Thursday, March 18, 2004
The city faces few more important and difficult tasks in the months ahead than a careful review of the Darryl Hunt case to ensure that the mistakes made in it will never be repeated. Yet, as it stands now, the reviewers will be city workers themselves, and that's a mistake.
Winston-Salem needs a review free of potential bias to find out how and why its police investigators pursued a murder conviction against Hunt in the 1984 stabbing of Deborah Sykes, then stuck by their belief that he was guilty, despite mounting evidence that their deeply flawed work had led to the imprisonment of the wrong man. Hunt was finally exonerated last month after almost 19 years in prison. He is black and Sykes was white, and racial tensions from the case still hang over the city.
Vivian Burke, the chairwoman of the city council committee overseeing the review, says the city will hire an outside agency if it finds the internal review lacking. But by then it may well be too late.
The city budget is strapped, and it would be far cheaper for police officials and members of the city manager's staff to review the case, as is the plan now. Hiring a consultant to do the work would cost from $300,000 to $500,000, city officials say.
But a city trying to revitalize itself can't afford to spare expenses on this matter. The review needs to finally answer all the questions the case left and bring those blacks and whites divided by it together. Businesses considering relocating focus on cities with reputations for good race relations. A committee addressing race relations in the wake of the case has already been meeting, but the review is just as important for race relations.
Public safety is at stake as well. DNA testing has led to charges against a new defendant in Sykes' killing, a man who was free for much of 20 years until he was arrested in December.
The city has already had one internal investigation of this case years ago that led to the demotion of one detective and sanctions for two supervisors. But that review didn't free Hunt or find the real killer. Nor did follow-up investigations by city police and the SBI. And although city officials say their new review would be an unbiased one led by officers and city officials who weren't involved in the original case, there's still the potential for bias in favor of co-workers, or at least the potential for that perception.
The city council can invoke limited subpoena power for the review, and it should do so to reach witnesses who might not come forward otherwise. There's a chance the review would produce evidence that tends to cast Hunt in a negative light. That evidence, just as the rest of the evidence produced, should be shared with taxpayers.
An outside agency could meet these challenges better than city workers. Perhaps the city's largest nonprofits, corporations and churches could help with the cost of hiring the outside agency. All the good city police officers who stand in the shadows of a few misguided investigators need to put this case behind them. So do Hunt and Sykes' survivors. And so does a city trying to revitalize itself.