November 21, 2007
A Good Deal
Hunt could have avoided a second trial in the Sykes case if he had taken a plea bargain negotiated during the second Wilson trial, before his acquittal.
With two murder charges pending, both sides had a lot at stake. The police believed that they had a stronger case in the Sykes murder than they had in 1985, based on new witnesses. But there was enough risk to get the lawyers talking about a plea bargain.
Hunt had served five years in prison before he got out on bond in November 1989. The two murder charges carried the possibility of two life sentences.
The negotiations were never put into writing. Warren Sparrow, the district attorney in Forsyth County who prosecuted the second Wilson case, remembers discussions but not the details. Bowman said he doesn't remember negotiating a deal with Hunt, but he doesn't dispute the defense's account.
Hunt's attorneys said that Bowman and Sparrow agreed to combine the murder charges and allow Hunt to plead guilty for the time he had already served in prison. Hunt couldn't have asked for a much better offer - five years in prison for two murders. All he had to do was admit guilt to both and he would be a free man.
He talked the deal over with Little and the clergy who were part of his defense committee. Cut your losses, they all said. All except one. Mendez told Hunt to follow his conscience.
Hunt said he never seriously considered the deal. "It was out of the question because they wanted me to plead guilty and I'm not pleading guilty to something I didn't do," Hunt said in a recent interview at the Piedmont Correctional Institution, where he was imprisoned until he was moved last month to the Randolph Correctional Center outside Asheboro.
His lawyers see Hunt's refusal as the ultimate statement of innocence.
"I think this whole ordeal, ironic as that may be, has been a growth experience for him," Ferguson said. "At one level it would have been easy for him to say, 'I'll take the plea.' He thought about it. In the end he felt that he couldn't live with himself, not the other people, but with himself. You can't plan principle. Principle has to be a part of who you naturally are - and Darryl has it."
The rejected plea doesn't impress prosecutors or the police. They say that by then Hunt had become such a martyr for his own cause that he had to reject the offer to save his reputation. Better to stay in prison, they argue, than go home a fallen hero.