A Crime, Then a Tragedy
Twists in rape case snared wrong man

by Bill Rankin and Bill Torpy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 11, 2005

It was near dusk when the woman pulled into the Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot in East Atlanta. Her favorite song came on the radio, so she sat in the car to enjoy it. Suddenly, a man in a cowboy hat stood at the window and flashed a pistol.

"Slide over or I'll blow your brains out," he said.

It was July 31, 1981, the start of a nightmarish journey that would forever change the lives of two people — one who was in the car that evening, and one who wasn't.

The woman, a Decatur schools employee enjoying summer vacation, was beaten and raped. Robert Clark, who was 22, would be convicted of kidnapping, rape and armed robbery, and would spend more than 24 years in prison.

All the while, Clark was innocent, and last week he walked out of prison after DNA testing determined he was wrongly convicted.

From the start, fate in the form of evidence and happenstance piled up against Clark. He was driving the rape victim's car, he hid from police and then concocted an unbelievable story.

Then the victim picked him out of a lineup — a "fairly positive" identification that grew more certain as the case unfolded. Evidence that might have ruled Clark out as a suspect was lost before the trial. And a thunderstorm knocked out electricity at the courthouse on the final day of testimony, prompting the judge to have Clark handcuffed — which risked prejudicing the jury.

Clark's story, based on trial transcripts and interviews with those involved in the case, including jurors, the prosecutor and defense attorneys, shows how justice can sometimes go wrong.

Attacker was sadistic

"Tell me what you have to live for," the man told the woman, a 29-year-old mother, as he drove toward Cobb County.

After raping the woman once, the man beat her, then bound her hands with a bra and forced her back into the car.

"Do you see anywhere where you want to make your final resting place?" he asked her. Later he came to a dark, secluded area. "This is good," he said, pulling over.

He raped her again and then pushed her down a deep embankment. He raped her a third time. He tied her feet, gagged her, then drove off.

She worked a hand free and, naked, clawed her way up the hill.

A couple sat in a nearby car. "Will you help me?" the rape victim cried out. But they drove away.

Finally, she found a Good Samaritan who gave her clothes and called police.

In the week after the rape, the victim, not police, found her stolen car, a maroon Oldsmobile Cutlass, after a friend spotted it at an apartment complex in southwest Atlanta.

It was Aug. 6, 1981, and that evening, the woman and her father drove to the apartments to see if they could find the car — and her attacker.

They saw the Cutlass pull in. They found a police officer and returned. But the officer was calling for backup and they didn't see where the driver went — or get a good look at him.

A woman in the complex told police she had seen Clark in the car.

Seventeen days later, at 3 a.m.,, police went to arrest Clark at his mother's house. They found Clark in his underwear hiding in an upstairs bedroom closet, his feet sticking out from under a pile of clothes.

As he was being interviewed by Atlanta police Sgt. Louis Arcangeli, Clark later told a tale that would eventually help undermine him.

The car, he told Arcangeli, was given to him by a woman — a dancer at a now-defunct lounge on Luckie Street.

Clark told Arcangeli he thought her name was Pam, "or something that starts with a P."

In that same statement, which would be read to jurors, Clark said he wore a cowboy hat with a feather — so, too, did the woman's attacker.

But Arcangeli, who went on to become a deputy chief, never questioned Clark about the rape.

Later, in court, he explained why. "The initial description was of a perpetrator shorter in stature than Robert Clark."

The woman told police the attacker was slightly taller than she, about 5 feet 7 inches tall.

Clark stands 6 feet 1 inch tall.

But Clark's story about the dancer didn't check out, and police brought the victim to Cobb police headquarters, where she was shown six photos.

"I believe this is him," she told police, pointing to Clark's photo. "I'm fairly positive."

Two days later, Clark and six other men — each of them about 6 feet 1 inch tall — stood before the victim in a lineup. Each man in the lineup was asked to step forward and turn around.

The woman wanted to hear their voices.

Tell them to say, "Get in the car," she said. One at a time, they did, first softly, then forcefully.

It's No. 6, she said. She had "no doubt."

It was Clark.

The truth comes late

Months later, in February 1982, Clark was sitting in jail awaiting trial.

That's when he decided to tell the truth about how he got the car.

He told Cobb Detective R.B. Kelly that it had been given to him by a friend, Tony Arnold. Clark had initially lied, he said, because he wanted to protect Arnold.

