New DNA testing supports a Boulder man’s claim that he was wrongfully convicted of a 1994 murder and contradicts earlier testing done by now-discredited Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods, his attorney said Monday.
Michael Clark, 49, was convicted in a 2012 jury trial of first-degree murder in the 1994 cold-case killing of Boulder city employee Marty Grisham, 48, who was shot to death at his home on the evening of Nov. 1, 1994.
Clark has consistently maintained his innocence in the murder — despite DNA testing done by Woods that she said connected him to the crime scene. New testing by an independent lab now shows that Woods’ testing was flawed, Clark’s attorney, Adam Frank, said Monday.
The new testing took place after the CBI discovered that Woods, a top scientist at the agency for decades, mishandled DNA testing in more than 1,000 cases, sometimes cutting corners or skipping protocols meant to ensure accurate results. She was charged in January with 102 felonies; the criminal case is still pending.
Her misconduct shook Colorado’s justice system and is expected to cost millions of dollars to rectify. Clark was the first to claim he was wrongfully convicted due in part to her unethical work.
“Michael Clark was convicted because of Missy Woods’ false testimony that DNA evidence put him at the scene of the crime,” Frank said. “Based on (the) retesting, we now know that is not true.”
Woods tested DNA in a small tub of lip balm that was found under the stairs near Grisham’s apartment. The city employee answered a knock at his door at 9:34 p.m. on Nov. 1, 1994, and was shot multiple times by someone who never entered the apartment.
Woods concluded that the DNA in the lip balm tub excluded 99.4% of the world’s male population but could include Clark.
The new testing found that it is 2.8 times more likely that random people contributed the DNA in the lip balm than Clark, according to a copy of the DNA results filed in court. That means there is “limited support” to exclude Clark’s DNA from the lip balm, the report states.
Moderate support would be a ratio between 100 and 10,000, while strong support would be a ratio higher than 10,000, the report says.
The re-testing shows Clark’s DNA is not in the lip balm container, Frank said in a Monday court filing.
“…The reason Mr. Clark was arrested, prosecuted and convicted was that Missy Woods falsified a DNA match,” Frank wrote. “DNA retesting has proven that Mr. Clark has been telling the truth all along: Mr. Clark’s DNA is not in the Carmex container.”
In 1994, investigators considered Clark a suspect in Grisham’s killing because he had access to a 9mm 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.
But 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 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.
The case went cold, and no one was arrested in Grisham’s killing for nearly two decades.
The investigation was reopened in 2009, and Woods tested the lip balm tub for DNA in 2011. Clark was arrested after police said the testing results tied him to the crime scene.
He is serving a life sentence and is due in court Tuesday for a discussion of the new DNA results.
The Boulder County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.
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