Man found dead in car could think of nothing but avoiding his next false arrest

I received this article from my wife titled “Wrongly Convicted NC Man Found Dead in Car” written by Breanna Edwards posted yesterday March 14, 2016 and in it she details “Darryl Hunt, who spent 19 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, was found dead in a car in Winston-Salem, N.C., early Sunday, the Charlotte Observer reports. Officers got a call about a person believed to be dead in a car near the Wake Forest University campus, where they found Hunt unresponsive.  In 1984 at age 19, Hunt was charged with the rape and murder of a newspaper copy editor. Hunt was exonerated in February 2004 after DNA evidence led police to Willard Brown, who later confessed to the murder. Hunt was exonerated and pardoned by then-North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley and was also awarded a settlement of more than $1.6 million in 2007. Hunt then went on to found the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, which is an advocacy group for those wrongfully convicted.   As the Observer notes, Hunt traveled across his home state with People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, and even traveled overseas for the documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt to speak about abolishing the death penalty and improving the justice system. Hunt's experiences, however, haunted him, the Observer notes. He was reportedly prone to using ATMs daily—not really just to get money but so that he could create a time-stamped receipt and image of his location. Hunt, the Observer notes, had recently been diagnosed with cancer, but a cause of death has not been released”.

When she sent this to me, her question was “do you think he could not live out of prison” and to that my answer is no.  Living outside of prison had nothing to do with the expiration of this man-made body and the release of the soul/spirit of Daryl Hunt.  My thoughts are Daryl Hunt began his life as someone who wanted to stay under the radar.  He may have done some bad but his over-all prospective seems to be for good.  The thing that tripped up Daryl Hunt and continued to haunt him morning noon and night was not the experience of prison but the lack of documented proof of his innocence at the very beginning of this nightmare, showing clearly where he was to contradict the circumstantial time they said he was committing this crime.  This is explained by him stopping by ATMs to document his locations and time stamp his life but he knew that even the money he received for being falsely incarcerated was not enough to keep the next false arrest from happening and Daryl Hunt just could not exist any longer looking over his shoulder for the next arrest for another crime that he did not commit.  It got worse for him when he began to realize that even the time stamps from the ATMs would not be enough to prove he was innocence and nothing he could think of would ever appear to be. 

To others who may read this, it could be said that Daryl Hunt fought with his inner demons as well as we all do at times and in this case his inner demons won but for me I come away with a much different prospective.  I say Daryl Hunt won that battle between his inner demons and himself because after being exonerated, pardoned and compensated, he went on to do more good than he may have been able to before his false arrest.  Establishing the Daryl Hunt Project and traveling all over North Carolina and even abroad, Daryl Hunt was able to reach people that he would have never reached just being Daryl Hunt from North Carolina and when he had done enough and had enough, when he could no longer see a way where he would avoid being falsely accused again, he gave up and gave in.