BY BETH VELLIQUETTE

bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 419-6632

DURHAM – Darryl Hunt sometimes wakes up at 3 o’clock in the morning and sits on the side of his bed for a few moments before realizing he doesn’t have to wait for a prison guard to tell him he can go to the bathroom.

Hunt spent nearly 20 years in prison for a rape and murder he didn’t commit, and though he was released from prison in December 2003 and the charges were dismissed a few months later, sometimes something – maybe a word or a look – will remind him of the fear he faced in prison, and his heart beats faster and he breaks out into a sweat.

On Monday, Hunt appeared at a forum called “The Racial Justice Act: Behind the Politics,” held at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. The documentary film about his story, called “The Trials of Darryl Hunt,” was shown, followed by a panel discussion that included Hunt, his attorney Mark Rabil, who is now an adjunct professor of law and innocence as well as Justice Clinic co-director and Forsyth County assistant capital defender; Duke Law Professor James Coleman Jr.; State Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr.; Stephen Dear, director of People of Faith against the Death Penalty; and Daniel McLellan, the pastor at Immaculate Conception.

Hunt still suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from the years in prison, where at times white prisoners left notes on his bed saying they planned to kill him, according to Rabil and Hunt.

He was, to them, the black man who had raped and murdered a beautiful, young white woman, Deborah Sykes, a copy editor at the Winston-Salem Journal, in 1984. After years and years of struggle, DNA, which wasn’t tested until 10 years after the murder, proved Hunt did not rape Sykes, yet the State persisted that Hunt was the killer even though their previous theory was that Hunt had raped Sykes before killing her.

The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned down his appeal for a third trial.

It wasn’t until 2003 that that the DNA from the case was compared with samples in the state and federal database and it came back to another man, Willard E. Brown, who was arrested and charged with Sykes murder. While he was being booked, he confessed to killing Sykes and said he was sorry for what had happened to Hunt.

The panelists discussed whether what happened to Hunt could happen today and what people can do to keep it from happening again.

“It happens,” Hunt said. “It continues to happen even today.”

“Anyone can be accused and sentenced, sent to prison for something they didn’t do,” he said.

Hunt, who appeared humble, grateful and forgiving, said he still doesn’t trust the system. Before he left Winston-Salem to come to Durham Monday, he said he stopped at an ATM and made a transaction. Why? Because an ATM takes his photograph and records the date and time he was there. He said he planned on stopping at an ATM in Durham and doing the same thing before he returned to Winston-Salem.

“That is so people will know if something happens to me,” he said. “That’s a fear.”

What happened to Hunt was not atypical, Coleman said.

“We have a system that’s rotten,” he said. “I think a lot of us know that. We just don’t admit it.”

The moderator of the panel, Frank Stasio, asked the panelist why prosecutors haven’t been disciplined more severely when it became obvious they had ignored or hid evidence that may have shown a suspect was not guilty.

“I think the reason prosecutors get away with this kind of misconduct is because the public lets them get away with it,” Coleman said.

“The only way we’re going to change the attitude of prosecutors and the Attorney General is if the public lets them know we’re not going to tolerate it,” Coleman said.

Coleman hoped the lesson from the Duke Lacrosse case was that anyone could be falsely accused of a crime, and the prosecutor should pay a price for it, as Mike Nifong did when he was disbarred, but that doesn’t appear to be what happened, he said.

“It appears, though, that the lesson has been, you won’t get away with it if you do it to white kids from Duke,” he said.

Hunt is now involved in the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, which seeks to provide assistance to people wrongfully convicted of crimes, helps ex-offenders obtain skills, guidance and support to return to life outside of prison and to advocate for changes in the system so innocent people won’t spend time in prison.

“It’s not about me,” Hunt said. “It was never about me. It’s about a bigger picture than me. I think that’s what we all fight for.”

“We have to figure out how to make our system work because our system is run by human beings,” Hunt said.

“We have to be able to forgive for one,” he said. “If we can’t forgive then we’re lost.”

Judges also need to remain independent and not be “part of the prosecution team,” Coleman said.

“Courts have gotten to the point where they aren’t willing to enforce the law,” he said.

“That’s a drama being played out here in Durham. When the judge starts to enforce the law, the prosecutor is going berserk.”