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Panel Put On Hold
Smith supporters want committee of local residents
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Published: February 12, 2008
Winston-Salem city officials, under pressure from residents, said yesterday that they would delay starting a citizens committee that's intended to reinvestigate the 1995 near-fatal beating of Jill Marker.
City council members said at a meeting of the public-safety committee last night that a delay of at least a month is needed to deal with concerns brought up at last night's meeting.
"We want the public to have confidence" in the city, said Vivian Burke, a council member and the committee's chairwoman.
Supporters of Kalvin Smith, the man convicted of beating Marker, told the committee that only a citizens committee that can compel people to testify about the case would be able to unearth all the facts, which they believe will prove Smith's innocence.
Smith was convicted in 1997 of beating Marker in the Silk Plant Forest, a store on Silas Creek Parkway.
The city had proposed a citizens committee that would look into whether police followed their procedures in investigating the case. It would not be able to issue subpoenas, meaning that former police officers could refuse to speak about the case.
A review done by the police department was withdrawn by City Manager Lee Garrity last year, after Garrity learned that one of the authors of the review had been a supervisor of the detective who had worked the Marker case.
Smith's supporters sent letters to Mayor Allen Joines last month and met with him and other council members, lobbying for a committee with subpoena power. In response, city officials proposed asking the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission to review the case.
The innocence commission, started by the state in 2006, reviews cases brought by people who claim that they have been wrongfully convicted. Its eight members include a judge, retired sheriff, district attorney, police chief and a defense attorney.
The commission can issue subpoenas and reinvestigate cases. If it votes to send a case on to a panel of three judges, they can hear the evidence and overturn a conviction if all judges agree.
The Winston-Salem City Council has subpoena power, but it can't give that power to a citizens committee. To do that would require a law passed by the state legislature, which would add months in delay in reviewing the case, if not more than a year.
Smith's supporters, about 25 of whom attended last night's meeting at City Hall, said they had doubts about the innocence commission and wanted a local committee.
"The city has a responsibility itself to deal with this and not pass the buck," said Larry Little, a professor at Winston-Salem State University.
Mark Rabil, the attorney for Darryl Hunt, the Winston-Salem man wrongfully convicted of murdering Deborah Sykes, said that the commission already has a two-year backlog.
The commission's executive director, Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, did not return a phone call yesterday.
Council Member Molly Leight asked city officials why the city hadn't considered the commission earlier. "Why did this possibility escape us when it's been ongoing?" she said.
Angela Carmon, the city attorney, said she didn't have the answer, but one problem was that there was confusion about what the commission did and what it would take for them to get the case.
The commission has said it will take the case if Police Chief Pat Norris asks them to, Carmon said.
Smith's supporters say that police did not turn over some evidence and failed to investigate thoroughly, focusing on Smith after a jilted girlfriend said he did it.
Key witnesses have changed their stories, according to the Innocence Project at Duke University, which has taken up Smith's case.
Little and Jet Hollander, who was on a citizens committee that reviewed the Sykes case, gave city officials a proposal for a local committee that could subpoena people.
What's been misunderstood, they said, is that Smith's supporters don't want a committee that gives its opinion about Smith's innocence or guilt.
They want one that investigates all facts, not just whether police followed their rules, Hollander said.
Another problem with any request to the innocence commission is that Smith's attorneys may not be interested in cooperating with it.
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