'As long as you are shackled, so are we' | 20 years after prison release, Darryl Hunt's legacy lives on

While Rabil was convinced of Hunt’s innocence, this was just the beginning of a controversial case rife with racial tension.

“1984 Winston-Salem was a highly segregated community. In those days, Highway 52, which divided east and west Winston-Salem - I mean it was a clear dividing line between white and Black and there was some overflow into different areas of the city, but it was still very basically a segregated town - churches, restaurants, businesses, everything was just separate,” Rabil said.

America’s own racial history increased the stakes of the case.

“[In] this particular case, you had a white woman raped and murdered, which is sort of the old thing that the Klan stirred up fear of is the Black man is going to come take the white woman,” Rabil said.

“It brought up all these fears of centuries of the history of the United States and the South and in the past, the mere suspicion that a particular Black man had his way sexually with a white woman would generate a fairly quick lynching,” he said.

This fear, Rabil said, put Hunt’s life in jeopardy.

“There was certainly that feeling of the thing that stood between Darryl and a lynching was us - me and Gordon Jenkins [Hunt’s other lawyer] and Larry Little [supporter and friend], and the ministers who stood behind him," he said. 

Despite the long difficult battle ahead, Rabil never wavered in his defense of Hunt. He stayed on the case for nearly 20 years until Hunt’s exoneration in February of 2004. 

“He was just a very charismatic person. A very thoughtful person. He was just somebody that you couldn’t give up on,” Rabil said.

“As much as I felt like I knew something with certainty, it was that Darryl was innocent,” he said.

After the initial trial in 1985, Hunt was convicted of murder.

The jury sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

Rabil and other lawyers fought tirelessly through numerous trials and appeals. That led to several roadblocks in the fight for Hunt’s freedom.

Most notably in 1994, a DNA test ruled Hunt out in the rape of Sykes. Despite this, Judge Melzer Morgan denied giving Hunt another trial. 

His reasoning was that the DNA test did not rule Hunt out of murdering Sykes. 

"When we had the DNA, the state courts and the federal courts made up scenarios that like well, he could have still been the lookout or some crazy guy could have come along and deposited semen in Deborah Sykes after she was dead or he [Darryl] might have deposited semen and they just didn’t find it, even though they did find semen and sperm - it’s like they just make things up," Rabil said.

“It was a total rejection of science. It was like, here is DNA that says everything the State said at two trials about Darryl Hunt being the rapist and murderer of Deborah Sykes was false. It was a lie and here’s DNA to prove it,” Rabil recalled. 

Rabil, on his way out of the courthouse that day, smashed his fist on the door in frustration, breaking a bone in his hand. Later that day, he wrote a letter to Hunt.

I think I broke my hand when I slammed it on the courthouse door as I left following my brief statement to the media. So it will probably be a long time before I stop feeling this day. I went to the YMCA and ran one mile for each year of this case in the wind and rain. That calmed me down to a certain degree; at least it worked out some of the anger. We will not give up. We will be successful. You will be released. As long as you are shackled, so are we. 

"Even though I was angry, depressed, and worried that we would never win, I had to put on a light for Darryl that there was hope,” Rabil said.

Journalist Phoebe Zerwick, wrote “Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt” in 2003 for the Winston-Salem Journal and more recently the book Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt. 

She interviewed Hunt behind bars in 2003, and it was clear that the 1994 DNA decision weighed on him. 

“It seemed at the time in 1994 that DNA was gonna prove his innocence and yet it didn’t. He remained in prison for 10 more years,” Zerwick said.

Zerwick recalled Hunt talking about how much certainty he felt going to his court hearing that day in 1994, even giving away what little items he had. 

“Here he was in prison - you don’t have many possessions when you’re in prison - and he was giving them away,” Zerwick said.

This moment, she said, captured his emotional state at the time.

“That huge disappointment I know he felt when he was rejected in 1994 and the isolation and misery of spending all that time in prison,” Zerwick said.

The losses were numerous and repetitive.

"He [Hunt] believed in the criminal justice system at first. That changed after he was repeatedly denied justice, even in the face of DNA,” Rabil said.

In 2003, Zerwick published “Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt” - a series re-examining the case nearly two decades later. Her series would lead to an unexpected call that would change the trajectory of Hunt’s life.

After the first installment of Zerwick's series was released, a woman named Mary Lane gave her a call. 

