Beyond Innocence

January 10, 2022
Journalist Zerwick debuts with a moving account of a North Carolina man’s wrongful conviction and incarceration, eventual exoneration, and lingering postprison trauma. In 1984, newspaper editor Deborah Sykes, a white woman, was raped and murdered on her way to work at the Winston-Salem Sentinel. After an investigation that hit several dead ends, police charged a 19-year-old Black man, Darryl Hunt, with the crime based on tenuous evidence, including the testimony of a teenage prostitute who later recanted and witness identification by a man with ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Though the only witness to the actual attack failed a polygraph and Hunt’s blood type didn’t match samples taken from the crime scene, the nearly all-white jury convicted him. Documenting an appeals process that dragged on for 19 years, Zerwick draws on excerpts from Hunt’s letters and diaries, and profiles activists, clergymen, and lawyers who advocated for his release, which happened in 2004, after DNA evidence implicated a man whom police had discounted as a suspect at the time of the investigation. Amid his own struggles to adjust to life after prison, Hunt began a project to help others with reentry into society, but the work may have exacerbated his own mental health struggles, according to Zerwick, and he committed suicide in 2016 at age 51. Richly detailed and lucidly written, this is a harrowing story of racial injustice and the lingering traumas of wrongful imprisonment. (Mar.)
Religion

Starred review from January 15, 2022
A painstaking reexamination of a miscarriage of justice and the devastating aftermath. When the wrongly convicted walk free, headlines roar and justice seekers cheer, but what happens when the news crews depart? In her debut book, Zerwick, the director of the journalism program at Wake Forest, revisits a story she covered for the Winston-Salem Journal involving the life, arrest, trials, exoneration, and aftermath of Darryl Hunt. At 19, Hunt was a familiar face for local authorities due to a tough childhood and years of hard living. Despite having an alibi, Hunt was accused in the 1984 rape and murder of a White copy editor at the local paper. Despite the accusation, he maintained his innocence throughout. In portions of the retelling, Zerwick uses sharp prose alongside Hunt's urgent journals to convey his thoughts and establish context. Hunt avoided the death penalty and spent the following two decades working with a devoted community and legal team to prove his innocence. His story garnered national attention in the mid-2000s after HBO released the documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt. The film ends with Hunt being released and exonerated courtesy of DNA evidence, compensated nearly $2 million in restitution, and beginning his new life, which included the founding of the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice. However, as Zerwick deftly shows, Hunt, like many who have served prison sentences, struggled with reentry into society. Hunt's untimely death in 2016 remains somewhat shrouded in mystery; hidden substance abuse may have been one culprit, but Zerwick posits that unacknowledged PTSD was a contributing factor. "It shouldn't be surprising that years of wrongful imprisonment would leave those who suffer such injustice scarred," she writes, "but the depth of these scars has only recently become a subject of research." This moving, powerful book should lead to deeper research in that area. An engaging, heartbreaking read that cautions society and the justice system to handle exonerees with greater care.

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February 1, 2022
Darryl Hunt, a 19-year-old African American, was convicted of the tragic 1984 rape and murder of a white Winston-Salem, North Carolina, copyeditor, Deborah Sykes, a crime he did not commit. For 19 years, he maintained his innocence. His steadfast integrity gained him many supporters who fought for his release. Winston-Salem Journal reporter Zerwick covered Hunt's battle and bolstered his case. Now she tells the full story of the racial and political injustices involved in his wrongful conviction and the many judicial twists and turns that finally led to his exoneration. While release from prison is often considered a happy ending, Hunt's tale does not conclude there. Instead, Zerwick tracks Hunt's life as an exoneree and dedicated activist, whose advocacy helped lead to substantive reform for death row inmates until the burden of his trauma led tragically to his taking his own life. Zerwick's portrait of Hunt humanizes all who are incarcerated, opening out into a well-researched, frustrating, inspirational, and heartbreaking look at profound issues of equality and justice and how racism and injustice destroy lives.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2022

The Trials of Darryl Hunt (2006) is a documentary about the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of a Black man for a rape and murder in North Carolina. Hunt spent 20 years behind bars before DNA evidence exonerated him. Zerwick (journalism, Wake Forest Univ.) wrote an eight-part investigation on Hunt in the months before his exoneration in 2003. Here, she examines what happened to Hunt during and after his incarceration while connecting his story to the systematic racism that dominates America's carceral state. Most of the book is dedicated to recounting the crime, the conviction and Hunt's time in prison; throughout, Zerwick includes excerpts from Hunt's journals. The last section of the book focuses on Hunt's work as an advocate for social justice and the days leading up to his death by suicide in 2016. The book's reconstruction of Hunt's last days is a powerful reminder of incarceration's effects on the large numbers of Black Americans who have spent time behind bars. VERDICT Zerwick's portrait of Hunt is a reminder of the trauma caused by the American justice system and offers an essential narrative of the lasting impacts of incarceration.--John Rodzvilla

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