Saturday, December 18, 2004
City officials said yesterday that they plan to proceed with a review of the Winston-Salem Police Department's investigation into the 1984 rape and killing of Deborah Sykes now that Willard E. Brown, the man charged last year with Sykes' murder, has pleaded guilty to the crime.
Officials announced earlier this year that the city manager's office would investigate the police department's handling of the case. A Winston-Salem man, Darryl Hunt, was twice convicted of the crime and served 18 years in prison before DNA testing identified Brown as a suspect last December and led to Hunt's freedom.
As part of the review by the city manager's office, the Winston-Salem City Council decided to involve the public by appointing a citizens advisory committee.
However, the new review was put on hold when Forsyth County's district attorney, Tom Keith, said he could not allow use of case documents because it could jeopardize the prosecution of Brown.
Brown pleaded guilty Thursday in Forsyth Superior Court to first-degree murder, first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping and common-law robbery.
"Now that it's over, I assume we can start ... taking our own serious look at what took place," said City Council Member Vivian Burke, who pushed for the review and the committee.
Burke said that citizen involvement in the review is important to let people know that "we do not have anything to hide and we must be able to critique what we do."
The review is expected to look at Sykes' murder and another downtown rape in which Brown was a suspect, as well as related investigations. The review is also expected to include an evaluation of the police department's current operations, including case-management procedures and safeguards.
"We will be looking at the whole criminal investigation division and how we do business today," said Assistant City Manager Lee Garrity, who is in charge of the review. "It's also very important to assure our citizens that we're doing everything the best way and the right way now."
Keith could not be reached for comment yesterday. In an April 22 letter, he told city officials not to allow anyone other than the investigators assigned to the case and his staff to have access to the files while the case was still open. He said he would release the files after Brown's conviction.
"Of course, as soon as Mr. Brown is convicted I have no problem releasing all of the documentation used at his trial," Keith wrote in the letter. "The remaining documentation will have been reviewed by us then and can be made available to the whole world. You can put it on a website thereafter."
Garrity said that based on Keith's letter, city officials believe they can now go ahead with the review.
Garrity said that the first step will be coming up with an application process for the citizen committee. According to a resolution adopted by the city council in April, the committee will have a maximum of seven members with no connections to the Sykes case. At least two members must have legal or criminal-justice experience, and one member must be from the city's Human Relations Commission.
The city council will appoint the members, and the committee will hold public meetings, be briefed on progress in the city manager's review and provide recommendations for the final report.
This is the second review of the Sykes case by the city manager's office. In 1985, City Manager Bill Stuart's office looked at the way that police handled the Sykes case and found mistakes in the department's investigation. A detective was demoted, and two supervisors were given sanctions. The goal of the second review is to make sure nothing else happened that the city doesn't know about and to reinstate the public's trust in the department, Burke said earlier this year.
Sykes, 25, was raped and killed on Aug. 10, 1984.
• Lisa Hoppenjans can be reached at 727-7232 or at lhoppenjans@wsjournal.com
• The Journal's eight-part series on the Darryl Hunt case is available at http://darrylhunt.journalnow.com