information that is not exculpatory," he said.
"We've got all the pieces, and we've got the puzzle almost finished. We got another piece that looked like it came from another puzzle ... and then we turned it over intellectually and decided we could make it fit," he said.
George Bedsworth, one of two attorneys appointed to represent Mitchell in what prosecutors have said will probably be a death-penalty case, said he disagrees with Morgan and Keith but will wait for the N.C. Supreme Court's ruling before taking any action in Mitchell's case.
"It seems to me that the state's case is reduced to conjecture that perhaps a fourth unknown person was involved," Bedsworth said.
Bedsworth said Morgan shouldn't have separated the felonies of robbery and kidnapping from the rape and sex-offense felony-murder theories. "You can't look at those verdicts with blinders on and ignore the theories that they used to reach those verdicts," he said.
Appellate attorney Benjamin Sendor will now defend Hunt before the Supreme Court. "It gets like a farce after a while. How many times can they desperately change their theories?" he said.