Council orders ex-detective to testify in Silk Plant Forest case

Committee reviewing beating will hear from lead investigator

Don Williams was the lead investigator in the beating in 1995 of Jill Marker at the Silk Plant Forest.

By: By Laura Graff | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: November 18, 2008

A former detective who investigated the beating in 1995 of a store manager will be forced to testify about the case before the Winston-Salem City Council, the council voted last night.

The Silk Plant Forest Review Committee -- a group of nine people appointed by the council in March to review the case and how it was investigated and prosecuted -- had asked the council in August to subpoena the detective, Don Williams.

Williams was the lead investigator looking into the beating of Jill Marker. She was attacked while working in the Silk Plant Forest, a store where she was a manager, in December of 1995.

Kalvin Michael Smith, who was convicted in 1997 of beating Marker, has said he is innocent. His case has been taken on by the Innocence Project at Duke University Law School and was the subject of a Winston-Salem Journal series in 2004.

Williams repeatedly had refused to testify in front of the review committee.

A date for questioning has not been set.

Members of the review committee will be allowed to watch the questioning, but members of the public will not. The city plans to question Williams in a closed session because, they say, he might testify about personnel-privacy issues that are protected by state law.

A Superior Court judge ruled last week that the city must give any investigative files the review committee collects to an assistant district attorney and to Smith's defense attorney.

In other business last night, the city council voted to give the city's chief finance officer and city manager the power, for one year, to change which banks manage the city's bonds. Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Bank of America Securities currently manage the city's water and sewer bonds, and Wachovia Bank manages some of the city's variable-rate certificates of participation -- securities that the city sells to help pay for some investments.

City Manager Lee Garrity said last night that the city should consider changing banks because of the struggles some of those banks are now facing.

Mayor Allen Joines and the city council will hold a public forum tonight to discuss the economy and the city's financial stability with residents, and to hear from residents about how they think the city should develop.

For more information, visit www.cityofws.org.

■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.