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Report: Garrity, Norris erred in case review poor judgement
More said to have hurt marker case review
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Published: November 14, 2007
City Manager Lee Garrity and Police Chief Pat Norris each made mistakes that contributed to the Winston-Salem Police Department's botched internal review of a 1995 assault case, according to a new report released by the city.
The assault case involves Jill Marker, who was attacked and left with permanent injuries, and Kalvin Michael Smith, who was convicted of the attack in 1997.
The case has gained attention because the Innocence Project at Duke University Law School has uncovered evidence that it says can help Smith prove his innocence. Based on the Innocence Project's findings, District Attorney Tom Keith has been reinvestigating the case this year.
In January, Garrity asked Norris to find out whether police detectives investigated the case properly.
But the report said that failures of judgment, communication and oversight were made along the way that damaged the integrity of the internal review and ultimately forced Garrity to withdraw it shortly after it had been released to the public in August.
Complicating matters, the internal review was released at a time when the city was trying to promote the police department as a trustworthy agency and shed a reputation rooted in past days when questionable police work led to the conviction of Darryl Hunt.
Hunt spent more than 18 years in prison for the 1984 murder of Deborah Sykes.
In January, the city council agreed to pay him $1.6 million in restitution for the police work that contributed to his wrongful imprisonment. When the council made that decision, it also asked Garrity about any other similar cases. And that's what led to the police department's review of whether the Marker attack was properly investigated.
Among the mistakes made during the internal review, Garrity did not give Norris clear marching orders.
"The scope of the review was never clearly defined between the City Manager and Police Chief, so each was proceeding on what they believed was the proper scope," the report, done by Deputy City Manager Derwick Paige, said.
Garrity said yesterday that he supports the findings in Paige's report, even though a lot of the responsibility for the review's poor quality fell on his shoulders. Garrity also failed to exercise oversight of the police department's work, the report said.
"I could have handled it better than the way it was handled," Garrity said.
Norris, for her part, showed a lack of judgment by allowing Lt. Ted Best to handle the internal review. Best had supervised the lead detective, D.R. Williams, during the Marker case, which meant that he had been assigned to review his own work - a conflict of interest.
"Despite being told on several occasions that Lt. Ted Best directly supervised D.R. Williams and actually signed some of the reports in the original investigation, Chief Norris failed to note the importance of this connection," Paige said in the report.
Norris' decision to keep Best on the review was one of the key reasons that Garrity withdrew the internal review.
Before the review got under way, Norris told Garrity that Best had limited involvement with the Marker case, but she didn't explain that Best had supervised D.R. Williams. It wasn't until after the police department released the review that Garrity was told by a Winston-Salem Journal reporter that Best had been Williams' supervisor.
"Chief Norris never communicated to the City Manager that Lt. Best supervised D.R. Williams and was actually his supervisor during the first 8 to 11 months of the investigation," Paige said.
Norris said yesterday that she has taken responsibility all along for the botched review.
"The results are there, and they are what they are," she said.
The issue of Best's assignment came up again in September, during a meeting with police lieutenants. Norris said at the meeting that she "wanted to clear the air," saying that she told Garrity that Best had been Williams' supervisor.
When Garrity later met with the lieutenants, they asked him why he had said that he didn't know of Best's role. That led to Norris' admission that she misspoke.
"Chief Norris recalls using the word supervision in her explanation to the lieutenants, but she does not recall specifically stating that Lt. Best supervised D.R. Williams. However, she does acknowledge that she could have been using the words interchangeably, thus may have, in fact, misspoken and used the word supervised when she meant worked with," Paige said.
The report done by Paige puts the responsibility of the botched review mostly on the shoulders of the police chief and the city manager, but it does not provide any suggestions on whether to hold either Garrity or Norris accountable.
Some members of the Winston-Salem City Council, although disturbed by some of the findings in Paige's report, would not say whether the city manager or police chief should be disciplined. But some said that there probably would be closed-door discussion about it.
"Yes, we made an error. We admitted it, and we're going to move forward," Council Member Robert Clark said. "I look at a person's total performance. I do cut them a little bit of slack.. The city manager has been very upfront about it."
Council Member Vivian Burke fired a warning shot.
"We have been having too many mistakes, and you can't ask the council to look the other way anymore," she said.
The city has been accepting applications for a panel of volunteers called the Silk Plant Forest Citizen Review Committee, which will take on the task that the police department had been assigned - to find out whether police investigators properly handled the Marker case.
Hunt said that using people with no connection to the case is the only way to review it.
"To have those detectives . work on the case, to me, would be like having Larry Little and Mark Rabil do the reinvestigation of my case," Hunt said.
Rabil was Hunt's attorney, and Little, a former member of the city council, led the charge to prove that Hunt was innocent.
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