WATCH NOW: Phoebe Zerwick speaks about Darryl Hunt — Transcript

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1. 0:00this book beyond innocence the life
2. 0:02sentence of daryl hunt
3. 0:04tells the story of a man that i think a
4. 0:06lot of people in winston-salem are
5. 0:08familiar with
6. 0:09um but
7. 0:11may not know the the full story of of
8. 0:14his life so daryl hunt was
9. 0:18a winston-salem teenager in the 80s when
10. 0:21he was
11. 0:24when he was picked up and charged with
12. 0:26the murder of a woman named deborah
13. 0:29sykes who was a copy editor at the
14. 0:31afternoon newspaper
15. 0:33and the case instantly attracted
16. 0:35attention
17. 0:36um because
18. 0:39he was a black teenager and she was a
19. 0:43young white woman working downtown
20. 0:46he claimed innocence from the from the
21. 0:49very beginning and
22. 0:51very soon after his arrest
23. 0:54larry little who had been a city
24. 0:55councilman at the time
25. 0:57established a defense committee to rally
26. 1:00to his support so from the very from
27. 1:02from the time he was 19 really he
28. 1:05he
29. 1:07he became a public figure in
30. 1:09winston-salem he spent
31. 1:11more than a decade
32. 1:13trying to get this conviction overturned
33. 1:18in the early 90s there was dna evidence
34. 1:21that ruled him out as the rapist in the
35. 1:23case but no court would
36. 1:26found that sufficient to award him a new
37. 1:28trial and then in
38. 1:312003
39. 1:33he
40. 1:35he
41. 1:37got new dna testing in the case the
42. 1:40journal assigned me to do an
43. 1:42investigative series brought a lot of
44. 1:44attention to the flaws in the case
45. 1:47and
46. 1:48that new round of dna testing eventually
47. 1:50solved the crime
48. 1:52led to the real killer and daryl was
49. 1:55exonerated in 2004. um and the book
50. 1:58really tells the story of what was
51. 2:01happening really behind the scenes what
52. 2:04his life was like in prison well really
53. 2:06what his early life was like
54. 2:08what that kind of injustice does to
55. 2:11somebody emotionally
56. 2:14it looks at the trauma that he suffered
57. 2:16in prison the violence that he suffered
58. 2:18in prison and then it looks at the
59. 2:21difficulty and challenges he faced
60. 2:24when
61. 2:25when he came home from prison he became
62. 2:29a
63. 2:30advocate for justice and left a legacy
64. 2:33of reform in north carolina he was the
65. 2:37subject of a documentary and traveled
66. 2:39around the country and really
67. 2:41internationally
68. 2:43but
69. 2:45this this role he had as an advocate
70. 2:47weighed heavily on him and the book
71. 2:51looks at the tension and stress he was
72. 2:53under that led up to his death by
73. 2:55suicide and it also really looks at the
74. 2:58legacy of
75. 3:00racism in this country and how that
76. 3:03that whole history
77. 3:06has tainted our justice system and how
78. 3:09all of that history was really borne out
79. 3:12in one man's life