The police investigation that led to Kalvin Michael Smith's conviction in the 1995 beating of Jill Marker at the Silk Plant Forest shop once again will come under review at a Winston-Salem City Council committee meeting Monday.
The committee will discuss an internal review conducted by the Winston-Salem Police Department, three months after the police chief reported the results of the review to the committee.
A number of resident activists who disagree with the report and believe Smith is wrongfully imprisoned plan to attend.
The case revolves around a night in December 1995, when Marker, a clerk at the store in a shopping center on Silas Creek Parkway, was brutally beaten there. Smith was convicted in 1997 of beating her and was sentenced to serve 23 to 29 years in prison.
Marker was left with severe brain injuries and requires round-the-clock care. Smith confessed in writing to being in the store when Marker was attacked but has maintained his innocence in the beating. His supporters say his confession was coerced and is unreliable.
Smith's supporters have hired Chris Swecker, a former FBI agent, to review the original police investigation. Swecker's review will be the fourth done outside of the court system — a committee of citizens appointed by the city council examined the investigation, and the police department has conducted two internal reviews. City Manager Lee Garrity threw out the first of the police department's reviews after questions emerged about it.
Jet Hollander, one of the citizens who hired Swecker, said Swecker's investigation would be independent.
Garrity said he plans to update the council committee on Monday about Swecker's investigation. He said the police department is cooperating with Swecker.
"He's coming in and going through the original case file, and we're giving him access to everything the law allows us to let him see," Garrity said. "If he wants to talk to any current police officers who may have been involved, I have clearly said that we will pass those requests on to those officers. We will not in any way prohibit them from speaking — it will be up to them."
Garrity said some pieces of the police case file were protected by health and medical privacy laws.
Police Chief Scott Cunningham initially said he would not allow Swecker to talk with the officers who are still on the force, including one who worked with the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee on its 18-month review. The committee released a lengthy report and unanimously concluded that it had no confidence in the initial investigation.
In response to the citizens committee's work, the city formed an internal committee of high-ranking members of the police department to review the investigation and determine whether the case should be reopened. That committee, which included Cunningham, released a report in November that concluded the case should remain closed.
Garrity said he also plans to update the committee Monday about questions raised by James Coleman, a Duke University law professor and faculty adviser to the Duke Innocence Project, which has taken on Smith's case. The project looks into claims of wrongful imprisonment.
Coleman said he asked the city for the name of a woman who might have seen Smith at the shopping center the day before Marker was beaten.
Coleman and Smith's other supporters have raised a number of questions about the investigation. They believe his written statement was coerced, and that Don Williams, the detective assigned to the case, coerced statements from people who knew Smith. Smith's supporters have questioned the way evidence was handled during the initial investigation and point to a surveillance tape from a Toys R Us next door to the Silk Plant Forest store that detectives initially collected from the store and deemed had no value. A later claim that Smith and an accomplice went to Toys R Us after the beating could not be verified or refuted because the tape was no longer available.
"There was zero evidence that Kalvin did this," Coleman said.
The police review released in November concluded that Williams did not follow all of the department's policies during the investigation, but that his errors did not affect the outcome.
The court system has consistently upheld Smith's conviction. He has appealed in the state courts; those appeals have been rejected. He is now appealing to the federal court system.
lgraff@wsjournal.com
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