A free man
Robert Clark spent nearly 25 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit.
He knew he was innocent, and now the rest of the world knows it, too.

by Don Plummer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 9, 2005

As child, he often thought --- "Maybe if Dad would just say he did it he could come home." But Clark's father, Robert, would never say he did it because he didn't, and on Thursday afternoon, he came home to his son and other family members, embracing them in a Cobb County courtroom after serving 24 years for someone else's crime.

"There is so much I want to do," Clark said, hugging his son. "I just want to spend time with my folks right now."

In 1982, after a year in jail awaiting trial, Clark was sentenced to life in prison for a kidnapping and rape. Now, he's been cleared by a DNA test that didn't exist then. Those results proved he was not the man who abducted a woman, then raped and beat her before leaving her for dead.

"The truth is finally out, the truth you knew all along," Cobb Superior Court Judge Dorothy Robinson said during a short hearing Thursday. "And that truth has now set you free."

But after nearly a quarter-century behind bars, Clark missed all of those moments that make a life a life: his son's first day of school, the birth of his grandson; the passing of his mother.

While he was in prison, the country elected four presidents. The Internet, the cellphone --- even home computers --- seemed light years away. The Twin Towers were crumbled by terrorists. Clark's case, though, is notable for several firsts.

Of the 164 people across the country whose convictions have been overturned by DNA tests, Clark served the longest sentence, said Peter Neufeld, a lawyer with the New York-based Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to clear those who have been wrongly convicted.

And it's the first time, Neufeld said, that a DNA test cleared one person and implicated another.

Authorities now believe that Floyd Antonio "Tony" Arnold, who is in a Georgia prison on unrelated charges, raped the woman who had identified Clark as her attacker, and they say Arnold may have committed two other rapes, one in Fulton County, another in DeKalb.

So how did it come to this?

Found driving victim's car

On July 30, 1981, a 29-year-old woman was abducted at gunpoint outside a fast food restaurant in East Atlanta.

At 7:30 that night, an armed man forced his way into her car and threatened to kill the woman --- unless she did what she was told. The man drove her to two secluded spots in Cobb County where he beat her and raped her three times.

Then, he drove away in her maroon Oldsmobile Cutlass.

That car would later play a pivotal role in the case, and it's what led police to Clark.

Police soon found him with the victim's car.

He was arrested for having a stolen vehicle and questioned about the rape. But police did not initially suspect him in the assault because the victim reported her assailant was about 5 feet 7 inches tall.

Clark, according to court documents, stands 6 feet 1 inch tall.

At one point, 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.

Later, she also identified Clark in a lineup.

Clark was the only suspect in both the photo array and the lineup, and the Innocence Project questioned whether that may have tainted the identification.

After his arrest, Clark told police he got the car from Arnold --- his friend.

But a police officer testified that authorities never followed up on that lead, according to a court motion in the case.

Suddenly, Clark, whose only scrape with the law was a burglary conviction when he was 16 years old, was on trial for rape.

New suspect was in court

The year was 1982. Clark was 22 years old.

His trial lasted three days, and the victim identified Clark as the man who raped her.

"I will never forget the face," the woman said. During that trial, the defense's only witness, a woman named Tracy LaVerne Lee, testified she saw Arnold driving the maroon Cutlass.

At the time, Arnold was brought into the courtroom.

"It's unusual to bring the actual perpetrator into the same courtroom and show how the identification was tainted from the very beginning," Nancy Scott Rogers, one of Clark's trial attorneys, recalled Thursday. "We were actually putting forth the real truth of the case back then."

But a Cobb County prosecutor at the time, Chuck Clay, who went on to become a state senator, said Thursday that the defense didn't connect the dots.

"They brought him in to show him to the witness and the jury," Clay recalled, "but they didn't develop it."

Rogers, though, said the victim's identification of Clark was too much to overcome.

Clay, too, said the woman "was a dignified, quiet witness in a savage case."

The jury convicted Clark, and he was sentenced to two life terms plus 20 years in prison for rape, kidnapping and armed robbery. All the while, he maintained his innocence --- while another man who police believe may have committed the crime remained free.

''We just kept praying'

Two years ago, the Innocence Project agreed to look into Clark's conviction.

"I remember the day we went to visit, and he said he had some people who were trying to help him," Rocky Clark said Thursday, his eyes filling with tears 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."

The DNA test not only cleared Clark, but it led police to Arnold. He was convicted of sodomy in Fulton County in 1985 and is serving five years in prison for a DeKalb County conviction of cruelty to children.

He is scheduled to be released Jan. 31.

But Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head, who agreed to dismiss the charges against Clark at Thursday's hearing, would not say whether he will file charges against Arnold in the Cobb County case, saying he could not comment on an "ongoing investigation."

Erik Friedly, spokesman for Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, said Howard first learned about three weeks ago that DNA showed Arnold was connected to a 1993 rape of a 23-year-old woman in north Fulton.

That case will be sent to Howard's crimes against women and children unit for investigation, Friedly said.

And in DeKalb County, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming said her office also recently learned that Arnold's DNA matched that from a 1995 rape.

"Since that time we have been working to pull together a file to review for possible indictment within the next few weeks, before Mr. Arnold is scheduled to be released," said Stephanie Kirijan, a spokeswoman for the district attorney.

Thursday, though, was Clark's day. Two other inmates freed by DNA evidence attended the brief court hearing.

"To see somebody standing over there with a smile that's actually bigger than my smile was, that's amazing," said Calvin Johnson, who in 1999 was the first man freed in Georgia by the Innocence Project.

Said Clarence Harrison, who was who freed last year by DNA evidence presented by the Innocence Project: "I'm just happy to see that the system still works."

Well-wishers and camera crews gathered outside the Marietta courthouse, and Clark said he harbored no anger over the years he lost.

He has not decided whether he will seek compensation from the state for his years in prison.

For now, he plans to stay at his mother's house in Atlanta --- the place where police had arrested him nearly 25 years ago.

But first, there was one more stop.

His lawyers called him back into the courthouse --- back into the legal system --- to sign papers confirming he was indeed a free man.

Now, after all these years, Rocky Clark can build a relationship with his dad --- and introduce him to his grandson, 10-year-old Quintavius.

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

Staff writers Bill Torpy, Bill Rankin and Jeffry Scott contributed to this article.