BOULDER — The Colorado man who saw his murder conviction overturned in April in part because of faulty DNA evidence connected to a statewide scandal will be prosecuted again in connection with the 1994 Boulder killing, prosecutors announced in court Thursday.
Michael Clark, 50, was while prosecutors considered whether the case against him should continue after his conviction was thrown out. Clark, who has maintained his innocence, served more than 12 years of a life prison sentence for the killing of Boulder city employee Marty Grisham after he was convicted in 2012.
A judge this year wiped away Clark’s conviction after his attorneys found evidence that DNA testing in the case was mishandled by now-former Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods, one of several problems with the original murder prosecution.
Woods was charged in January with 102 felonies connected to widespread misconduct during DNA testing. Investigators found she deleted, omitted or manipulated DNA data in at least 1,003 criminal cases during her 29-year career with the CBI. Her case is pending.
The DNA testing scandal sent shockwaves through Colorado’s criminal justice system and prompted reforms and new oversight at the CBI. Clark was the first to successfully challenge his conviction in the wake of Woods’ misconduct, and his case is expected to be one of many such challenges.
In Thursday’s hearing in Boulder County District Court, prosecutors announced they would retry the case despite the problems with the DNA evidence and said they had other evidence that supports Clark’s guilt.
Adam Frank, Clark’s attorney, said the decision to retry the case was a “moral failing.” He said he plans to file a motion seeking dismissal of the case due to “outrageous governmental conduct.”
Frank requested a motions hearing in February, citing witnesses’ “faded memory” and the availability of the defense’s key DNA expert, Phillip Danielson, a University of Denver professor.
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in a statement Thursday that the decision to vacate the original conviction was “the right thing to do.”
“In light of the charges in this case, we then carefully and thoroughly analyzed all the remaining evidence to determine the right path forward,” Dougherty said. “Our request for trial dates is a reflection of that process and our decision of what justice requires. We look forward to the trial.”
Prosecutors said they could be ready to go to trial as soon as next month, but Chief Judge Nancy Salomone set a tentative trial date of May 11.
Clark remains free on bail ahead of the trial. He walked into the courtroom Thursday hand-in-hand with his wife. Several other family members and friends joined in person and via a livestream of the hearing.
Frank has long maintained that the charges against Clark should be dropped.
Grisham was shot and killed on Nov. 1, 1994, after he answered a knock at the door. Clark was always a suspect in the killing, but investigators only had circumstantial evidence at the time.
It was Woods’ DNA testing of a Carmex lip balm container found at the scene that led investigators to finally charge Clark in the cold case in 2012. Woods at the time concluded that DNA in the lip balm tub excluded 99.4% of the world’s population, but could include Clark.
New testing conducted this year found that it is 2.8 times more likely that random people contributed the DNA in the lip balm than Clark. The results could statistically exclude Clark from the DNA in the container, prosecutors acknowledged in court filings.
In 1994, investigators considered Clark a suspect in Grisham’s killing because he had access to a 9 mm gun — the same caliber used in the killing — and because they alleged he stole blank checks from Grisham and wrote $4,500 in false checks from Grisham’s account.
Later, they alleged Clark, then 19, dreamed of joining the Marine Corps and believed he could not do so if he was caught committing check fraud, so he killed Grisham in an attempt to cover it up. A jailhouse informant also later claimed Clark had admitted to the killing while jailed in the check-fraud case.
Clark had been in Denver at 9 p.m. that night, then at his home in Boulder making phone calls to friends by 9:45 or 10 p.m., Frank has said. Investigators initially believed it was possible Clark shot Grisham at 9:34 p.m. that night, but “the timeline was very tight,” Frank wrote in a motion for post-conviction relief.
