24 Years in Prison for Crime he did NOT commit

December 8, 2005
After 24 Years in Prison, Man Has a Reason to Smile
By SHAILA DEWAN

MARIETTA, Ga., Dec. 7 - It is rare to see a prison inmate with a life sentence who cannot stop grinning.

But that was Robert Clark Jr. on Wednesday, the day before his conviction for rape, robbery and kidnapping was expected to be vacated on the strength of a DNA test that showed he was not the rapist.

After 24 years in prison - one of the longest incarcerations served by the 164 people who have been exonerated by DNA testing - Mr. Clark, 45, was buoyant at the prospect of seeing his siblings, children and the five grandchildren he did not have when he was sentenced in 1982.

"I still got a little life in me," he said.

Though wrenching, Mr. Clark's story is not so different from that of others who were wrongfully convicted. What is stunning about it is the fact that the man who the authorities now believe was the real rapist, Floyd Antonio Arnold, was in easy reach of the police at the time.

The DNA test that exonerated Mr. Clark started a chain reaction that revealed not just Mr. Clark's innocence, but a series of law-enforcement bungles. Those missteps allowed Mr. Arnold to commit violent crimes repeatedly and, very nearly, to walk out of prison, where he is serving time for cruelty to children, at the end of January, despite the fact that his DNA matches that found in Mr. Clark's case and two other previously unsolved rapes.

"This is the worst case of tunnel vision that we've seen in the history of the Innocence Project," said Peter J. Neufeld, a co-founder of the project, which has been instrumental in DNA exonerations and which is handling Mr. Clark's case.

At 21, Mr. Clark was living with his mother and 5-year-old son in southwestern Atlanta. He worked as a roofer and had no criminal record, save a juvenile burglary charge. One day an acquaintance, Mr. Arnold, lent him a car. Because the car was not hotwired and Mr. Arnold had the keys, Mr. Clark said, he did not think the car was stolen.

But the car had belonged to Patricia J. Tucker, 29, who had been getting into the driver's seat in a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot when she was carjacked, kidnapped, taken to the woods and raped three times. At Mr. Clark's trial, the sole defense witness identified Mr. Arnold in the courtroom and testified she had seen him driving the car before Mr. Clark was arrested with it.

But Ms. Tucker testified that Mr. Clark had been her attacker, even though she had initially described him as 5-foot-7 and Mr. Clark was 6-foot-1. The detective in the case told the jury that he never investigated Mr. Arnold because Mr. Clark had initially lied to officers about where he had gotten the car, then switched his story. The judge sentenced Mr. Clark to life.

When Mr. Clark heard that, he interrupted, saying: "Your Honor, they had Tony here. I can't put him on the stand. He'll tell you I didn't do nothing but drive the car two weeks later. Y'all got him right here."

"Mr. Clark, you have had your trial," the judge admonished. "Just remain silent."

Mr. Arnold went on to commit a string of felonies, including burglary, gun possession and sodomy. In 2001, he was charged with multiple counts of child molesting in a case prosecutors say involved a 13-year-old female relative. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, cruelty to children, for which he is now serving time.

Meanwhile, Mr. Clark wrote birthday cards to his children and letters to anyone he thought might be able to help with his case.

When his mother came to visit, he would lay his head in her lap and sleep. When her kidneys failed, he asked to be locked up in solitary confinement so he could be alone to grieve. She died last year, before he gained his freedom. "She knew I got the court order I needed," Mr. Clark said, smiling again.

Finally, the Innocence Project took his case, and a DNA test was done on the evidence. In November, the results showed that the attacker was not Mr. Clark. The district attorney in Cobb County, Pat Head, ran the DNA profile against the criminal offender database. A match came back: Mr. Arnold.

But there was more, said Ted Staples, the manager of forensic biology for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The printout showed that in 2003, when Mr. Arnold's DNA was first added to the database, it matched that in two other rapes, in Fulton and DeKalb Counties.

No action was taken against Mr. Arnold, who will finish his current sentence on Jan. 31.

Mr. Staples said the police in those jurisdictions were notified at the time by phone and letter. But a spokesman for the Fulton County Police Department said it did not know of the match until last week. It has put a hold on Mr. Arnold so he cannot be released.

In DeKalb, Detective Sgt. K. D. Johnson, of the DeKalb County Police Department's youth and sex crimes unit, acknowledged that the department was notified in 2003, but said that the information had slipped through the cracks. "It had gone through several different detectives who have since been transferred to other departments," Sergeant Johnson said. "We're trying to figure out who had it and when."

For his part, Mr. Clark stands to get some restitution from the state, which has paid $1.5 million to two other exonerated men. But, he said, he is thinking more about his 5-year-old granddaughter, Alexis, than how much he might be owed. "They owe me an apology," he said. "They done messed my life up." And he smiled.

Brenda Goodman contributed reporting for this article.