Plan now up to court; eight police officers oppose release of Silk Plant transcripts

The city of Winston-Salem shouldn't be allowed to release statements that eight former and current Winston-Salem police officers gave to a citizens committee examining the police investigation of a 1995 assault because the committee's work was botched from the beginning, an attorney for the officers argued yesterday in Forsyth Superior Court.

"What could be more damaging to public confidence than contaminated evidence," said Michael McGuinness, who is representing the officers.

The citizens committee's work revolved around the beating of Jill Marker, a manager at the former Silk Plant Forest store on Silas Creek Parkway. The attack, during the Christmas holiday season, left Marker, who was 4½ months pregnant, with severe brain damage. Today, she is blind and living under 24-hour care in Ohio.

Kalvin Michael Smith, who in 1997 was convicted of beating Marker, is serving 23 to 29 years in prison. He has maintained his innocence, and on Tuesday, his attorneys filed an appeal in federal court.

The committee's final report, released in August, concluded that it had no faith in the police department's work on the case. Separately, the committee voted 7-2 in favor of a statement that says it found no credible evidence that Smith was at the scene of the crime.

At issue yesterday were statements that the eight officers gave as part of the committee's re-examination of the case. The officers were interviewed by police Lt. Joseph Ferrelli and Sgt. Chuck Byrom, who were assigned to work with the committee.

City officials initially didn't release the statements because of personnel privacy issues. In October, they asked a judge to release those statements along with thousands of pages of other documents that accumulated during the committee's work.

Last month, Judge Richard Stone of Forsyth Superior Court ordered the release of a 214-page transcript of an interview that Don Williams, the former Winston-Salem police detective who headed the investigation, had with city officials and the citizens committee in June 2009. Stone also will decide whether to release the officers' statements. It will be at least a month before he issues a ruling.

McGuinness said yesterday that releasing the statements of the eight officers would cause more harm than good because of problems with the committee's work.

City officials shouldn't have allowed police officers to interview other police officers as part of an investigation by a citizens review committee, he said. A third-party law-enforcement consultant should have handled the investigation, he said.

And, he added, the police officers had a reasonable expectation that any statements they gave to Byrom and Ferrelli would remain confidential. Al Andrews, assistant city attorney, said that the police officers were never told that their statements would be kept confidential.

McGuinness also said that the committee had an agenda from the beginning. He pointed to a deposition of James Ferree, a committee member, in which Ferree said he knew about the case from a five-part series in the Winston-Salem Journal in 2004.

According to McGuinness, Ferree said that before he got on the committee, he had questions about the police investigation as a result of reading that series. That meant he had a bias that tainted the work of the committee as a whole, McGuinness argued.

He also criticized Guy Blynn, the chairman of the committee, over his leadership and lack of knowledge about law-enforcement. He quoted Blynn from a deposition as saying that all he knows about criminal law comes from watching the television show Law & Order.

Andrews said that the city followed the proper procedures in forming the citizens committee and that there is no mandate that the city has to hire a third-party consultant to conduct internal investigations of its departments. The bias of one committee member does not harm the final result of the committee's work, he said.

He also said that there is significant and tangible public interest in the case and that releasing the information would help restore public confidence in the Winston-Salem Police Department.

Four of the officers testified they thought that the questions they were asked were too narrow and didn't give them a chance to provide important information they felt was needed to understand the 1995 police investigation. They said that the media coverage of the case has been unfair and biased and that release of the statements would only further damage their reputations.

"To be frank, I think it's been a travesty how this thing has progressed," said Capt. Ted Best, who in 2007 led an administrative review of the case. City officials scrapped that review and appointed the committee after learning that Best had supervised Williams.

City Attorney Angela Carmon said that even if the judge denies the city's request, portions of those interviews would still be released, but they would be heavily redacted.

"It would be more misleading to release a redacted document," she said.

mhewlett@wsjournal.com

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