Father is coming home

Rodrickus "Rocky" Clark was only 3 when his father Robert Clark Jr. was sentenced in 1982 to two life terms plus 20 years in prison for a kidnapping and rape he always said he didn't commit.

Recently, a DNA test that didn't exist then determined that Robert Clark is not the man who abducted a 29-year-old Atlanta woman, then drove her to Cobb County where she was repeatedly raped, beaten, bound and left for dead.

Rocky Clark's earliest memories of his dad are the visits he and his sister made to visit him in prison. Robert Clark's mother brought her grandchildren with her to visit so they would know their dad.

Rocky said he remembers those visits. He remembers thinking maybe, if dad would just say he did it he could come home.

Now 28, Rocky Clark knows that wouldn't have happened. His hope now is that his father will be able to spend the time they missed with Rocky's 10-year-old son Quintavius.

"I just want we and him to be able to get together and spend time with his grandson that he didn't get to spend with me," Rocky Clark said.

Rocky smiles when he speaks of the father who was never at home.

"He never missed my birthday, he always sent a card."

It was two years ago that Robert Clark told his mother and son that he might be freed. The New York-based Innocence Project had taken his case. Lula Clark died in June 2004, but at least, Rocky said, she knew his dad might be coming home someday.

"I remember when we went down to visit and he said he had some people who were trying to help him," Rocky said, his eyes filling at the memory. "We didn't know if it would ever happen, but we just kept praying and going along with it so he would have hope."

Robert Clark is going home, but will not be abandoned, said Georgia Innocence Project spokeswoman Lisa George. The project will formally begin representing Clark Friday, she said. The group has a formal re-entry program for inmates proven innocent by DNA tests.

After nearly a quarter of a century behind bars Clark, 45, will need help adjusting to life as a free man. Driving, using a cell phone, adjusting to the Internet age that dawned after he entered prison are just some of the adjustments, George said.

Clark's lawyers met with him this morning and said his mood is "extremely optimistic."

"Mr. Clark said he has been waiting for this day for 24 years and that he is looking forward to going home," said attorney Vanessa Potkin of the Innocence Project. "He just has a grin from ear-to-ear."

Not only did the DNA test prove Clark innocent, it also revealed that the real culprit is a man who went on to commit further crimes, Clark's lawyers said Thursday.

Clark's lawyers allege that Floyd Antonio "Tony" Arnold committed the sexual assault Clark was convicted of committing. 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."

Clark 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.

"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 is the 164th person nationwide whose convictions have 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 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 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, only a juvenile burglary conviction 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 victim's rape kit to Arnold, whose DNA profile is on file as a result of his 2003 cruelty to children conviction, the court motion said.

Clark is 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 MARTA bus in DeKalb County. DNA tests of the rape kit used as evidence against Harrison showed he did not commit the crime.

On October 7, 2002, Samuel Scott and Douglas Echols had their indictments dismissed in the kidnapping, rape and robbery of a Savannah woman in 1986. Scott had been sentenced to life plus twenty years. Echols received five years. In 2001, DNA tests excluded both men as the source of sperm collected from the woman after the rape.

Calvin Johnson, convicted in a 1983 rape, sodomy and burglary in College Park. Johnson was sentenced to life in prison. In 1999, Johnson became the first Georgia inmate proved to be innocent using DNA evidence, according to the Innocence project. No one has been arrested in that crime.