Justice blunted? Darryl Hunt qualifies, too

Remember that righteous outrage that had some of y'all wanting to storm the Bastille and overthrow the legal system when you thought a scalp-hunting prosecutor might send three innocent Duke lacrosse players to prison for sexual assault?

I hope you have a little bit of that outrage left over for what happened to Darryl Hunt.

If you think what Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is accused of doing in the lacrosse players case was wrong -- hiding or withholding evidence, proceeding with a case for political gain -- wait till you get a look at the prosecutors and cops who sent Hunt to prison for two decades for a rape and murder they must've known he didn't commit.

You can get that look at them tonight when HBO airs the award-winning documentary "The Trials of Darryl Hunt."

The film follows Hunt from his first interview with the Winston-Salem cops soon after Deborah Sykes' body was found in 1984, through jailhouse confabs with his attorneys, all the way to the day 19 years later when a judge finally said what anybody watching already knew: The case against him was a bunch of hooey.

If you care anything about justice, watch "The Trials of Darryl Hunt." Please. Even after you do, you probably still won't believe the way prosecutor Dean Bowman shamelessly changes course and still maintains the kid's guilt when evidence debunks all of his initial theories.

I promise you, it is a thing of pure ugliness.

Hunt seldom, at least visibly, succumbed to despair onscreen, despite numerous setbacks. There was one heartbreaking gasp -- you'll know it when you hear it -- when his attorney, Mark Rabil, told him the N.C. Supreme Court had refused to grant a new trial. As he said at one point after being hustled back to prison, "I've become immune to being discarded."

Watching Hunt's trials, I couldn't help but think several times "My God, my God. Why hast thou forsaken this dude?"

One who didn't forsake him was Larry Little, a former Winston-Salem alderman who's now a political science professor at Winston-Salem State University.

Let me tell you: If you're ever charged with a crime you didn't commit, pray that you have someone like Little in your corner.

I asked Little, whose frustration at times singed the screen, whether he ever felt like giving up.

"Never. I didn't know if we'd prevail, but I knew I couldn't give up," he said.

Even as prosecutors and some cops were trying to fast-track Hunt to a date with the sleepy needle, other cops, Little said, were surreptitiously aiding him.

"That boy missed the death penalty by one vote," Little said; had he gotten it, Hunt would most likely have been worm food by the time his attorneys found the real killer.

Jessica Manzi of HBO assured me that the timing of the documentary is "completely coincidental" to the dismissal of charges against the Duke men.

The timing is nonetheless exquisite, and the juxtaposition of the two cases may actually make some of you realize that clean-cut lacrosse players in navy blazers and khakis aren't the only ones who can become victims of evidence-ignoring, overzealous prosecutors.

Honest. Sometimes poor black guys get a bum deal, too.

Race played a huge part in the Hunt trial travesty. One prosecution witness was a Klansman, and prosecutor Bowman's incendiary appeals were designed to inflame the all-white second jury.

If you live in North Carolina, though, you know that you don't have to be black and poor or white and rich to become a victim of prosecutorial dirty pool.

Alan Gell spent half of his nine years in prison on death row for a murder he couldn't possibly have committed: He was in jail when Allen Ray Jenkins was killed. Despite that unassailable alibi, Attorney General Roy Cooper subjected him to another trial instead of releasing him pronto.

That's because Gell was one of those white dudes Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about: "I ain't no millionaire's son. ... I ain't no fortunate one."

If Nifong is found guilty of ignoring defense-friendly evidence, he'll be a fortunate one if he finds a job going: "Hi. Which of our 31 flavors you wanna try?"

As Little said: "He is probably going to get disbarred because he messed over rich white boys. The prosecutors in Hunt's case got promoted."

To wit: Dean Bowman, who didn't return a call to his office, is now an assistant attorney general in the N.C. Department of Justice's Special Prosecutions Section. Eric Saunders, an assistant DA during Hunt's motions of appeals, is now chief assistant DA in Winston-Salem. See whether you can keep from laughing when Saunders, in open court, dismisses DNA evidence -- which seems to exclude Hunt -- as a "highly speculative procedure." Oy.

Donald Tisdale, the DA who tried Hunt for the death penalty, is now a defense attorney.

Hmm. I reckon that shows that for some people, the law is just a game.

To win, unfortunately, it helps to be one of those fortunate sons.