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Silk Plant citizens committee chairman says some of detective's work was 'fictionalization'
Journal file photo
Former detective Don Williams, left, conferring with his attorney Carl Parrish during an April court hearing on a summons to appear before the Winston-Salem City Council.
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Published: September 16, 2009
The chairman of the citizens committee that reviewed the 1995 Silk Plant Forest assault case says he believes supplemental reports in the case by the detective in charge were "a fictionalization of what really happened.''
The comments by Guy Blynn are revealed in an attachment to the final report of the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee released this morning. Blynn in a memo dated June 14, analyzed the truthfulness of former police Detective Don Williams after Williams, under subpoena, testified before the city council and the committee about this work on the case. Blynn compared Williams' notes from the 1995 case to his reports to his appearance before the citizens committee.
"A final highlight for me … tends to confirm, after denials elsewhere, that Williams did not put some things in the case file because he could testify to them,'' Blynn wrote. "However, if the things not put in the file potentially were exculpatory, the defense in this case never would know about them, unless it had called Williams at trial and was extremely lucky to stumble across the matter.''
Blynn's comments shed new light on a case that has been at issue since 2004, when a five-part investigative series in the Winston-Salem Journal raised serious questions about the police investigation and prosecution of Kalvin Michael Smith, who was convicted and is serving a sentence of 23 to 29 years in prison. Smith has maintained his innocence.
One of the issues raised in the series was comments Williams made to the newspaper in which he said he withheld evidence to prevent defense attorneys from having it. Prosecutors are required to turn over any potentially exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys.
The Duke Innocence Project also took up Smith's cause, which led to a hearing in January at which Smith sought a new trial. A Superior Court judge rejected Smith's motion for appropriate relief, and last Friday, the N.C. Court of Appeals turned down Smith's request to review the ruling. His attorney, Dave Pishko, has said he will file an appeal in U.S. District Court.
The victim, Jill Marker, was a manager at Silk Plant Forest store when she was severely beaten about the head in December 1995. Marker, who was was 4½ months pregnant, survived and delivered a healthy boy. Today she is blind has severe impairments and is living under 24-hour care in Ohio.
The city council voted to form the citizen's committee in 2007 to conduct a fact-finding review of the work of the police department in the case. The committee voted 7-2 in March on a resolution saying that its members had found "no credible evidence'' after studying thousands of pages of reports and transcripts and hearing from witnesses, that Smith was at the store on the night of the attack.
The final report goes on to say the committee has no faith in the work done by Williams and the department, nor in the outcome that landed Smith in prison. It lays out recommendations for changes in procedures involving police interviewing techniques, witness line-ups and other areas, many of which had previously been adopted by the police department.
Today's release included the memo from Blynn, as well as statements and documents made by Marker, witnesses and others, but does not include the transcript of the recent interview with Williams, who is retired. The city says it cannot release thousands of pages of supplemental materials until a Superior Court judge orders it. Some of the materials released today include redactions.
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