Later today, the Winston-Salem City Council’s public safety committee will consider granting greater power to the Silk Plant Forest Citizen Review Committee, which is reviewing the conviction of Kalvin Smith in the 1995 near-fatal beating of Jill Marker.
City Manager Lee Garrity, under pressure from Smith reporters, is recommending that the review committee become a fact-finding panel. The biggest issue surrounding that move is how the review committee would be granted subpoena power. Only the General Assembly can grant the review committee subpoena power, and Garrity warns that would take too long, so he appears to be leaning toward allowing the City Council to issue subpoenas on the review committee’s behalf.
Note that Garrity’s proposal for the council’s public safety committee are vague, but he’s bascially saying that the city will allow the panel to do whatever it wants short of issuing subpoenas, and only because getting the General Assembly involved would be too complicated and time-consuming. Garrity also “agreed agreed to several changes to make the committee more independent from the city manager’s and city attorney’s offices, including an assurance that the panel’s report is not edited by any city agency, state office or attorney.”
Outgoing Police Chief Pat Norris might also get involved before all is said and done:
In another unusual twist, the resolution that the city council will consider also says that Police Chief Pat Norris will ask the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission to review the case.
…Should Norris ask the commission to review the case, she would essentially make herself an advocate for Smith.
Norris would have to put in writing what new evidence exists and explain why she thinks that Smith might be innocent.
“It means they’re writing to us and saying, ‘I have some information about this case, and it looks like there’s some new evidence and the person might be innocent,’” said Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, the commission’s executive director.
Norris said she is not going that far. “No, I’m not saying that I think Kalvin is innocent,’’ she said, “but there are folks in the community who think that he is.”
Maybe I’m being picky here, but the fact that the police chief refers to a convicted assailant as ‘Kalvin’ displays an unprofessional familiarity indicating that she already is an advocate for Smith. I realize that Forsyth District Attorney Tom Keith still has to weigh in on whether or not Smith gets a new trial, and there’s no indication right now that Keith is leaning toward a new trial. But in the meantime, it looks as though the city has backed itself into a proverbial corner on this case. When you look eastward down Interstate 40, that appears to be the trend in city government these days.
