1 week Ago By Nicky Andrews
The Boulder County District Attorney’s Office will not stand in the way of a man’s motion to vacate his conviction of fatally shooting a Boulder city employee in 1994. Michael Clark, who has been incarcerated since 2012, is expected to be transferred to a jail and will have the opportunity to post bond. On the same day as the DA’s announcement, a court issued an order vacating the conviction.
Clark may face a second trial.“The duty of a prosecutor is to do justice,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in a Friday news release. “After the misconduct of the State’s DNA lab analyst was communicated to our office, we requested a re-test of an important piece of evidence.
Based on those results, as well as the significant claims of juror misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel, our office determined that the conviction must be vacated. It is the right thing to do, after considering all three issues. In light of the charges in this case, we will carefully and thoroughly analyze all the evidence to determine the right and just outcome.
”Clark, 49, is set to move to jail from the Fremont Correctional Facility after a more than 12-year stay in prison for the death of Marty Grisham. Clark, who was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to life without parole, has always maintained his innocence, which is now supported with DNA evidence that was retested after the finding that Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst Yvonne “Missy” Woods, who worked Clark’s case, mishandled more than 1,000 DNA cases.When a conviction is vacated, it returns to a pre-trial posture and the defendant is set a bond and status conference, defense attorney Adam Frank wrote over email.
A status conference has been set for June 6, according to the DA’s Office’s news release. The status hearing will determine next steps in the case.The original bond of $100,000 will be reinstated, and Clark is eligible to post the bond, according to the DA’s Office’s news release.
The DA’s Office believes the change in Clark’s case “is consistent with the ethical obligations for prosecutors and appropriate considering the exceptional circumstances presented here,” the office said in the news release.“It is the People’s intent to re-evaluate the evidence, locate key witnesses, and determine whether the case can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at a second trial,” the office said in the news release. “In the meantime, the defendant’s bond status should be changed to reflect the status and developments, as outlined in the motion response filed this afternoon.
” In 2023, the bureau found that Woods tampered with DNA testing by omitting and altering data in her work. Following the finding, about 3,000 DNA samples were called for retesting statewide. According to Boulder District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Shannon Carbone, the CBI review found that in the mishandled cases, data was deleted and altered that concealed Woods’ tampering with controls and Woods’ failure to troubleshoot issues within the testing process.
Carbone added that Woods reportedly failed to provide thorough documentation in the case record related to certain tests that were performed.Michael Clark, left, talks with his lawyer Megan Ring at his filling of charges in court at the Boulder County Justice Center in Boulder, Colorado, on Jan. 12, 2011.
Clark was arrested on suspicion of murder in the 1994 Marty Grisham case. (Photo by Mark Leffingwell/Daily Camera)A Carmex lip balm container was found under the outside stairwell near Grisham’s apartment the morning after the homicide, which was tested by Woods, according to a motion filed in court.“When Ms.
Woods tested the Carmex for the presence of DNA, no DNA could be identified from the outside of the Carmex container, but partial DNA profile was developed from the inside of the container on the surface of the lip balm,” Frank wrote in the motion.According to Frank, the DNA extracted by Woods, 17 years after the homicide, was very small and Woods testified that 99.4% of the world’s population could be excluded as a contributor of the DNA, but not Clark.
Woods found that there were at least two DNA contributors, including a female contributor, but Woods could only develop a partial Y chromosome profile, which was only tested against Clark’s DNA, according to Frank.“Mr. Clark’s DNA matched at only five out of the typical fifteen loci, but the analyst considered this sufficiently reliable and announced that Mr.
Clark could not be excluded as a contributor to the DNA profile in the Carmex container,” Frank wrote in a motion.Following the finding that Woods had mishandled cases, additional testing of the lip balm was conducted by an outside lab. In a motion filed in March, Frank wrote that the outside lab found a lot of DNA, and DNA from inside the Carmex container was not consistent with Clark’s.
According to the lab report, the DNA profile was at least 2.8 times more likely to be of three unknown, unrelated individuals than of Clark and two unknown, unrelated individuals.However, the report also stated that “Michael Clark cannot be visually excluded as a possible contributor to the interpretable portion of the mixture DNA profile” and the result provides limited support for exclusion.
Grisham, who was 48 at the time of his death on Nov. 1, 1994, was shot four times in the head and chest in the doorway of his apartment after answering a knock at the door during dinner with his girlfriend.Police never found the murder weapon, but investigators were able to gather enough circumstantial evidence and witness testimony to get a conviction.
Boulder police said Clark — who, at the time of the shooting, was friends with Grisham’s daughter, Kristen — had forged checks he stole from Grisham’s apartment. Kristen had asked Clark to watch the apartment about a month before the shooting. Clark was a suspect from the beginning of the investigation but was not charged until 2012 after prosecutors found evidence they say linked Clark to the sale of a 9mm gun similar to the one used to shoot Grisham.
While Clark’s attorneys tried to convince the jury there was no hard evidence to prove Clark was the shooter, prosecutors argued the evidence showed Clark was the one person with the means and the motive to kill Grisham.On Dec. 10, 2012, Clark appealed his conviction to the Colorado Court of Appeals and on Sept.
29, 2016, his conviction was affirmed, according to a motion filed in district court. The Court of Appeals denied a request for rehearing on Nov. 3, 2016.
On July 6, 2017, Clark petitioned the Colorado Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari — asking for a review of his case — but on Oct. 10, 2017, it was denied.On Feb.
8, 2019, Clark filed a petition in district court, and in January 2020, the court ordered prosecutors to respond to certain arguments made by Clark, including claims he made that his counsel was ineffective by failing to communicate with him and failing to investigate credibility and alternative suspects. The motion was denied in August 2020..
