DNA absolves inmate of 1981 rape
Release in works; lawyers say another convicted felon implicated

by Bill Rankin and Don Plummer - Staff, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 8, 2005

Robert Clark always said he was innocent of the rape that has kept him behind bars for nearly a quarter of a century. Now DNA evidence has proved him right and revealed that the real culprit is a man who went on to commit further crimes, Clark's lawyers said Wednesday.

During his time in prison, Clark's two children have grown into adulthood and his mother has passed away. Today a Cobb County judge is expected to set him free.

Clark, 45, was convicted in 1982 of a brutal attack on a 29-year-old woman the year before. The woman was abducted outside an East Atlanta fast food restaurant and then taken to Cobb County and raped repeatedly.

During a three-day trial, the victim identified Clark, saying "I will never forget the face, the skin color and his voice." Clark, who maintained that a friend of his was the likely perpetrator, was sentenced to two life terms plus 20 years in prison for rape, kidnapping and armed robbery.

Recent DNA tests, which were unavailable at the time of his trial, show Clark is innocent, a court motion filed Wednesday by Clark's lawyers said.

"Despite the fact that Robert was a head taller than the description, once the police locked in on him, it was all over," Peter Neufeld, one of Clark's lawyers from the New York-based Innocence Project, said in a statement. "Tunnel vision not only cost Robert a quarter-century of freedom, it enabled a serial rapist to assault at least three more victims."

Clark's lawyers allege that Floyd Antonio "Tony" Arnold, the friend Clark had mentioned, committed the sexual assault. Department of Corrections records show that Arnold was subsequently convicted of sodomy in Fulton County in 1985 and convicted there a year later of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He is serving five years in prison for a DeKalb County conviction of cruelty to children and is scheduled to be released Jan. 31.

The Innocence Project says that Arnold's DNA profile was matched in 2003 to two unsolved rapes in DeKalb and Fulton counties. He has not been charged with either crime.

Cobb District Attorney Pat Head said he will move to dismiss the charges against Clark at today's hearing. He said his office cooperated with the Innocence Project after initially balking at the defense's choice of a non-accredited DNA lab.

"Once an accredited lab was selected we have cooperated in every way. I'm just glad we still had the materials to test after this many years," Head said Wednesday. Head would not say if he will file charges against Arnold in the Cobb County case, adding that he could not comment on an "ongoing investigation."

Former Cobb Assistant District Attorney Chuck Clay, who prosecuted Clark, said he was shocked to hear about the recent test results.

"I remember it well, it was a horrible, horrible case. In the six years that I was a prosecutor, this was one of the cases that I never had questions about," said Clay, a former state senator who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2004.

"It's certainly a sobering reminder that everything can be done right in a case and you can still get a wrong result."

If cleared, Clark will be the 164th person nationwide whose conviction has been overturned by DNA tests, said Neufeld, who co-founded the Innocence Project in 1992.

According to court records, the victim of the July 30, 1981, rape was abducted at gunpoint in an East Atlanta parking lot at 7:30 p.m. by an armed man who forced his way into her car. Threatening to kill the woman unless she did what she was told, he drove her to two secluded spots in Cobb County where he beat her, raped her three times and then drove away in her maroon Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Police soon found Clark with the victim's car. He was arrested for possessing a stolen vehicle and questioned about the sexual assault, court records show. Police did not initially suspect him in the assault because the victim reported her assailant was about 5-foot-7, and Clark stands 6-foot-1, the court motion said.

But the lead detective put Clark's picture in a photo array that was shown to to the victim, and she tentatively identified him as her assailant, the motion said. The victim later identified Clark in a lineup. Clark was the only suspect who was in both the photo array and the lineup.

The woman, whose identity is not being revealed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution because she is a victim of a sexual assault, could not be reached for comment.

After his arrest, Clark told police he got the car from Arnold, but authorities never attempted to follow up on that lead, the court motion said.

Clark had no prior adult felony convictions. He had been convicted of burglary, committed when he was 16 years old, his lawyers said.

Two years ago, Clark, represented by the Innocence Project, filed a petition for DNA testing under Georgia's new post-conviction testing law. Court-ordered testing, completed last month, found that sperm from the victim's rape kit did not match Clark's, the court motion said. Innocence Project lawyers then asked prosecutors to search the DNA profile from the crime scene with state and federal DNA databases of convicted felons.

This search matched sperm from the rape kit to Arnold, whose DNA profile is on file as a result of his 2003 cruelty to children conviction, the court motion said.

If formally exonerated today, Clark would be the fifth Georgia man cleared of a sexual assault conviction in the past six years.

In August 2004, Clarence Harrison was released after serving 17 years on charges of sexually assaulting a woman as she waited for a bus in DeKalb County. DNA tests of the rape kit used as evidence against Harrison showed he did not commit the crime.