 Darryl Hunt Darryl Hunt was convicted twice of a 1984 North Carolina murder he didn't commit. After DNA results proved his innocence in 1994, it still took 10 years of legal appeals to exonerate him.
The Crime
In the early morning hours of August 10, 1984, Deborah Sykes, a 25-year-old copy editor at a local newspaper, was raped and murdered on the outskirts of Winston-Salem, NC. Sykes had been on her way to work; she was stabbed 16 times. She was found naked from the waist down and tests revealed that there was semen on her body, indicating that she had been raped.
The Investigation and Identification
A man called 911 that morning to report an attack and identified himself as Sammy Mitchell. When police talked to Sammy Mitchell the next day, they also spoke with Hunt, who was Mitchell's friend. Mitchell told police he hadn't called 911 that night. Another man, Johnny Gray, eventually told police he had made the call.
A local man came forward and told police he had seen Sykes with an African-American man on the morning of the crime. When that man described a person who matched Darryl Hunt's description, police arranged a photo lineup. The witness tentatively identified Hunt as the man he had seen with Sykes.
Johnny Gray had identified a different man (who was in jail on the day of the crime) in a first photo lineup, but after Hunt had been identified as a suspect, Gray identified him as well.
After this, Hunt's girlfriend was arrested on outstanding larceny charges. She initially told police that she was with Hunt on the night of the crime and that he couldn't have done it. Now, under arrest, she told police that Hunt had admitted to her that he committed the crime. She recanted before trial, but prosecutors presented her statements to the jury nonetheless.
The Trials
Hunt was tried for first-degree murder in the Sykes case. Eyewitnesses brought forth by the prosecution testified that they had seen Hunt with the victim before the crime or that they had seen Hunt enter a local hotel and leave bloody towels behind in the restroom. Hunt testified on his own behalf that he didn’t know the victim and had nothing to do with the crime. The jury deliberated for three days. They convicted Hunt and he was sentenced to life in prison.
On appeal, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the conviction because prosecutors had introduced Hunt's girlfriend's statements after she had recanted them. Hunt was released on bond in 1989. With the trial pending, Prosecutors offered Hunt a plea bargain – he could be freed and sentenced to time already served (five years) in exchange for a guilty plea. Hunt rejected the offer and faced a second trial.
He was retried in rural Catawba County before an all-white jury. The main eyewitnesses from the first trial testified again, and two jailhouses snitches testified that Hunt had admitted guilt to them while in prison. The jury deliberated for less than two hours and convicted Hunt of first-degree murder. Again, he was sentenced to life in prison. He had been free for 11 months.
Post-Conviction
Hunt's original trial attorney, Mark Rabil, worked on the case for nearly 20 years. After the second conviction, in which Rabil was part of a larger defense team, Rabil and another attorney, Ben Dowling-Sendor, filed for DNA testing in the case. In October 1994, DNA results came back. Hunt's DNA did not match the semen found on the victim's body at the crime scene. Despite the results, however, Hunt's appeals were rejected. Judges found that the new evidence did not prove innocence. Repeated appeals met the same fate.
Exoneration
Finally, in 2003, the DNA profile from the crime scene was run in the state database, at the request of Hunt's attorneys. The results matched a man incarcerated for another murder. On Christmas Eve, 2003, Hunt was released from prison. On April 6, 2004, the charges were dismissed. Less than two weeks later, Gov. Mike Easley pardoned Hunt.
In December 2004, Willard E. Brown, the man whose DNA matched the profile at the crime scene, pled guilty to the murder of Deborah Sykes. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Hunt was awarded $750,000 in state compensation and settled a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Winston-Salem for $1.65 million.
in 2016, Hunt died of a self-inflicted gunshot.
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