Lane's daughter-in-law, Regina Lane, was kidnapped while walking into her job at Integon Corp. in February 1985. Regina was commanded to drive away at gunpoint from the building and then raped. She managed to wrestle away the gun and tried to use it to defend herself, but her attacker told her it wasn’t loaded. He then took out a knife and cut her in the face. Regina fought back and escaped with her life. 

Mary Lane noticed similarities between Regina's attack and what happened to Sykes. She suspected it could be the same person who did it. Mary Lane told Zerwick that police discouraged her daughter-in-law from pressing charges against the man she identified as her attacker. 

Zerwick then connected with Regina Lane and quickly wrote an article on this new lead, publishing it as part of her series. 

The report garnered interest from Judge Anderson Cromer, who ordered another round of DNA testing in Hunt’s case. The order went ignored by the State Crime Lab technician for seven months. The judge said he would hold the technician and crime lab in contempt, and finally, the new DNA test was completed in December 2003. 

It led to the identification of Willard Brown as the rapist and murderer of Deborah Sykes. 

With this discovery, Hunt was finally released from prison in December 2003 and exonerated in February 2004 - a development that shocked the community.

"I was just stunned. But that match ultimately led to Darryl Hunt’s exoneration,” Zerwick said. 

“It was kinda proof all along - this sense that without being able to solve the crime and find the true killer - that his [Hunt’s] arrest and conviction was almost inevitable," she said. 

With Hunt’s exoneration, came more information on what kept him behind bars for so long.

"In the end, the court actually determined that there was at least 3,000 pages of evidence of interviews of witnesses that should have been turned over to us,” Rabil said.

Those 3,000 pages, Rabil said, included police reports, State Bureau of Investigation reports, and witness interviews.

“It was everything from different descriptions by the eyewitnesses like Johnny Gray - at one point, he’ll describe the hair of the person he saw as an afro, other times, he would describe it in braids or cornrows. Other people told wildly different stories,” Rabil said.

Rabil said the pages also contained information on Willard Brown. 

“He [Brown] also was identified as someone who attacked, kidnapped, and raped another woman, Regina Lane, in February 1985 and she identified him as the person - and they never charged him with that because they knew that this would open up the whole questioning of whether Darryl was the right guy, because [Regina Lane's attack] happened a block away from where Deborah Sykes was murdered,” Rabil said.

Rabil said he and his team had heard about Regina Lane’s rape and asked for the information to be turned over, but it never was.

“But they knew that they had this and they hid that file, even though we asked for that evidence because we had heard about this case downtown and they would never turn anything over,” Rabil said.

These details were revealed in an investigation done by the City of Winston-Salem in 2007.

“It was a very serious cover-up in this case. In many ways, much worse than I had even imagined,” Rabil said.

During her research for her series, Zerwick stumbled upon reports that led her to believe the case against Hunt was flawed.

“I worked with my editor and by then, all of the police reports in the case had been released through various court orders and we were really able to piece together how the investigation unfolded and how police so quickly started ignoring evidence that might lead them in another direction and focus in on Hunt,” Zerwick said.

Back in 1994, Hunt's legal team had challenged the decision that kept Hunt behind bars, despite the DNA test that ruled him out as the rapist. It went all the way to the North Carolina Supreme Court but still didn't get Hunt out of prison. 

Zerwick said the ruling had her asking more questions about the justice system. 

She interviewed former State Supreme Court Justice Henry Frye, the first African American justice appointed to NC's highest court. 

"He looked at that 1994 DNA evidence and saw very clearly that it was evidence of innocence,” Zerwick said.

“He wrote the dissenting opinion and the other justices, who were white in the majority, didn’t see that as significant, and they ruled that a jury would not have seen that as significant," Zerwick continued. 

“That interview, I think, was really eye-opening for me in showing me how this system we want to think of as neutral is not neutral,” she said.

After Hunt was exonerated, he moved in with his wife April whom he had married while in prison, and her three children.

He was pardoned by the governor of North Carolina at the time, Mike Easley, and he was awarded $360,000 that rose to a full compensation of $750,000. 

In 2007, Hunt was awarded a $1.6 million settlement from Winston-Salem after an investigation into the case.

He started the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice. A project to help men and women re-enter society after being incarcerated.

He also began traveling, delivering speeches on his journey to exoneration after the release of The Trials of Darryl Hunt, a documentary done on his story.

Rabil and Hunt often went to these speaking engagements together which was when Rabil noticed how conviction had affected Hunt.

Hunt and Rabil had traveled to Washington, D.C. in 2006 to discuss The Trials of Darryl Hunt. They were staying at a futuristic hotel called the Hotel Helix.

