Wednesday, December 24, 2003
After 18 years in prison, Darryl Hunt was poised for freedom late yesterday, but the justice system kept him waiting at least one more day.
Hunt, twice convicted in the 1984 murder of Deborah Sykes, was seeking his release in the wake of DNA testing that identified a new suspect, Willard E. Brown.
Brown, 43, who appeared in Forsyth District Court earlier in the day, was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping and armed robbery.
Hunt's attorneys had filed a motion Monday in Forsyth Superior Court asking that he be freed immediately and that his murder conviction be overturned.
Hunt has been serving a life sentence at the Randolph Correctional Center in Asheboro in a case that has helped divide the city along racial lines since the crime occurred.
He was taken from Randolph to the Forsyth County Jail yesterday in anticipation of action on his attorney's motions. Little news was available for most of the day because a judge issued a gag order barring government officials from discussing the case.
Late yesterday, Tom Keith, Forsyth County's district attorney, emerged from meetings to issue a brief statement after speaking with investigators.
"We still have some more things to do,'' Keith said.
Mark Rabil, Hunt's longtime attorney, said he talked with Keith last night but could not discuss details.
"Darryl Hunt is an innocent man who continues to be exonerated by DNA evidence,'' Rabil said. "Once by testing that excluded him as the rapist and one that included the real rapist who is the sole rapist and killer in this case.
"There is no reason Darryl Hunt should be held in jail any further. We continue to be baffled by the fact that the state continues to hold him for a crime that someone else is obviously guilty of,'' Rabil said.
The news of the delay didn't go over well at Emmanuel Baptist Church, where many of Hunt's supporters had gathered.
"That's quite disappointing. I think that's really disappointing. I just don't know what's behind it,'' the Rev. John Mendez said. "We're just praying and still hoping he (Keith) will do the right thing."
Another Hunt supporter expressed some optimism.
"We're disappointed that it hasn't happened tonight, but we believe that Mr. Keith still has a historic and meaningful opportunity to make a major contribution to the healing of this city,'' said the Rev. Carlton Eversley of Dellabrook Presbyterian Church.
Earlier in the evening, in a telephone interview from the jail, Hunt said he had heard about Brown's arrest on the news, but he didn't know about the possibility of his release until a guard told him to pack his things yesterday morning.
"Basically I was trying not to get over-excited because we had been close before and let down," he said. "Everyone was basically wishing me luck, telling me this was finally it. They were praying for me, the guards and the inmates."
Hunt, who has maintained his innocence since his arrest a month after Sykes' killing, said he had rehearsed the moment of his release many times.
He said he was looking forward to praying at the Community Mosque of Winston-Salem and then going home to the house he has seen only in pictures. "I'm just curious to know how it's going to feel to walk in the door," Hunt said.
His wife, April, said she left work early yesterday, unable to concentrate. She just wanted to see her husband, she said.
Hunt and his wife married three years ago in a prison service. They met when he was out on bond in 1990 awaiting his second trial, but up until now their married life has been limited to weekly trips to the group visitation room at the prison.
Last night, after waiting with Hunt's attorney at his office, she hurried home to pick out a shirt, slacks and a leather jacket she had bought for Darryl and took them with her to the church.
"I think it's ridiculous," she said last night of the delay. "They're trying to hold onto him and won't let him go."
But Sykes' mother, Evelyn Jefferson, said last night that she hoped officials would not make "a hasty decision regarding his (Hunt's) release."
Sykes, 25, was raped and stabbed to death on Aug. 10, 1984, while on her way to work at The Sentinel, Winston-Salem's afternoon newspaper that closed in 1985.
An eight-part series in the Winston-Salem Journal last month documented problems with the case against Hunt, showing that police used questionable tactics and witnesses to focus on Hunt as a suspect. The series also explained how authorities changed their theory on the crime after DNA evidence showed in 1994 and again in 1995 that Hunt did not rape Sykes. The original prosecutor, Don Tisdale, said that he probably would have dropped the charges against Hunt had the DNA evidence been available.
Another round of DNA testing was ordered in April by Judge Anderson Cromer of Superior Court, at the request of Hunt's attorneys. The idea was to see if the DNA from the semen could be matched against samples in state or federal databases of DNA from violent felons.
The initial search provided a close match, and further testing at a lab in Alabama ruled out that suspect, who sources said is Brown's brother. The DNA, apparently, was close or had some similarities to that found at the crime scene. Investigators began to look at the Brown family.
The investigation is being conducted by Detective Mike Rowe of the Winston-Salem Police Department, which asked for assistance from the SBI. Agent Scott Williams was assigned to help Rowe.
"Neither of these detectives was familiar with or had participated in any aspect of the previous investigations," according to a joint statement Monday by Keith, the police and the SBI.
The investigators began to look at Brown, who was being held in the Forsyth County Jail on minor drug and trespassing charges. He was not in the state's DNA database, officials said.
They got a DNA sample from Brown and sent it to the SBI lab in Raleigh, which determined that it was a match to evidence collected in the Sykes rape.
Brown made his first court appearance yesterday before Judge William Graham of Forsyth District Court. Wearing an orange jumpsuit, chains and leg irons, Brown listened as the four charges against him were read.
Brown could face the death penalty if convicted. If he is found guilty but not sentenced to death, he would eventually be eligible for parole because the crime occurred before the state imposed mandatory life sentences in 1994 for people convicted of first-degree murder who are not sentenced to death.
Brown's attorney, Forsyth Public Defender Pete Clary, would not comment on the case against his client.
The revelations of a DNA match to Brown could also have implications for Sammy Mitchell, a friend and co-defendant of Hunt's who was never tried for the crimes against Sykes. Mitchell is in prison serving a 50-year sentence for an unrelated murder conviction. An attorney for Mitchell, Laurel Boyles, said they would follow up on the news of the DNA match.
On Friday, Keith said he believed that Brown might be a third suspect in the killing. That angered several black ministers in Winston-Salem and Hunt's supporters, who said that Keith was continuing to ignore compelling evidence that Hunt might be innocent.
Police and prosecutors had known since 1994 that the semen found at the crime scene was not from Hunt. But the news that Sykes was raped by a man who police had not focused on in their two investigations of the case was enough for Hunt's supporters to again call for him to be exonerated.
Also Monday, Mayor Allen Joines and several Winston-Salem City Council members expressed concern about whether the city police could adequately handle the case and suggested that the SBI take the lead in the investigation, or take it over completely.
The city's marketing and communications office issued a written statement on behalf of Joines and the council, saying that they have "the utmost confidence in the professionalism of the Winston-Salem Police Department."
Little, a Hunt supporter who is a former city alderman, worked all weekend with area ministers to keep the pressure on law enforcement and the DA's office. He said he spoke with Keith late Monday night. He said that Keith asked him to hold off on further criticism and give him 24 hours to "work things out."
Sykes was a copy editor who was raped and stabbed 16 times as she walked to work early in the morning. Because dispatchers mishandled a 911 call, police did not find her body until six hours later.
Rabil's wife convinced him to fly home from a family vacation early yesterday to be here in expectation of his client's release. "You need to be there for closure," he said she told him.
• Patrick Wilson can be reached at (336) 727-7286 or at pwilson@wsjournal.com
• Phoebe Zerwick can be reached at 727-7291 or at pzerwick@wsjournal.com
• Journal reporters Michael Hewlett and Paul Garber contributed to this report.