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Silk Plant delay OK'd
Panel is given 3 more months to do its report
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Published: February 17, 2009
The citizen's committee reviewing the Kalvin Smith case will get an additional three months to complete its report, the Winston-Salem City Council decided last night.
The Silk Plant Forest Citizens' Review Committee asked for the extension because the lead detective in Smith's case, Don Williams, has refused to answer its questions.
An investigative series by the Winston-Salem Journal in 2004 reported that Williams said he intentionally did not document some of his investigation so that Smith's defense attorney would not have access to it.
Smith has maintained his innocence since being convicted in 1997 of the 1995 beating of Jill Marker, an employee at the Silk Plant Forest shop off Silas Creek Parkway. The attack left Marker blind, with brain damage and needing 24-hour care.
The city has filed a legal petition asking a judge to force Williams to cooperate with the committee.
Williams has not responded to the petition, City Attorney Angela Carmon said last night.
The city voted to create the committee in August 2007 to review the police work that went into Smith's conviction. The council appointed the members of the citizens' review committee in March and the committee held its first meeting later that month.
Since then, the committee has interviewed people who were involved in the investigation, reviewed evidence and sifted through notes from the original investigation.
Two police officers have been assigned to the committee to help them evaluate the police work in the case.
The committee was originally supposed to present a final report with their findings to the council in December, but asked that the report due date be extended to March 16 in the hopes that Williams would agree to be interviewed.
The extension approved by the council last night pushes that due date to June 30.
"It's my belief that it would be unfortunate both for the citizens and the city government to have set up a committee, ask them to do something and then not allow them to get it done completely," said Molly Leight, who represents the South Ward. "I'm certainly willing to give them a little extra time to try to do that."
Mayor Pro Tempore Vivian Burke, who represents the Northeast Ward, said she would support an extension, but cautioned the committee against overstepping its bounds.
"We are not the justice system, we are the City Council," she said. "And there's a stopping line we have as a City Council. There's a stopping line we have as a committee."
Wanda Merschel, who represents the city's Northwest Ward, cast the only vote against the extension.
Merschel said she did not think an extension was necessary. The committee, she said, was created to evaluate policies, not to determine Smith's guilt or innocence. Merschel suggested that the committee produce its report now and publish an addendum if Williams testifies.
The committee's investigation has cost the city more than $145,000 so far.
Other council members, including Robert Clark, who represents the West Ward, and Dan Besse, who represents the Southwest Ward, said they would agree to this extension, but would not agree to any in the future.
"We need to wrap this up," Clark said.
Smith's claims of innocence are the most prominent in Winston-Salem since the case of Darryl Hunt, who was freed in 2003 after serving nearly 19 years in prison for the murder in 1984 of Deborah Sykes. A DNA test linked another man to the crime.
Smith's case has been taken on by the Innocence Project at Duke University.
The citizens' review committee also has asked the reporter who wrote the Journal series, Phoebe Zerwick, to answer their questions and provide them with her notes.
Zerwick has since left the newspaper, and the Journal opposes the committee's request.
At a meeting last week, committee members said they remained disappointed in the Journal's position.
The committee had requested more information from the Journal about why it opposed the interview request when its editorial pages have urged the committee to be thorough.
Last week the Journal's attorneys sent a letter outlining the paper's belief that testifying before a committee created by city government eroded the paper's ability to report independently and guarantee sources that information given in confidence would not be disclosed through cooperation with government agencies.
"‘Freedom of the press' is a hollow concept if reporters are subpoenaed to produce their notes, drafts, resource materials and sources," wrote C. Amanda Martin, the newspaper's attorney.
"It is the job of reporters to observe and write about criminal prosecutions and civil suits, not to become part of them.… Moreover, when reporters are forced to become witnesses unnecessarily, their neutrality and independence becomes tainted and compromised."
Committee members said they did not believe that their request harmed any journalistic freedoms, since they were not trying to force a reporter to testify, nor is the committee a judicial hearing.
"I found their position to be inexcusable on this," said Bill Davis, a committee member, at the meeting last week.
Committee members also learned Thursday that Kenneth Lamoureux, an early suspect in the case, refused to be interviewed by the committee. His attorney in Winston-Salem, Todd Peebles, may speak to the committee.
■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.
■ Journal reporter Dan Galindo contributed to this report.
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