With its neon colors, Rabil commented it was like something out of The Jetsons. Rabil noticed the environment made Hunt uneasy while they were having a cup of coffee in the lobby.

“Darryl all of a sudden broke out in a sweat and I can see that his chest was sort of heaving. I thought he was having a heart attack,” Rabil said.

When the episode passed, Hunt told Rabil what had triggered him was a flashing lime green light. It had brought him back to September of 1984 - a press conference had been called to inform the public that Hunt had been arrested and would be charged with Sykes’ murder.

He remembered how he stood behind a floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence that separated him from the media.

As he tried to hold back tears, Hunt focused on the socks of a newspaper reporter to endure the ordeal.

Hunt told Rabil the color of the light was the same color as the reporter’s socks.

Rabil said Hunt showed other signs of trauma.

Hunt would disappear for days at a time and often had difficulty traveling requiring a companion.

Rabil said the changing of the world also affected Hunt’s trauma.

“He was 19 when he got in prison, so he didn’t know about air travel, cell phones, computers, and all that, so it was a mysterious world but it was really more than that. Trauma affects your brain and makes you feel stuck in the past,” Rabil said.

Zerwick said in her research for her book Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt, others imprisoned in their youth similarly to Hunt experienced this sense of being frozen in time.

“Other people who have been in prison - who went to prison as Darryl Hunt did in their youth have talked to me about this. You go to prison when you’re 19, the rest of the world grows up and has relationships, and has families, and has jobs and you’re still partly stuck in the place that you were as a 19-20 year old man,” Zerwick said.

Zerwick cited a study in her book done by Saundra Westervelt and Kim Cook. They observed men and women who had been wrongfully imprisoned and found that they experienced a deeper level of PTSD called continuing traumatic stress disorder.

They said these men and women showed signs of paranoia, profound depression, and insomnia.

Jamie Lau, Deputy Director for the Duke Law Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility, said he noticed these signs in his clients as well. 

“This continuing traumatic stress that individuals who are wrongly incarcerated feel a heightened level of anxiety-all the time, paranoia, distrust. Well, difficulty trusting others, but you have to imagine not only were they incarcerated but they were incarcerated because of this broken system that despite their innocence resulted in them losing significant periods of their life,” Lau said.

He said he also observed hypervigilance in his clients.

“A client that I had for the first few years of release after being exonerated whenever a law enforcement officer would be around, whenever he’d see the presence of law enforcement, whether it be a law enforcement officer on the highway or a store, would call me and put his phone on speaker even if he didn’t come into contact with the law enforcement officer,” he said.

Lau said this client’s behavior arose from fear that an encounter with an officer would lead to a negative situation.

“If you’re wrongfully incarcerated, you don’t have that faith that law enforcement or society will only provide a negative consequence to you if you do something wrong. You exist in a fear that at all times, no matter what conduct you’re engaged in, you could be subject to arrest, prosecution, and conviction whether you’ve done anything right or wrong,” Lau said.

Rabil noticed health issues in a client, Norman Satterfield who he helped get out of prison. He'd been incarcerated for 42 years. He was out for less than a year when he died of a heart attack. 

“It was just the wear and tear on his body - 42 years of wrongful incarceration,” he said.

Hunt’s advocacy work might have also added to the trauma from his time wrongfully imprisoned.

“He took a lot on himself. I thought when he got out, he might help me in the Innocence Project type work, you know, helping individuals get out, but he wanted to help everybody,” Rabil said.

Zerwick said she believes the constant retelling of Hunt's hardships may have taken a toll on his mental health. 

“I think there was tension there, so I think it did give him tremendous purpose and meaning but especially all the public speaking he did that required him to retell over and over again this story of his wrongful conviction, I think rather than being cathartic, I think finally it was damaging for him,” Zerwick said.

The documentary that told of his triumphs in the justice system and inspired others began to affect his mood.

“His wife told me that they would go to these events and he couldn’t stand to watch the documentary anymore - that it was too upsetting and that finally, his life became the retelling of this horrible thing that had happened to him, but I think that prevented him from moving on,” she said.

Hunt's speaking engagements and advocacy work also made him a known figure - recognizable wherever he went. 

Before he was wrongfully convicted, he talked about living a decent life. He wanted to work for the city of Winston-Salem like his grandfather who raised him. 

