Monday, December 22, 2003
District Attorney Tom Keith of Forsyth County yesterday defended his handling of a new suspect in the 1984 murder of Deborah Sykes, while attorneys for the man imprisoned for the crime prepared to file a court motion asking that their client be freed.
Darryl Hunt's attorneys said they will ask a superior-court judge to free Hunt because police have another suspect in the murder of Sykes, for which Hunt has spent 18 years in prison.
State authorities said Friday that the state crime lab discovered a DNA match between semen found in the Sykes case and the new suspect.
Investigators with the Winston-Salem Police Department and State Bureau of Investigation said they are looking at the new suspect in the Sykes case. But Keith said yesterday that he still considers the case against Hunt to be closed.
Hunt's supporters "are saying it exonerates him, and I'm saying it may or may not," Keith said.
The man considered the new suspect, law-enforcement sources have said, is Willard Elliot Brown, 43. He is being held in the Forsyth County Jail on minor drug and trespassing charges that are unrelated to the rape and murder; he is in protective custody and is allowed no visitors at the request of the Winston-Salem Police Department.
Hunt's attorneys will ask a judge to grant a request first made in January that the murder conviction against Hunt be dismissed and that he be released, said Mark Rabil, Hunt's lead attorney.
If the judge denies the request, a second part of the motion asks that Hunt be freed on bail while the case is being investigated and that a hearing be held on whether Hunt should be freed, Rabil said.
The motion also will ask for access to any written or recorded statements made about the case by Brown, and copies of SBI crime lab reports, Rabil said.
Sykes was raped and stabbed to death on Aug. 10, 1984, as she was on her way to work as a copy editor at The Sentinel, the afternoon newspaper in Winston-Salem that closed in 1985. Hunt has twice been convicted of murder in the case.
Hunt has maintained his innocence. An eight-part series in the Winston-Salem Journal last month showed how the police have long relied on questionable witnesses and tactics as they pursued the case against Hunt, and adjusted their theory of the crime to fit DNA evidence when it became available, rather than reinvestigate the case.
Hunt's supporters yesterday called on Keith and the police department to remove themselves from the investigation and turn it over to the State Bureau of Investigation and another prosecutor.
Keith said he agrees that the initial police investigation in 1984 was flawed, but he said much has changed since then. He said that Winston-Salem police detectives are experienced in criminal investigations and qualified to continue handling the case.
"If we shirked from our duties every time we were criticized, we would be writing traffic tickets," Keith said.
Brown was picked out of a lineup but was never prosecuted in a rape that occurred six months after the murder of Sykes.
A man with a gun raped and stabbed a woman after kidnapping her downtown near the area where Sykes was killed.
Police said they believed that Brown was in prison on the day that Sykes was killed, and did not pursue him as a suspect in her death.
Investigators recently learned that Brown actually was not in prison that day, and that his DNA matches the DNA of the semen found in the Sykes killing.
According to N.C. Department of Correction records, Brown was released to parole from the Forsyth Correctional Center on June 14, 1984.
Keith repeated yesterday a statement he made Friday, that authorities believe that the new suspect is a third person who they have previously said they believe was involved in the attack on Sykes.
The "third-person'' theory began to be discussed during Hunt's second trial in 1989. The semen sample taken from Sykes, however, has not matched any of the people who the authorities have theorized were involved in the crime, including Hunt, his friend Sammy Mitchell or Johnny Gray, a witness who called 911 but who came to be regarded as a possible suspect.
Rabil said he talked to Hunt about Brown, and said that Hunt indicated that he did not recognize the name.
"He says that he had never heard of him, and doesn't know him," Rabil said.
"Not having any photographs or anything, I couldn't ask him whether he had even seen him before."
Rabil and Keith were at odds on another issue, as well.
Rabil said that Keith violated an agreement among a judge, Hunt's defense, and law-enforcement authorities when he notified news media Friday night about the new DNA results.
Keith said yesterday that no such agreement existed, and that he would never enter into an agreement that required him to withhold information that a new suspect had been identified.
Keith defended his decision to notify the news media, saying that because of the years of racial tensions in the case, he did not want Hunt's supporters to believe that his office was covering up new information.
Rabil said he expects that Judge Anderson Cromer will handle the motions he would be filing.
Rabil also said he was disturbed that Brown has not been allowed any visitors.
Sheriff Bill Schatzman, whose office runs the Forsyth County Jail, said that Brown is in protective custody "to protect the integrity of the investigation and to protect the inmate."
Rabil said he is worried that Winston-Salem police will offer Brown leniency in return for testimony, or ask questions that will allow Brown to point a finger at Hunt.
Rabil said he does not know if police or SBI investigators have interviewed Brown, or taken any statements from him. He also said that it is uncommon for a jail inmate to be allowed no visitors.
"I've never heard of that," Rabil said.
"The way we read that is, they don't want Darryl Hunt's attorneys or investigators ... to talk to (Brown) and find out what's going on."
• Patrick Wilson can be reached at 727-7286 or at pwilson@wsjournal.com
• Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com