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WINSTON-SALEM (MCT) — The city of Winston-Salem asked a judge in Forsyth Superior Court yesterday to review and then order the release of thousands of pages of documents compiled by a citizens committee that studied the police investigation of the 1995 beating of a clerk at the Silk Plant Forest shop.

The city is also asking that specific information from pre-existing personnel files not be released.

The Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee produced a report that included exhibits, letters, transcripts and other information about the investigation — documents that total more than 5,000 pages. The city has made the committee's summary report public, but it has not released thousand of pages of the additional documents.

The city is asking for a judge to inspect the information — privately, if necessary — and decide whether "full disclosure is warranted," the petition said. Some of the personnel and employment files that the committee reviewed and discussed may be protected from public disclosure under state and federal laws.

''The committee's materials are of great interest to the citizenry," the city's petition says. "The city council has determined that a full release of the committee's report, its appendices, and related materials is necessary and essential to maintaining public confidence in ... city services."

The Winston-Salem Journal and several citizens have asked the city to release all of the documents relating to the committee's work. The Journal published a five-part series looking into the Silk Plant Forest case in 2004.

City Attorney Angela Carmon and Alan Andrews, an assistant city attorney, filed the petition.

The committee, established by the Winston-Salem City Council, spent months reviewing the police investigation into the beating of Jill Marker, who today is living in Ohio. She is blind and brain-damaged, and requires 24-hour care.

The man convicted of the assault, Kalvin Michael Smith, is serving a sentence of nearly 29 years in prison, has maintained his innocence. He has failed in several efforts to win a new trial, despite recantations by several key witnesses against him and other evidence that raise questions about the police investigation and the prosecution. Smith's attorneys are pursuing another appeal of his request for a motion for appropriate relief.

In its final report, the citizens committee concluded that it had no faith in the police investigation. Separately, committee members voted 7-2 to approve a statement saying that there is no credible evidence to believe that Smith was at the scene of the crime.

Many of the questions surrounding the case involve Don Williams, the detective who was the lead investigator in the case. and who is now retired. Under a subpoena pursued by the city, he testified to the city council and committee in June.

Although the motion the city filed yesterday does not include a transcript of the interview with Williams, it does include summaries of what some police detectives and supervisors had to say about the quality of his work while he was a police officer. Those summaries indicate that Williams had some support on the force, but they also raise questions his peers in the department had about his work.

The city filed its request after months of lobbying by some residents who have taken up Smith's cause, as well as the Innocence Project at Duke University, which has worked with Smith since 2003.

Police Chief Scott Cunningham has said that his department is conducting an internal review to determine if it should reopen its investigation into the crime.