RICHMOND -- The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday denied Darryl Hunt's request for a new trial, ruling that DNA test results don't exonerate Hunt in the death of a Winston-Salem woman in 1984.
The three-judge panel upheld a 1998 ruling from a federal district-court judge who denied Hunt's request for a new trial.
Hunt, formerly of Winston-Salem, is serving a life sentence for his conviction in the death of Deborah Sykes. Sykes was raped, sodomized and stabbed to death on Aug. 10, 1984, while she was on her way to work. She was an editor at The Sentinel, the Journal's sister newspaper that closed in 1985.
Mark Rabil, one of Hunt's attorneys, said he will appeal Hunt's conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court within two months.
Rabil said he was disappointed with the ruling. He said that a jury should be allowed to consider whether the DNA evidence clears Hunt. He had also argued that prosecutors failed to turn over documents that contradicted the testimony of some key witnesses.
But the federal judges disagreed with Rabil. They ruled that DNA results aren't enough to justify a new trial for Hunt and that the documents didn't provide sufficient reason for a new trial.
Hunt has been convicted twice in Sykes' death. He was tried and convicted in 1985, then won an appeal after a judge ruled that invalid evidence was presented at that trial.
A second jury convicted Hunt in 1990.
A second man, Sammy Mitchell, was indicted in the killing. Mitchell, whose indictment was handed down before Hunt's second trial, has not been tried in Sykes' killing. He is serving a 50-year sentence on a second-degree murder conviction in a man's beating death.
DNA tests performed in 1984 ruled out Hunt or Mitchell as the source of the semen from the rape. An appeals-court judge ruled, however, that DNA evidence didn't eliminate Hunt as Sykes' killer or even as a participant in the rape.
The federal panel agreed with that reasoning.
Clarence Delforge, the assistant state attorney general for North Carolina, and District Attorney Tom Keith could not be reached to comment on the latest ruling.
In his oral argument to the federal judges, Delforge said that another trial for Hunt would probably result in Hunt's conviction. Hunt received a fair trial and his conviction should not be overturned, he said.
Hunt's trials resulted in deep racial divisions in the city. Many blacks maintain that Hunt was railroaded by prosecutors and police and was convicted on weak evidence.