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Keith to retire as DA
Journal photo by David Rolfe
Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith announced his retirement yesterday. He says he will spend more time with his family and on pet projects. He’s also ready to go bird hunting in Texas.
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Published: November 18, 2009
After nearly 20 years at the job, Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith said yesterday that he is retiring to spend more time with family and focus on other projects.
In June, Keith turned 65. "I'm getting closer to the end of the roll," Keith said. "You become aware of your mortality."
His last day will be Nov. 30. Gov. Bev Perdue said yesterday that she would appoint Assistant District Attorney Jim O'Neill, 43, who has served under Keith since 1997, to fill the rest of Keith's term.
O'Neill said in a statement that he was humbled to have been chosen to complete Keith's term.
"It has been an honor to work with Mr. Keith these last 13 years," he said.
During an interview at the Hall of Justice, Keith touted his accomplishments over his 19 years in office -- increasing his staff from 11 prosecutors to 25, creating the Safe on Seven domestic-violence program and cutting a backlog of felony cases from 2,300 when he first took office to 999 pending cases as of the last quarter.
But almost from the beginning of his first term, Keith has been a lightning rod for controversy.
In 1996, a dispute between Keith and Judge Todd Burke of Forsyth Superior Court about case assignments shut down courts for several days.
And his law-and-order stance on crime has rankled many, particularly when it comes to the issue of race. Keith says that his office has sent more people to death row than any other county in North Carolina.
Those are the kinds of statistics that anger Keith's critics, who say that he has ignored racial disparities in the criminal-justice system and has been slow to respond in cases in which there appears to be evidence that someone was wrongfully convicted.
Darryl Hunt's was the most high-profile of those cases. Hunt spent nearly 19 years in prison on charges that he raped and killed Deborah Sykes, a copy editor for the now-defunct afternoon paper, The Sentinel. In 2003, Hunt was exonerated after DNA testing led to another man, Williard Brown, who confessed to killing Sykes.
But when initial DNA testing in 1994 showed that Hunt was not the man who raped Sykes, Keith successfully fought efforts by Hunt's attorneys for a new trial.
Over the years, Keith has softened his stance on such cases.
Keith called the Hunt case a seminal point in his life.
Because of Hunt, prosecutors didn't dismiss the case of Joseph Lamont Abbitt, who in September was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending 14 years in prison on charges that he raped two teenage girls.
"I tell other (prosecutors) …just because you have eyewitnesses, some forensic evidence, don't close your mind," he said. "Keep it open."
Mark Rabil, the attorney who represented Darryl Hunt, said that the Hunt case changed Keith and made him take innocence claims more seriously.
"He's not as sensitive to innocence issues as I am, but he is a lot more advanced in his thinking on innocence claims," Rabil said.
Over the years, Keith and the Rev. John Mendez clashed over Keith's handling of a number of cases, including Hunt's.
Through it all, Mendez said, Keith has had a "genuine interest in developing programs to keep young people from going to prison and becoming felons." Mendez said he and Keith recently talked about those programs.
The Rev. Carlton Eversley, the president of the Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity, said he believes that O'Neill's appointment could be the start of a more open relationship between the DA's office and members of the community.
"This is an opportunity for Forsyth County to make a step forward in terms of equal dispensation of justice," Eversley said.
Pat Norris, the former chief of the Winston-Salem Police Department, said that Keith worked hard to develop a good working relationship between the police and the District Attorney's Office.
"He and I were always able to communicate with each other," Norris said. "We had each other's personal cell numbers and we would talk with each other and share information on things we thought were coming up. We could say things to each other and not be offended by it.
"We realized we were not going to always see eye to eye on all things."
Mayor Allen Joines agreed.
"I've worked with Mr. Keith on some very difficult issues, and he has been receptive to my input," he said, referring to the Hunt case and the case of Kalvin Michael Smith, who has spent the last 13 years in prison in the 1995 beating of Jill Marker, a manager of the Silk Plant Forest store off Silas Creek Parkway. Smith has maintained his innocence.
Joines said that Keith's early retirement should not affect the city's legal fight to make public the report issued by the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee. The committee spent more than a year looking at the police department's investigation.
Keith said that in his retirement, he wants to spend more time on his pet projects, particularly the Safe on Seven program, which provides one location for agencies that help victims of domestic violence. The program is losing a $400,000 federal grant, and Keith said he wants to help secure permanent funding.
He said he will miss the people he works with, but not the long hours that his job demanded.
"I'm ready to go to Texas for bird hunting," he said.
mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
727-7326
Journal reporters Laura Graff, John Hinton and Wesley Young contributed to this story.
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