November 23, 2007
Ronald Cotton's case unfolded in a way that Darryl Hunt could only dream about. In May 1995, DNA results ruled out Cotton, a Burlington man, as the source of the semen evidence in two rapes in July 1984. The police then had another suspect tested. That man's DNA matched, he confessed, and Cotton was freed from his life sentence.
"It wasn't hard to admit that a mistake was made," said Michael Gauldin, now the Burlington police chief and one of the detectives who built the case against Cotton. "The hard part is that Mr. Cotton spent 11 years in prison for two crimes he didn't commit, and it turns out he was an absolutely innocent man."
The evidence that Gauldin had against Cotton was strong. One of the victims, a woman named Jennifer Thompson, studied her attacker's face during the rape. She wound up identifying Cotton from a photograph, and police found circumstantial evidence that seemed to support her identification. A flashlight seized from Cotton's home matched one used by the attacker; a witness reported seeing Cotton in the neighborhood the night of the rapes.
Gauldin is now a member of the N.C. Actual Innocence Commission, which is working to improve criminal investigations, and Thompson, who lives in Winston-Salem with her husband and three children, speaks publicly about the hazards of identifying the wrong man.
Thompson said she never once doubted herself until DNA proved her wrong.
"I felt shame," she said recently. "Eleven years of his life were gone and I knew the majority of why he'd been put in prison was because of my testimony."
In 1994, Darryl Hunt had tried but failed to win a new trial after DNA evidence ruled him out as the source of semen found on Deborah Sykes in the 1984 rape-murder in downtown Winston-Salem. Cotton's conviction was one of the first in the country overturned by DNA evidence. All told, 138 convicted murderers and rapists nationwide have been exonerated by DNA, forcing prosecutors and police to question the investigative techniques that led to such injustice.
They focus on issues that Hunt's attorneys have been raising for nearly 20 years. Eyewitnesses are unreliable, especially witnesses whose stories change over time. Prison snitches are untrustworthy. Confessions can be coerced. Police too often develop tunnel vision, ignoring witnesses whose testimony doesn't support their theory, in favor of those who do. And prosecutors too often don't give the defense investigative reports that the law entitles them to.
"The only difference between Hunt's case and these 130 some odd people is the courts haven't given him the relief the others got," said Richard Rosen, a law professor at UNC Chapel Hill and one of the attorneys who handled Cotton's appeals.
"To say that Darryl Hunt should stay in prison for the rest of his life based on a decision by a jury that didn't hear the single most powerful piece of evidence is just not just."
Rosen said he believes that Hunt's case might have turned out differently had it not become a symbol of the city's racial politics.
"It's not an easy case for the court to rule against the state," he said. "There were a lot of people invested in finding Darryl Hunt guilty."
Last year, the chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court appointed a group of prosecutors, police, defense attorneys and crime victims to the N.C. Actual Innocence Commission to look at what leads to wrongful convictions and to propose reforms.
The commission began by studying the issue of eyewitness testimony. It has just proposed new procedures for police to follow to reduce mistakes by eyewitnesses. Many of the practices cited as potential problems were used by Winston-Salem police in the investigation that led to Hunt's arrest. For example:
• The commission recommends that the investigating officer should not be the one to conduct a lineup because he might inadvertently give hints to a witness about the suspect's identity. In Hunt's case, the lead detective conducted the lineups.
• The commission recommends that rather than show a witness a line of five or six men, or a group of photographs, investigating officers show a witness one photo or one person at a time. The traditional photo lineup method used in the Hunt investigation can lead to mistakes, because witnesses compare one photo to another, rather than rely on their memory.
• The commission recommends that police remind witnesses that their investigation will continue, even if the witness identifies a suspect. That removes the responsibility witnesses feel to identify someone. In Hunt's case, detectives told Johnny Gray that he was their only eyewitness to the attack.
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