Friday, December 26, 2003
Judge Anderson Cromer of Forsyth Superior Court did the right thing on Christmas Eve when he released Darryl Hunt from jail on an unsecured $250,000 bond. After the new suspect in the rape and murder of Deborah Sykes confessed to the crime and told officials that he acted alone, the case against Hunt - a case always marred by errors, questionable witnesses and contradictions - unraveled. While authorities are right to investigate thoroughly and let the legal process play out, there is no longer any justification for keeping Hunt in prison.
Hunt has already spent 18 years of a life sentence in prison. Sykes, a 25-year-old copy editor for The Sentinel newspaper, was raped and stabbed to death on her way to work in downtown Winston-Salem early on the morning of Aug. 10, 1984. The investigation of the crime was bungled from the beginning. Even though various witnesses gave contradictory accounts of what they saw, there was never any question that Sykes, who was white, was accosted by at least one black man. Hunt was never charged with the rape, and two tests in the mid-1990s comparing Hunt's DNA with semen found in Sykes showed that the semen was not his.
The case has long been a divisive one in Winston-Salem, stirring racial resentment and suspicion. Hunt has had many supporters who believed that authorities built the case against him mainly because they wanted a conviction in such a high-profile crime. Hunt, 19 at the time, with few resources and a record of trouble with the law, was convenient. On the other side were many people who were convinced that even if Hunt was not the rapist, he was present and involved in some way. That conviction was shared by prosecutors, who capitalized on conflicting eyewitness testimony about how many black men were seen with a white woman that morning. A series in the Journal last month outlined problems in the case, including the way that prosecutors changed their theory about what happened as new evidence emerged.
The new suspect identified by fresh DNA testing is someone not previously mentioned publicly in connection with the case, however. According to the judge's order releasing Hunt, Willard E. Brown, who has been charged with rape, murder, armed robbery and kidnapping, "spontaneously confessed to the murder of Deborah Sykes" while he was being booked. The order also says that Brown said that Hunt was not involved and that Brown expressed "remorse that the Darryl Hunt conviction has divided the community."
Hunt and his supporters understandably would rather that he had been freed outright, without the necessity of bond and the prospect of a new date in court on Feb. 6. Now that he is out of prison, however, proceeding cautiously is wise. Authorities will have time for further investigation, which might enable them to answer once and for all any lingering suggestions that Hunt was even peripherally involved.
The truth - all of it - is what everyone should want. Hunt's conviction never closed the case, because it has long been known that someone else was, at least, the rapist. Sykes' family and the community should want nothing more now than to know that the right person is being held accountable for her death. And no one should want a man to be imprisoned for a crime that he did not commit.