“He wanted a family, he wanted a little house, he wanted just a basic job. He wanted to have a backyard and instead there he was leading this pretty public, very high-pressure kind of life and I think the whole thing was just finally too much,” Zerwick said.

To cope with the stress, Hunt began using opioids. He moved to Georgia for a short time, then moved back to North Carolina in 2016. 

Hunt and Rabil were planning to attend the National Innocence Conference in Texas that April.

But a month before, Hunt went missing. Friends and loved ones searched for him. 

Hunt was found dead in the College Plaza shopping center. He had a gunshot wound to his stomach.

Police ruled his death as a suicide.

“I got a call in the middle of the night on March 13, early Sunday morning that they had found his body, and then to find out that they thought he had shot himself was like a complete shock,” Rabil said.

Before Hunt died, he'd also been telling friends and family he had prostate cancer. Rabil said he learned that wasn't the case. 

“After he died, the autopsy showed that he didn’t [have cancer] and they got medical records from where he said he went. He didn’t have it - he was lying about stuff so that he could get more drugs,” Rabil said.

Hunt’s struggle had ended.

Hunt’s experience with being wrongfully imprisoned started more conversations about how society can better help those in similar situations. 

According to The National Registry of Exonerations, 3,400 people have been exonerated since 1989.

Not all exonerees are equal.

Hunt was able to receive compensation for his time spent in prison. In North Carolina, those exonerated receive compensation.

But not all states offer compensation.

While money might help, it doesn’t give back years lost in prison.

Rabil works as the director of the Innocence and Justice Clinic at Wake Forest. He said Hunt remains at the top of his mind as he tries to help others who are wrongfully imprisoned.

“I want to get people out of prison and they want to get out of prison, but I’m always in the back of my mind thinking, 'OK, if we get them out, where are they going to go?'” he said.

Rabil said he wants to make sure those exonerated have a family support system for the journey ahead.

“We try to work with people and make sure we have the attention, the counseling, and the financial help that they need but it’s still a struggle,” he said.

Zerwick thinks more can be done to help people enter back into society after prison. 

“I think we need to remove the structural barriers and by that, I mean rules, laws, licensing regulations, all kinds of very real barriers that make it so difficult for anybody coming home from prison to really restart their lives,” Zerwick said.

Lau agreed that we need to work on creating ways to better assist those coming back home after prison.

“There are some fundamental things that a person needs to successfully navigate in society - among those things is stable housing first and foremost,” Lau said.

“We should do a better job helping all people return to society into a stabilized circumstance where they can then go forward and hopefully be a contributor to society,” he said.

Lau said one North Carolina initiative is a starting point - North Carolina will now give state ID cards to some people who are released after being in prison.

“That’s one of the immediate, profound impacts on people who are incarcerated - not having an identification card that they can even use to help them establish themselves coming back into society,” Lau said.

Rabil said a look at our justice system might also offer some insight for the future.

“I think we need to have a discussion in this country about this whole idea of incarceration. We have this belief that people can just be thrown away,” Rabil said.

“There’s probably 100,000 people who are innocent that are still in prison but there’s hundreds of thousands more who are there but shouldn’t be because of the overcriminalization in society,” he said.

To approach this subject, the Wake Forest Law School along with other organizations will host a symposium in February called Rethinking Incarceration.

While Hunt’s life involved several tragedies, his wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration brought changes to the justice system.

The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission was created, which is the only state agency in the country that can review wrongful conviction cases with the power to subpoena people. Since its founding, 15-16 people have been exonerated. 

The Eyewitness Identification Reform Act was also passed, which created better practices in how police conduct investigations with witnesses.

Hunt touched many lives by sharing his story, but ultimately, his time in prison weighed heavily on him. 

“Darryl’s exoneration got him out of prison, but the charges ended up giving him the death penalty,” Rabil said.

“He was stuck in time. He was always incarcerated. He never was really free.”

• Appendix 1 Deborah B. Sykes murder investigation timeline - winston-salem. (n.d.). https://www.cityofws.org/DocumentCenter/View/7257/Appendix-1-Deborah-B-Sykes-Murder-Investigation-Timeline-PDF 
• The National Registry of Exonerations - Exoneration Registry. (n.d.). https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx 
• Zerwick, P. (2022). Beyond Innocence : The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt . Atlantic Monthly Press.
• Zerwick, P. (n.d.). Journalnow special report: Murder, race, justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt: Stories. JournalNow Special Report | Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt | Stories. https://www.journalnow.com/app/specialreports/hunt/stories/story1.html 

  
  

  
  

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