The Winston-Salem Police Department’s internal report about the 1995 beating of Jill Marker, a clerk at the Silk Plant Forest store, was “woefully inadequate,” and contained “little to no analysis” about what went wrong in the initial investigation, the faculty adviser to Duke University’s Innocence Project said last night.
James Coleman, who is also a co-director of Duke’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic, asked a committee of the Winston-Salem City Council to reject the internal report. The report, made public last week, recommended that the beating not be reinvestigated.
Marker was pregnant when she was beaten in the head with a blunt object; she gave birth to a son while in a coma. The attack left her blind and needing 24-hour care.
Kalvin Michael Smith, who in 1997 was convicted of beating Marker, has maintained his innocence.
A citizens committee that examined the case for 18 months issued a report in 2009 saying that it had no confidence in the police investigation. The citizens committee also voted 7-2 to approve a statement that there was no credible evidence that Smith was at the store on the day that Marker was beaten. Coleman and others at Duke University have for the past seven years worked with Smith, who is serving from 23 to 29 years in prison. Smith is appealing his conviction in federal court.
“We have become firmly convinced that he is innocent,” Coleman said.
The Winston-Salem City Council’s Public Safety Committee chose not to vote on the internal report last night. The committee will continue discussions at its meeting in December.
But committee members said they had serious doubts about the initial investigation and said they had problems with the police department’s internal report.
Committee member James Taylor, who represents the Southeast Ward on the city council and who served on the citizens committee that reviewed the case, said the internal report left out critical information that pointed to Smith’s innocence. Taylor called the report “somewhat misleading.”
“We may possibly have an innocent man in prison,” Taylor said. “If we’re going to put out a report, we’ve got to put out both sides of it.”
Committee member Derwin Montgomery, who represents the city’s East Ward, said he was “disheartened” by the report. The internal committee that issued the report also concluded that no members of the Winston-Salem Police Department acted improperly, and found that the investigation was not fatally flawed.
“That’s very difficult for me to support that conclusion, that no one conducted themselves improperly,” Montgomery said.
Winston-Salem Police Chief Scott Cunningham defended the report, and said that the case should be resolved by the court system. The courts have made some decisions already: Smith was found guilty, and several of his appeals have been denied.
“We may not like or even agree with the court’s decision,” Cunningham said. “But I cannot substitute my opinion for a judge’s ruling.”
lgraff@wsjournal.com
727-7279
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement