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Study Goes On: Silk Plant Forest panel still at work
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Published: January 9, 2009
The rejection of Kalvin Smith's bid to win a new trial in the Silk Plant Forest assault case won't affect the work of a citizens review committee looking into how the original case was investigated, the committee's chairman said yesterday.
"The decision is interesting but does not mean anything for us," said the chairman, Guy Blynn. "Our mission was to investigate the matter and write a report. Our initial report will focus on whether police procedures were followed. And we will make such recommendations as we think are appropriate with regard to how procedures ought to be changed to better ensure the quality of police protection."
Smith has spent nearly 12 years in prison after being convicted in 1997 of beating Jill Marker in December 1995.
Marker, an employee at the Silk Plant Forest -- a store off Silas Creek Parkway -- was four months pregnant when two customers found her lying beaten on the shop's floor.
Smith has maintained his innocence.
Yesterday, a judge denied his request for a new trial.
The Winston-Salem City Council established the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee in October 2007 to look into the case, after the Winston-Salem Journal published a series of articles describing possible flaws in the original police investigation.
The committee is, according to a city-council resolution, supposed to operate independently of city staff.
The committee's members were recommended by the mayor and appointed by the city council. Two police detectives have been assigned to investigate anything the committee wants investigated.
"It's a very independent committee," City Manager Lee Garrity said. "Their charge is to look at the case extensively to go through a fact-finding review to see if the police department followed all the proper policies and procedures, and if not, to make recommendations about how we can address those issues and make sure it doesn't happen again."
So far, the committee has reviewed evidence and interviewed people involved with the case.
Don Williams, the retired police detective who originally investigated the case, has ignored requests from the committee -- and a subpoena from the city council -- to testify.
The review committee also asked for a paternity test after Ellen Lamoureux, the former wife of Kenneth Lamoureux, suggested that Marker's child, Barron Marker, might have been fathered by Lamoureux.
Kenneth Lamoureux was once the main suspect in the beating, but police dropped him after he moved to Charlotte and then ruled him out when Marker is alleged to have told Williams that her attacker was black.
Aaron Marker, Jill Marker's husband at the time of the attack, initially denied the DNA request, then later agreed to it.
Test results returned this week show that Aaron Marker is Barron's father, Blynn said yesterday.
■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.
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