Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith will put in his last day on Nov. 30. Keith made the official announcement Nov. 17, less than three months after two groups of local ministers called for his resignation.
On Sept. 11, the Ministers’ Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity called for Keith to step down as the top law enforcement official in Forsyth County — a post he’s held for nearly two decades.
During a press conference on the steps of the Forsyth County Hall of Justice, the Rev. Carlton AG Eversley, president of the Ministers Conference, demanded Keith resign immediately. Eversley said Keith’s “stubbornly held, virulently racist white-supremacist and wildly inaccurate views,” made him unfit to serve. Three days prior, a group of mostly white clergy had gathered on the steps of Wait Chapel and issued the same demand. Clergy members cited racial disparities in Forsyth’s criminal justice system and the post-conviction DNA exonerations of Darryl Hunt and Joseph Abbitt as just two reasons why Keith should step down.
By calling for Keith’s resignation, Eversley said the group of white ministers “set the moral framework for a new opportunity.”
On Monday, Keith’s office said he was unavailable for comment.
In the Nov. 17 press release, Keith said he was retiring a year before his term expired to pursue a number of law enforcement and crime prevention projects, including securing funding for his domestic violence program called “Safe on Seven,” establishing a local forensic crime lab for DNA evidence, and continuing to find ways to help keep young people out of the criminal justice system.
Willard Bass, associate pastor at Green Street Methodist Church, said under Keith’s administration, Forsyth County has actually experienced “an overabundance of young African American males going through the criminal justice system.”
Bass said the cases of Darryl Hunt and Joseph Abbitt — two African American men — “indicates to us that there’s a deeper issue that exists within our criminal justice system for African American people or people of color getting a fair trial.”
Bass said he was disappointed by Gov. Beverly Perdue’s decision to appoint Assistant District Attorney Jim O’Neill as Keith’s successor without first consulting stakeholders in the community.
“I was surprised it happened so fast and it happened without engaging the black community and the community overall, so we wouldn’t have the same concerns that we’ve had,” Bass said. “We know that Mr. O’Neill works for Mr. Keith. I just feel like, ‘What’s going to make it different?’” Perdue appointed O’Neill to serve out the remainder of Keith’s term, which expires in 2010. According to the governor’s press release, O’Neill serves “as a legal advisor to law enforcement for first degree murder cases and was the first dedicated domestic violence prosecutor” in Forsyth County.
“Jim O’Neill has the respect and confidence of the public, law enforcement and attorneys in the 21 page 13 st District,” Perdue stated in the release. “The citizens of Forsyth County should have every confidence that justice will be administered fairly by District Attorney O’Neill.”
Eversley characterized O’Neill as Keith’s “hand-picked successor,” but said the Ministers Conference will approach O’Neill’s administration with an open mind.
“The Ministers Conference and all of our members will certainly take anyone at face value without prior prejudice, but what we are looking for is a public repudiation of Keith’s racist world view, and that the new appointee would seek an outside agency to reduce the systemic and institutional racism that resides within that office,” Eversley said.
The Rev. John Mendez, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, said he also hopes O’Neill will meet with the Ministers Conference in a timely manner to discuss strategies to address the racial disparities in Forsyth’s criminal justice system.
“The fact you have more African- American males in jail than you have in college, considering the dropout rates in our community, and the hopelessness so many young people face in our community due to joblessness and poverty, and that so many of our young people are invisible as it relates to housing, jobs, education,” Mendez said. “We have to address these particular issues, not act like it doesn’t exist, and not treat it by building more jails.”
In the mid 1990s, Keith’s office began to focus on violent criminals and developed a habitual felon prosecution program that has sent the most repeat felons to prison of any county in the state, according to his press release.
In 2000, Keith’s office aimed its efforts at violent criminals who used guns during the commission of crimes and developed the Zero Armed Perpetrators program, which brings state and federal law enforcement and prosecution resources together to focus on the repeat violent felon.
Keith has said that during his 19 years as District Attorney, Forsyth County convicted more first-degree murderers of capital murder than any other county in the state, and has convicted all but 20 out of 421 defendants charged with murder. Also, Keith cited State Bureau of Investigation statistics that reveal Winston-Salem’s index crime rate decreased faster than any other urban city in the state from 1994 to 2007.
Also, Winston-Salem went from the 12th worst crime-ridden city in America in index crime in 1994, to a safer 117th place by 2007, while its violent crime rate went down 56.5 percent, more than any urban district in the state, according to the press release.
Keith said he would not forsake his activist approach to lobbying state legislators on a variety of criminal justice issues in retirement. Keith said he plans to continue working for legislation that keeps the habitual felon law strong and helps ensure the state has enough jail beds to keep repeat offenders behind bars.
Keith’s legislative agenda includes pushing for investigative grand jury jurisdiction for gang investigations, stronger gang punishment, funding for domestic violence programs from court fees, and constitutional amendments to allow non-jury felony trials and to define that life without parole means “until death in prison.”
Keith said he’s also looking forward to spending more time with his family. Following his re-election in 2005, Keith announced that he would not seek another term in office.
O’Neill’s appointment precludes an objective analysis by the district attorney’s office into its own issues with systemic racism, Bass said.
“Institutions always tend to deal with issues of race that the person is the problem,” he said. “We’re finding that it’s not always the person who’s the problem but the institution is the problem.”
Bass and other community leaders have expressed the desire to meet with O’Neill to ensure the district attorney’s office operates in a fashion that understands how African American males come into the judicial system. Bass said he believes the institute can assist the DA’s office in developing policies and procedures that improve the treatment of African American males in Forsyth County by ensuring they get a fair trial.
O’Neill did not return phone calls for this story.
Among the achievements Keith cited in his press release are that his office is now 28 percent minority, one-third of assistant district attorneys are racial minorities and 11 of 25 prosecutors are female.
Bass said the 28 percent minority employment statistic is misleading, and the larger for the Forsyth DA’s office is minority recruitment and retention. In 2004, Bass founded the Institute for Dismantling Racism to provide a roadmap for civic, government and business leaders to eliminate racism within their organizations. Even though Keith is stepping down, Bass said many concerns remain about the treatment of African-American males in Forsyth’s criminal justice system.
“There’s nothing in place to ensure anything is going to be different,” Bass said. “We can provide the ways and means for getting more minorities in [the DA’s office] and how we keep them there.”
Bass expressed the hope that O’Neill will take advantage of the Institute for Dismantling Racism’s programs by allowing his assistant district attorneys to participate in the institute’s two-anda-half-day class where participants come to better understand the historical context of how their organizations deal with race issues as well as their own personal attitudes on race.
“All institutions today operate from a place of not serving the entire community,” Bass said. “We’re saying it would be good if we could acknowledge that history and be more intentional about how history has shaped us, keep this historical perspective as we move forward.”
Bass said the Forsyth County District Attorney’s office has not yet agreed to meet with representatives of the Institute for Dismantling Racism to talk about issues of unfair judicial practices and how to create greater diversity within the DA’s office, but he remains optimistic that a change in leadership could lead to a more productive dialogue in the future.
Mendez agreed with Bass, saying that he hopes the new district attorney’s office will join forces with the Ministers Conference and other community groups to change the state of the criminal justice system in Forsyth County.
“I think it’s important that whoever comes into that office that we meet with them to talk to them about how we can collaborate and partner in terms of turning this thing around,” he said.
Black clergy have said Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith’s views on race make him unfit to serve. Others say he brought down crime rates. (photo by Keith Barber)
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