Saturday, February 07, 2004
In the end, Darryl Hunt's long imprisonment in connection with the 1984 rape and murder of Deborah Sykes was a case of mistaken identity.
Another man killed her, the police and prosecutors said yesterday. And most importantly, that man acted alone.
The words that ended the ordeal for Hunt, who has spent half his 38 years in prison, were simple.
"I grant the relief requested by both the defendant and the state to vacate this judgment," said Judge Anderson Cromer of Superior Court. "And furthermore with the consent of both parties, we will dismiss this case with prejudice."
With that, Mark Rabil, Hunt's attorney, whispered in his ear: "It's all over."
And suddenly, Hunt said later, he was overcome by the emotions that he had kept at bay for the last 19 years. He stood to speak to the judge, squeezing out the words.
"It's hard for me,'' he said, stopping to collect himself.
"Twenty years I've been trying to prove my innocence. Thank you. I give thanks to God and thanks to this court."
Sykes' family listened to the new evidence in the case, but said they don't believe that it outweighs the evidence from the eyewitnesses at two trials who placed Hunt at the crime scene.
Sykes' mother, Evelyn Jefferson, and her husband, Douglas Sykes, traveled to the hearing from outside Chattanooga, Tenn., to tell the court that it would be a travesty to exonerate Hunt.
Minutes later, in one of the most emotional moments of the morning, Hunt turned to face Jefferson.
"Mrs. Jefferson,'' he said, his voice breaking with emotion, "I had nothing to do with your daughter's (death). I wasn't involved. I know it's hard. I just ask that you and your family know that in my heart and my prayers ... that you are in my prayers.
"I feel the pain you felt.... I didn't do it. I wasn't there. I can't explain why people say what they did and why they lied. Only God can.''
About 250 people came to hear the court admit that a mistake had been made. Supporters filled the seats
in the courtroom and spilled into an extra room where the proceedings were broadcast by closed-circuit television.
As the judge read the order, there was applause among the spectators in the extra courtroom, with some rising
to their feet.
Scott Williams, an agent with the State Bureau of Investigation, and Mike Rowe, a Winston-Salem police detective, testified that after a month spent investigating the confession by the man now charged with the crime, Willard E. Brown, they believe that Hunt had no part in the attack on Sykes.
Brown, 43, was identified late last year through DNA testing. When confronted by the police, he confessed to the crime and said he acted alone. Brown has been charged with murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping. His next court date has not been set.
In his motion to vacate the judgment against Hunt, District Attorney Tom Keith laid out the evidence in support of Hunt's exoneration. Keith, too, concluded that Brown acted alone Aug. 10, 1984, the morning that Sykes was raped and stabbed to death on her way to work in downtown Winston-Salem.
A dismissal with prejudice means that Hunt can never be tried in the murder again. Keith said he will also dismiss charges against Sammy Mitchell, a friend of Hunt's who was charged with Sykes' murder in 1990 but never tried.
Hunt had expected to be freed 10 years ago, after DNA testing ruled him out as the source of the semen evidence
in the case. He was wrong. A Superior Court judge said that the DNA was not enough to even require a third
trial, and appeals courts upheld that decision.
It wasn't until the DNA testing, ordered last spring at the request of Hunt's attorneys, linked Brown to the crime late last year that Keith reopened the case.
"It is our opinion," Keith said yesterday, "that Willard Brown committed the murder and he acted alone."
When asked later whether Hunt was owed an apology, Keith said it would be difficult to know who should apologize.
"We can apologize for the system to no end," Keith said. "I'm sorry for what happened to him."
He noted that Hunt has said in interviews that he is not looking for an apology.
"I'll respect his wishes," Keith said.
The police officers who investigated Hunt in 1984, 1986 and 1990 all declined comment or did not return phone calls. But outgoing Police Chief Linda Davis and her successor, Pat Norris, both said they support Hunt's exoneration.
"We in law enforcement are the first persons who would not have someone in jail who did not commit the crime," Norris said. "I'm just glad that he has been released and that his record has been expunged."
Keith's motion and testimony from Williams and Rowe provide the first detailed glimpse of the events that led to Hunt's release from prison Dec. 24. on an unsecured bond .
On Nov. 24, the SBI crime lab found a partial match in its database of convicted offenders between the DNA evidence in the case and one of Brown's brothers, Anthony Brown, 36, but that test was inconclusive. In early December, an SBI lab technician flew to Alabama with the DNA evidence to work with the state crime lab there, which conclusively ruled out Anthony Brown.
Rowe said he was familiar with the police department's file on Willard Brown, who had been a suspect in a second downtown rape in February 1985.
In late December, Willard Brown was being held in the Forsyth County Jail on a misdemeanor probation violation and was set to be released within days. Rowe and Williams were able to get a DNA sample from him, and it was a perfect match with the Sykes evidence.
In Keith's motion to vacate Hunt's conviction, he makes note of the physical similarities between Hunt and Brown. Both were dark-skinned black men. Brown was 24 and Hunt was 19 at the time of the murder. Brown was 5 feet 7 and weighed 130 pounds in 1986 when he was questioned by police; Hunt is 5 feet 10 and weighed about 150 pounds in 1984.