But Kelly later testified he never tried to find Arnold.

"Well, once [Clark] had told me that he had lied about the previous thing, what's to say he wouldn't lie about this?" Kelly testified.

Clark's trial began in May 1982, and it lasted three days.

Assistant District Attorney Chuck Clay, who would later become a state senator, used the victim's unwavering identification to build the case against Clark.

"I will never forget the face, the skin color and his voice," the woman testified.

Pressed by defense counsel about the discrepancy in Clark's height and her description of the assailant, the victim held firm.

"You can't forget the voice, especially in a situation like that," she testified. "It was just something that sticks in your mind."

Later, Marsha Silverman Holcomb, a forensic expert with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, was called to introduce into evidence the rape kit containing semen and hair samples.

The prosecutor asked her about Item 1-A.

"It says 'Item Missing on This,' is that correct?"

"Yes," Holcomb responded, acknowledging a piece of evidence had been lost.

It was a plastic container with two cotton-tipped swabs covered with seminal fluid.

At the time, DNA technology did not exist, but that seminal fluid, Holcomb testified, might have shown it was "consistent" with Clark's blood type.

During her cross-examination, Nancy Scott Rogers, one of Clark's defense attorneys, let jurors know they could see it another way.

Couldn't such evidence be used to "totally eliminate" a suspect? she asked.

"That is correct," Holcomb conceded.

Before the trial, Bud Siemon, another one of Clark's lawyers, worked out a plea deal with prosecutors, but in an interview Friday, Siemon said Clark refused, insisting he was innocent.

The only defense witness called was Tracy LaVerne Lee, who said she saw Tony Arnold — not Clark — driving a maroon Cutlass that August. He said his father bought it for him, she said.

Clark's attorneys then asked the bailiff to bring Arnold, in jail on a burglary charge, into the courtroom — a tactic straight out of "Perry Mason."

Lee identified Arnold, who was then led from the courtroom.

The defense team had decided it didn't dare show Arnold to the victim, who was not in court at the time.

They figured she was so certain it was Clark, she would never recognize Arnold — and that would be devastating.

The defense rested without Clark testifying.

No one would believe him

During closing arguments, a thunderstorm swept over the courthouse.

The lights flickered and went out.

A deputy started to go over the railing to secure Clark. But the lights came back on before he got to him.

Alarmed, Judge Gary Andrews sent the jury out. He then ordered Clark discreetly handcuffed to his chair, not wanting to have the lights to go out again and the jury see a deputy grabbing the defendant.

Later, the jury retired to deliberate.

"He's guilty. He's guilty," several jurors said as they entered the jury room, juror Jane Arnold recalled Friday.

"Wait a minute," a few jurors interjected.

At 6 p.m. that day, the jury foreman told the judge they were split.

It was 9-3 in favor of conviction, Jane Arnold said.

When the judge sent jurors home that night, she was still unsure how she would vote.

The next day, the jury reached a verdict: guilty on all counts.

You did the right thing," a deputy told several jurors as they left.

That day, a judge handed down the sentence.

"Your Honor," a bewildered Clark interjected, "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 said, cutting him off. "Just remain silent."

The judge sentenced Clark to two life sentences plus 20 years.

Victim feels new sorrow

Two years ago, the New York-based Innocence Project, which helps exonerate inmates using DNA evidence, agreed to look into Clark's case.

And while the two cotton-tipped swabs in the case were lost, there was enough evidence remaining to perform DNA tests.

Those tests showed Clark did not commit the crime.

They pointed to Clark's friend, Tony Arnold — and led authorities to suspect he may have committed two other rapes, too, one in Fulton County in 1993, another in DeKalb in 1996.

Arnold is serving five years in prison on a DeKalb County conviction of cruelty to children and was supposed to have been released next month.

The victim said she feels "really bad" about the mistake.

"I'm not an inhumane person," she said Thursday. "I would hate for 24 years to be taken away from my kids, and my family."

So, too, does Clay, who prosecuted Clark.

"It's frustrating to think I had the actual perpetrator sitting in the courtroom and helped convict the wrong guy."

Clark, meanwhile, is happy someone finally believed him.

"They gave me a whole new life," he said of the attorneys from the Innocence Project. "They gave me back the life I had lost."