THE DARRYL HUNT CASE

Report from 2004:

Gov. Mike Easley pardoned Darryl Hunt yesterday in the 1984 rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, proclaiming Hunt innocent of the crime for which he served 18 years in prison. The pardon entitles Hunt to $20,000 for each year he was wrongly imprisoned, or about $360,000. Coming more than two months after a Superior Court judge vacated the murder conviction in the case, the pardon also gives him another chance to clear his name, Hunt said. "Finally, my innocence is recognized," Hunt said in an interview at his home, "in the sense that for so many years I have been trying to prove my innocence only to be told I was lying, and to finally have it official means a lot."

Easley issued a brief news release about 5:30 p.m., after notifying Sykes' mother and Hunt's attorney of his decision. "After careful, extensive review and consideration, I am granting a pardon of innocence for Darryl Eugene Hunt," Easley said in a statement. "This pardon exonerates Mr. Hunt of his October 1990 first-degree murder conviction. All parties have been notified of this decision and the facts and circumstances surrounding this case.".....

Hunt was freed Dec. 24 after DNA testing in the Sykes case identified the new suspect, Willard Brown, who authorities said later confessed to having committed the crime by himself. Brown has since been charged with murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery. No court date has been set for Brown, who is being held without bond.

Tom Keith, Forsyth County's district attorney, praised Easley's decisiveness on the pardon. "He knows it's a tough case, and he made a quick decision," Keith said last night. "I don't think there's anything he could do but that. "I think it was quickly done - in Mike's case, probably courageously," he said. "He could have waited until his last day in office. Politically, there's fallout on both sides."

Easley and his legal counsel, Reuben Young, declined to discuss the case yesterday. But the three-page document granting the pardon makes it clear that Easley accepts the recent developments in the case. He refers to testimony at Hunt's court hearing in February by Detective Mike Rowe of the Winston-Salem Police Department and Scott Williams, an agent with the State Bureau of Investigation, who both said that there is no longer any evidence that Hunt was involved in the rape or murder of Sykes.....

The Sykes murder and imprisonment of Hunt has long raised questions, largely along racial lines. Many people believe that Hunt was wrongly singled out in the brutal attack, while others believe that Hunt, who was found guilty by two juries, received special consideration because his supporters always raised race as an issue. The police never had any physical evidence to tie Hunt to Sykes' death, which occurred after she parked her car on West End Boulevard about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, 1984.

The police relied on eyewitnesses, including a man named Johnny Gray, who first called 911 to report the attack using a false name - that of Sammy Mitchell, a friend of Hunt's. When Gray came forward to acknowledge making the call two weeks later, he identified not Hunt, but another man as the attacker. And that person was in jail at the time. Authorities later came to believe that Gray himself may have been involved in the attack on Sykes.

After being convicted at his first trial in 1985 in Forsyth County, where one black man served on the jury, Hunt won a second trial. That trial, in 1990, was moved to Catawba County, and an all-white jury convicted him a second time. He appealed that conviction, arguing first that prosecutors had withheld evidence and later that the DNA evidence developed in 1994 - excluding him as the source of semen found on Sykes - entitled him to a third trial. Hunt lost his last appeal in federal court in 2000. Judges ruled that the fact the DNA evidence did not match Hunt did not necessarily exclude him from having participated in the attack on Sykes.

Further testing of the semen sample showed that it failed to match Mitchell or Gray, the state's two other suspects in the case. Neither prosecutors nor police ever ordered a new investigation to try to find the person responsible for raping Sykes. Last April, a Superior Court judge approved, without opposition from Keith, a request to compare the DNA evidence in the case against state and federal databases of convicted felons.

An eight-part series by the Winston-Salem Journal last November documented flaws in the case against Hunt, showing that police used questionable tactics and witnesses to focus on him as a suspect. The series pointed out another downtown rape in 1985, which had characteristics similar to the attack on Sykes, a copy editor for The Sentinel newspaper. In that case, the victim had identified Brown, but decided not to press charges.

Under state law, Hunt is eligible for compensation from the state for wrongful imprisonment, but he must apply to the N.C. Industrial Commission, which routinely hears worker-compensation and other types of compensation cases. His attorneys said they will apply for Hunt's compensation immediately, and they plan to help him put the money in trust for a house, his education and his future financial security.


May 19, 2005 report:

The House unanimously agreed Thursday to require the criminal records of a person who receives a pardon of innocence from the governor be eliminated from the court system. The measure was filed in response to the case of Darryl Hunt, who spent 18 years in prison for the slaying of a Winston-Salem woman before DNA evidence exonerated him. "The state took away 18 years of his life," said Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, before the bill passed by a vote of 112-0. "This is a chance to give some of (his life) back to him."

Last year, Gov. Mike Easley issued Hunt a pardon of innocence, which means Hunt was officially cleared in the slaying. But a pardon doesn't mean the records chronicling the case automatically are removed from the official court files. If it becomes law, the bill would delete the records for Hunt and other individuals who have received such pardons. The expunction also would allow Hunt or others pardoned due to wrongful conviction to state truthfully in court or on a job application that they haven't been charged or convicted of a crime.



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)