Hours before leaving office yesterday as president of the Harford County Council, Jeffrey D. Wilson issued a 19-page report in which he sharply criticized state and federal investigations into the suspicious death of county jail inmate William M. Ford and called for a re-examination of the case.
Mr. Ford, of Wilmington, Del., died in the Harford Detention Center in March 1992 while he was serving a 30-day sentence for drunken driving.
Jail officials originally said Mr. Ford strangled himself with a pillow case -- and a county grand jury agreed in a report issued earlier this year. But the pathologist who performed an autopsy on Mr. Ford maintains that an injury to his neck -- a fractured larynx -- could not have been self-inflicted. The Ford family, which won a $400,000 settlement from the county after a threatened civil rights lawsuit, contends the 28-year-old laborer was raped by someone in the Detention Center and killed by one or more jail guards.
Mr. Wilson, a Republican whose four-year term ended yesterday because he did not seek re-election, said in his report that he could not accept the grand jury's conclusion.
"I leave office with profound concerns that we . . . still do not know how William Ford died," said Mr. Wilson, a Presbyterian minister.
He originally accepted the grand jury's findings, but he suggested in his report that Assistant Attorney General Carolyn Henneman, who directed the eight-month grand jury probe, did not present certain evidence to the panel that might have led to a conclusion of homicide.
Mr. Wilson questioned whether the grand jury heard evidence from DNA tests that was contrary to its conclusion that semen found in Mr. Ford's rectum was his own.
He also questioned whether the grand jury was told that one of several Detention Center guards investigated in the case "failed" an FBI lie detector test. Mr. Wilson alleged that the guard failed the test on questions concerning whether the guard or anyone had an altercation with Mr. Ford before he died and whether the guard was withholding information.
Michael R. Enright, executive assistant to Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., denied that state lawyers withheld evidence as Mr. Wilson suggested. "The attorney general's office stands by its investigation and the report of the grand jury," Mr. Enright said. Ms. Henneman, who could not be reached for comment, said earlier this year, "Nothing was kept from the grand jury."
Mr. Wilson also called for the FBI to issue a "formal report" on the Ford case to explain why an agency investigator concluded in October 1992 that Mr. Ford did not commit suicide, then determined in February 1993 that he did kill himself.
Mr. Wilson said he began his informal investigation of the case in July with the assistance of County Council Attorney H. Edward Andrews III. He said he interviewed Dr. Frank J. Peretti, the former assistant state medical examiner who performed the Ford autopsy, reviewed files maintained by the county lawyers and conducted other interviews.
"When I looked through these files . . . and a grand jury report had been issued based upon half the facts, my public duty demanded that I bring forth these facts," Mr. Wilson said.
Dr. Peretti, now an associate state medical examiner in Arkansas, said in an interview yesterday that he stands by his finding that Mr. Ford did not kill himself. "I don't trust them," Dr. Peretti said of the attorney general's investigators. "They could not find a person to come in and disagree with me."
Mr. Wilson said investigators failed to consider that Mr. Ford could have been killed by one or more jail guards during an attempt to restrain him.
Lawyer William F. Gately, who represents the Ford family, said yesterday that he has not seen Mr. Wilson's report and could not comment.
Mr. Wilson also called on the new county sheriff, Joseph P. Meadows, to attempt to review files in the case that have been withheld from public view by the sheriff's office and the FBI. "If William Ford did indeed die by his own hand, then the unsealing of the files will exonerate those who still live under the burden of public suspicion," Mr. Wilson said. If Mr. Ford did not, then the unsealing will help "to see that justice is done."
Sheriff Meadows also said could not comment on Mr. Wilson's report because he had not seen it.