When Rowe and Williams first questioned him in December, Brown denied any role in the crime. But when police charged him on Dec. 22, he began to confess as he was being booked.
"When we reached this juncture he said to myself and agent Williams, he said was sorry," Rowe testified. "He said he was sorry for Deborah Sykes, sorry for Darryl Hunt, sorry for Sammy Mitchell and sorry for the community."
The investigators took Brown to the crime scene on West End Boulevard that afternoon, and the account he gave matched the accounts provided by other eyewitnesses to the crime. He told investigators that he stabbed Sykes with a pen-knife, and that he fled when two men walked by.
Those two men told investigators back in 1984 that they saw a black person and a white person fighting on the hillside, but they didn't stop because they assumed they were vagrants. Brown also told investigators that he ran toward the fire station, which is exactly what a third witness, Johnny Gray, told police in 1984.
"Would you agree with Mr. Rowe's assessment that Willard Brown is the lone killer in this case and Darryl Hunt is not involved?" Rabil asked.
"Yes sir, I would," Williams replied.
Mistakes made
Sykes had worked at The Sentinel newspaper just five weeks when she was murdered in August 1984. She and her husband, both raised in Iredell County, had just made an offer on a house in King, and they were anxious to move back to North Carolina from Chattanooga.
Copy editors at the afternoon newspaper started their day at 6 a.m. The morning of her death, Sykes parked her car on West End Boulevard, a two-block walk from the newspaper's office. Her co-workers worried when she didn't arrive on time. They called her husband, who drove to town that morning, looking for her. And her mother came, too, from Eden.
They both sat through both of Hunt's trials, and this week they both made the seven-hour drive from Chattanooga. Douglas Sykes sat perfectly still throughout the hearing, until rising to speak to the court. Jefferson took notes on the back of her copy of Keith's motion before she, too, rose to oppose Hunt's release.
"I am Deborah Sykes' mother, and I've lived with this 19 years," she said, her voice rising in anger.
Police botched a 911 call at 6:50 the morning Sykes was killed, and it wasn't until after 1 that afternoon that a passerby found her body.
The 911 call was the first clue in the case. But the caller, Gray, lied and told police he was Sammy Mitchell, a man who was known to police because of his long arrest record. When police went looking for Mitchell that night, they met Hunt, who spent most of his time that summer hanging around with Mitchell.
Police arrested Hunt a month after the murder on the strength of two eyewitness identifications. They never had any physical evidence to tie him to the crime, but several eyewitnesses testified that he was at or near the scene. He was convicted in 1985, and after his first conviction was overturned on a technicality, he was convicted again in 1990.
Hunt maintained his innocence from the start. In 1990, he turned down a plea bargain that would have freed him, saying he would not plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit.
"From Day One I told him (Rabil) I was innocent and the question has always been, was anyone listening?" Hunt told his supporters at an afternoon press conference at Emmanuel Baptist Church. "And today confirmed that someone was listening."
A role for race
From the start, race played a role in the way the case was prosecuted and perceived. At his first trial, then-District Attorney Don Tisdale excused all but one black juror. Hunt's second trial was moved to Catawba County, where an all-white jury convicted him again.
Hunt's case continues to divide the public, as it has since his arrest.
At the McDonald's restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, one mention of the Hunt case sparked a lively debate yesterday.
"They made a hasty decision and wanted to pin it on somebody to satisfy one half of the community," said Woodrow Haney Jr. "From here on out, they need to get the right man."
Carl Rice, however, said he still thinks Hunt knows more about what happened that day.
"I thought all along that he didn't rape her, but he knows something about what happened," Rice said.
Hunt's exoneration makes him the 141st man across the country to be cleared by DNA evidence.
His next step likely will be a request for Gov. Mike Easley to formally pardon him. Such a step is required under state law for Hunt to collect remuneration for his years in prison. He stands to receive $360,000 if the pardon is granted, $20,000 a year for each of his 18 years behind bars.
Ernie Seneca, a spokesman for Easley, said yesterday that the governor would give Hunt's request every consideration.
"It'll get a thorough review, and that takes time," Seneca said.
For now, Hunt will have to settle for Keith's motion and the testimony from the police and SBI that Brown committed the crime by himself.
"In this day and age, the statements from the SBI and Winston-Salem police chief are the closest thing one gets to an admission that Darryl Hunt is absolutely innocent of the crime," said Steve Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern University.
"Hopefully, perhaps after the new defendant is prosecuted, there will be a more formal and public apology issued and an analysis of both how this tragic mistake occurred and how it can be prevented in the future."
• Phoebe Zerwick can be reached at 727-7291 or at pzerwick@wsjournal.com
• Paul Garber can be reached at 727-7302 or at pgarber@wsjournal.com
• Journal reporters Michael Hewlett, Victoria Cherrie, Patrick Wilson, Pinky Kansupada and Titan Barksdale contributed to this story.