Judge Backs Committee

Retired WSPD detective Don Williams, center, with his lawyers Steven Smith, left, and Carl Parrish, rt., listening to Judge Edgar B. Gregory, Thurs., April 9, 2009, deny Williams' request to avoid a city council subpoena. The council wants to question Williams concerning his investigation in what has become known as the Silk Plant Forest case, and the subsequent hearings by a citizen's review committee.

By Dan Galindo | Journal Reporter

Published: April 9, 2009

A judge this morning ordered a retired Winston-Salem police detective to obey a city council subpoena and testify about his work in the Silk Plant Forest case.

Det. Don Williams, who led the investigation of the 1995 assault of Jill Marker, has maintained that he should not be forced to submit to a subpoena pursued by a citizens committee reviewing the case. The city council issued the subpoena in November, but Williams ignored it and never appeared for a December hearing.

This morning in Forsyth Superior Court, Judge Edgar B. Gregory said that the subpoena was properly issued and that Williams had to obey it.

Williams had asked for a gag order on a citizens review committee that has come up with the questions the city council is trying to ask him. He also asked for Gregory to consider disbanding the review committee, and to order the committee not to pass judgment on the guilt or innocence of Kalvin Smith, the man convicted in the case.

Gregory said no to all those requests. His ruling clears the way for Williams to testify perhaps as soon as May.

Williams' attorney, Carl Parrish, said he would not appeal. Once Gregory's order is signed, 30 days have to pass before a hearing for Williams can be set.

Al Andrews, a city attorney, said he and Parrish would negotiate a hearing date in the coming weeks.

The Winston-Salem City Council formed the review committee in the wake of continued questions about the crime, its investigation and the guilt of Kalvin Smith, the man convicted of brutally assaulting Jill Marker, a clerk at the store.

The City Council, in creating the committee, said that the committee was to examine the policies and procedures used by the police department in investigating Marker's beating, not to determine whether Smith was innocent or guilty.

Williams also asked that the city be ordered to pay his legal fees because he was employed by the city as a police detective during the original investigation. Gregory gave Williams' attorneys 30 more days to find some legal cases supporting that request.

Smith was convicted in 1997 and is serving 23 to 29 years in prison. Marker was pregnant at the time of the attack, in which she was struck in the head about 20 times. She later gave birth to a son while in a coma. Today, she is living in Ohio, where she is blind and requires 24-hour care.

Smith asked for a new trial last year, alleging that witnesses against him were pressured by police and have since recanted. He also claimed that his trial attorney was ineffective. Judge Richard Doughton rejected his request after a weeklong hearing in January.

The citizens committee, working with two police detectives, has for months asked Williams to answer questions about the investigation, but Williams has refused.

A five-part Winston-Salem Journal series in 2004 quoted Williams as saying that he did not document some of his work in order to keep it from Smith's defense attorney. Williams has since denied saying that. The series raised questions about the work of police and prosecutors, as well as that of Smith's defense attorney during his trial.

Smith's case also has been taken up since 2003 by the Innocence Project at Duke University's law school, which helped ready his request for a new trial