The N.C. Court of Appeals will decide whether the city of Winston-Salem can release statements that eight former and current Winston-Salem police officers made to a citizens committee reviewing how police handled the investigation of a 1995 beating of a pregnant woman.
The officers made statements to the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee, which reviewed the police investigation into the beating of Jill Marker, a manager at the former Silk Plant Forest store on Silas Creek Parkway. The attack left Marker, who was 4 ½ months pregnant, with severe brain damage. Today, she lives under 24-hour care in Ohio.
Kalvin Michael Smith was convicted in 1997 on charges that he beat Marker and is serving 23 to 29 years in prison. He has maintained his innocence and has filed an appeal in federal court.
City officials filed a brief with the court late last month outlining why the city should release the officers' statements. The N.C. Court of Appeals can either hear oral arguments or base its ruling on written briefs from both sides. There's no timeline for when the court will issue a ruling.
The committee's final report, released in August 2009, 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.
An internal committee of the Winston-Salem Police Department recommended in November that the 1995 beating should not be reinvestigated.
Judge Richard Stone of Forsyth Superior Court ordered the release of the officers' statements a few months after a hearing last year, but Michael McGuinness, attorney for the officers, appealed.
In 2009, Stone ordered the release of a 214-page transcript of an interview that Don Williams, the former Winston-Salem police detective who led the investigation, had with city officials and the citizens committee in June 2009.
City officials didn't initially release the officers' statements because of personnel privacy laws. Then, in October 2009, they asked a judge to release those statements and thousands of pages of other documents collected during the committee's work.
At the hearing, McGuinness argued that the officers' statements shouldn't be released because the committee's work was botched from the beginning and that the officers had a reasonable expectation that their statements would be confidential. He said the city should have hired a third-party consultant to conduct the review.
City officials have said they followed the proper procedures in forming the citizens committee and that there is no mandate for the city to hire a third-party consultant to conduct internal investigation of its departments. They also said 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.
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