2 – Darryl Hunt (Convicted in 1984)
Unfortunately, although the tale of Darryl Hunt involves an innocent man finally seeing daylight, it has a tragic end. In 1984, he was tried and convicted of the rape and murder of Deborah Sykes. Critics of the outcome pointed out that as an African-American man accused of the murder of a white woman. Since he was facing an all-white jury, he had no chance of acquittal. Certainly, there was no conclusive evidence to prove Hunt’s guilt and no physical evidence that connected him to the crime whatsoever. In fact, he was convicted on the strength of witness testimony and received a life sentence.
In 1987, Hunt was accused of murdering an African-American man named Arthur Wilson who had died in 1983. He was also convicted of the crime, but in 1989, both convictions were overturned. In 1990, an all-white jury acquitted him of the murder of Wilson, but the following year, Hunt was again convicted of the rape and murder of Sykes. In 1994, his defense team was able to test the DNA of the physical evidence in the Sykes case and found that Hunt couldn’t possibly have committed the rape.
Incredibly, a judge in Forsyth County refused to bring the case forward again because the DNA evidence did not prove Hunt was innocent of murder. Finally, in 2004, Hunt was released after a man named Willard E. Brown confessed to the murders. A review of the state’s DNA database discovered that Brown’s DNA matched what was found in the Sykes case, so there was no option but to release Hunt after he had served 19 years in prison.
Ultimately, Hunt received around $1.6 million in compensation, and instead of shying away from the spotlight, he founded the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice. It is an advocacy group for people who have been wrongfully convicted. However, Hunt was haunted by his experience and used ATMs every day as a means of creating a time stamp and image of his location to ensure he was never wrongfully convicted of anything again.
The last few years of Hunt’s life are a sad story. He divorced his wife April in 2014 and discovered he had prostate cancer. In 2016, Hunt returned to Winston-Salem, the scene of the Sykes crime, and found that his assets had been frozen. His truck was repossessed because he missed a payment and he found out that his cancer had progressed to Stage IV. Hunt had exhibited signs of depression after his release from prison, and in 2016, he was found dead in a car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had escaped the death penalty due to the decision of one juror over 30 years previously, but in reality, Hunt did receive a death sentence. His dignity and humanity were stripped away piece by piece until he had nothing left.