By: (AP) A man pleaded guilty Thursday to raping and stabbing to death a newspaper copy editor in 1984 -- a crime for which an innocent man spent 18 years behind bars.
Willard E. Brown, 44, was sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years for the slaying of Deborah Sykes under a plea bargain that allowed him to avoid a death sentence.
Darryl Hunt, the man wrongly convicted, was released from prison a year ago and was exonerated in February after DNA testing linked Brown to the crime.
Hunt, whose wife, attorney and other supporters were on hand for the plea, said he holds no malice toward Brown: "God is the ultimate judge."
Sykes, 25, was attacked while walking to her job at The Sentinel, the now-shuttered afternoon edition of the Winston-Salem Journal.
A month later, police arrested Hunt, then 19, on the strength of two eyewitness identifications. Two juries convicted Hunt, and courts upheld the conviction, even after DNA testing in 1994 showed that he was not the rapist.
Hunt's false conviction spurred reforms in the way the police and courts handle criminal cases.
Winston-Salem police and other law enforcement agencies in North Carolina now show photos of suspects to crime witnesses one at a time, instead of as a lineup. And the photos are now shown by an officer not involved in the investigation.
Both measures are intended to prevent investigators from influencing witnesses, even unintentionally.
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