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Final report omits testimony
Investigator's answers not made public in Silk Plant Forest case
Journal Photo Illustration
Kalvin Smith was convicted in 1997 of beating Jill Marker at the Silk Plant Forest store. The investigation has been heavily criticized.
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Journal's 2004 Special Report
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December 17, 2009
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Published: August 27, 2009
Winston-Salem officials late yesterday released a much-redacted version of the final report issued by the citizens committee that reviewed the police investigation into the 1995 beating of a store clerk. The final version, however, does not include the testimony of Don Williams, the lead detective who investigated the attack.
Williams fought being interviewed by the committee, but after being subpoenaed, he sat down with its members and the Winston-Salem City Council -- and after a preliminary report had already been prepared.
Williams' testimony was the major piece missing from that preliminary report, which the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee issued in March. In that report, committee members concluded that they had no faith in the Winston-Salem Police Department's work on the case.
The members draw the same conclusion in the final version of the report, writing that "the Committee does not have confidence in the investigation, the information in question, or the result of the investigation."
Separately, the committee previously voted 7-2 on a statement that says it found no credible evidence that Kalvin Michael Smith, the man in prison for the assault and who has maintained his innocence, was at the scene of the crime.
The committee completed the final report on June 24 and presented it to the city council's public-safety committee on Aug. 10. Alan Andrews, an assistant city attorney, said that the city waited to release it so that city officials could redact protected information from the report. The report has not yet been presented to the full city council.
Williams' testimony, according to the final report, is included in an appendix to the report. The city did not release any of the appendices.
Andrews could not be reached by phone last night, but said in an e-mail: "A full release of the un-redacted report, numerous appendices and associated materials will not happen until the City receives an Order authorizing such a release from the Superior Court. I do not know when the City will petition for such an order or when it might be issued."
The city council created the committee to re-examine the police investigation into the beating, which left Jill Marker, a clerk at the Silk Plant Forest store on Silas Creek Parkway, with severe brain damage. Today, she is blind and living with 24-hour care in Ohio.
Smith, who in 1997 was convicted of beating Marker, is serving 23 to 29 years in prison.
The committee and two Winston-Salem police investigators have spent the last year and a half reinterviewing witnesses from the investigation, reviewing testimony from Smith's trial and examining evidence from the case. The committee and investigators also interviewed the director of the Duke Innocence Project, which has supported Smith's claims of innocence.
In January, a Superior Court judge rejected Smith's request for a motion for appropriate relief, which could have resulted in a new trial. Smith's attorneys are appealing the ruling.
The final report lays out a series of recommendations in several areas of police work in which the committee said the police department and Williams failed in the Marker case. Those areas include the administering of polygraph examinations, interviews with suspects and witnesses, photo lineups and supervision.
In every part of the report, the committee's conclusions support the idea that Smith could have been wrongly convicted. For example, the committee concludes that Smith took and passed a lie-detector test in July 1996, something that had been the subject of discussion. It also concluded that Marker had made no identification of Smith in any photo lineup before Smith was tried, another point of contention.
And Vince Rabil, a former assistant district attorney, told the committee that while he was a prosecutor, he frequently found Williams' reports conclusive. He said, for example, that Williams would only submit a statement in which he interpreted a suspect's comments as a confession, rather than including the suspect's actual statement.
In 2004, the Winston-Salem Journal published a five-part investigative series about the Silk Plant Forest case, in which it found many problems with the investigation and prosecution.
■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.
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