Saturday, January 24, 2004
At the request of District Attorney Tom Keith, the Forsyth County Bar Association will set up a panel to review claims of innocence from inmates who request DNA testing in their cases.
Keith said yesterday that he asked for the review committee after new DNA evidence in the 1984 rape and murder of Deborah Sykes led to the release last month of Darryl Hunt.
“We don’t want to have another case like Darryl Hunt,” Keith said.
Hunt had maintained his innocence since his arrest in September 1984, but he was serving a life sentence until DNA testing led police last December to Willard Brown, who confessed to Sykes’ murder. According to the order allowing Hunt’s release on bond, Brown told the police that he acted alone.
A hearing next month will determine whether Hunt’s conviction will be overturned. A gag order prevents Keith from saying whether he will oppose overturning the conviction. But Hunt’s case clearly moved Keith to ask for the review panel.
“Tom, in response largely to what we learned in Darryl Hunt … thought we ought to make the same testing available to others,” said David Hall, an assistant district attorney. “If it exculpates, then we’re going to be the ones to file the motion and overturn the conviction.”
Hall presented Keith’s request to the bar association last week. The details have not been worked out, but members said they expect to approve the proposal in March.
The review panel would include defense and civil attorneys and possibly community representatives and police officers, and could be ready to review cases later in the spring. The panel also may recruit students from Winston-Salem State University and the law school at Wake Forest University to help with research. Attorneys praised Keith yesterday for a bold step, but cautioned that the panel would be limited in its scope, because it would review cases only where DNA testing is possible.
“I think it’s an excellent idea,” said Rich Rosen, a law professor at UNC Chapel Hill and a member of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission. “People on all sides of the criminal-justice system need to be concerned with looking at cases where we might have convicted innocent people. We need to understand that this will impact only a small percentage of innocent people in prison because it will only impact those cases in which there is something that can be tested, and that is only a tiny fraction of criminal cases.”
The Actual Innocence Commission, appointed by Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake of the N.C. Supreme Court, makes policy recommendations that could prevent wrongful convictions, but it does not review individual cases.
The law schools at Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. Central University and Campbell University run innocence projects, which review appeals from inmates.
Rosen and other lawyers interviewed yesterday said they knew of no other jurisdictions where a district attorney has asked for a local panel to review such claims.
“I think it’s important that we send a message to the community that all members of the bar association, whether prosecutors or defense lawyers, want to make sure that innocent people are not in prison,” said David Freedman, a local defense lawyer and president-elect of the local bar association.
Keith said he did not know how many of the 1,964 convicted inmates from Forsyth County might appeal their cases to the review panel, but only about 200 of those are murders and rapes, where DNA evidence might be available. State law already provides for inmates to request DNA testing in cases where the testing was not available at trial. Keith said that the proposed panel would speed that process.
Hunt’s attorney, Mark Rabil, said yesterday that he has been overwhelmed by calls from inmates who want him to help prove their innocence.
“I think it’s a good move by Tom to raise the issue,” Rabil said. “Ever since Darryl’s gotten out, I think I get a letter or a call every day from someone who thinks they’ve been railroaded.”
• Phoebe Zerwick can be reached at 727-7291 or at pzerwick@wsjournal.com