Clark's outlook remains positive

Editorial, Don McKee, Marietta Daily Journal, December 12, 2005

Robert Clark got his freedom back last week - almost a quarter-century after he went to prison for a crime he never committed.

"The truth is finally out, the truth that you knew all along. That truth has now set you free," Judge Dorothy Robinson of Cobb Superior Court told Clark after signing a handwritten order for his release.

What's almost as remarkable as Clark's exoneration after so many years is his outlook.

First, he says he's not angry about the terrible wrong done to him.

It was a case of mistaken identity by a woman who said Clark stole her car, assaulted her and raped her in Atlanta in 1981. He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to two life terms plus 20 years.

"I just want to go home," he said after leaving the courtroom.

He wanted to smell freedom and feel it and touch it, to hug his son, his grandson, to marvel at a cell phone, a digital camera and all the other changes of 24-plus years.

Thanks to his mother, who never lost faith, he had a home waiting for him. She believed in him, visited him often during his years behind bars and kept him believing. She kept him strong, he said. She inspired him to write for help from the Innocence Project, the nonprofit legal clinic that has freed many other innocent people from prison.

She left her house to her son so he would have a place when he was freed, as she knew he would be some day.

The other remarkable thing about Clark is he never lost hope that he would be exonerated. He said he was innocent from the outset, refusing to plea bargain for a lesser sentence. And thanks to the Innocence Project, his hope turned into reality.

Clark is the 164th wrongfully convicted person to be cleared by DNA evidence in the past 16 years and the fifth from Georgia in the past six years.

Every one of the Georgia cases "involved mistaken eyewitness identification," according to the Innocence Project.

There's a virtual epidemic of wrongful convictions often based on eyewitness testimony or identification by victims. Thousands of prisoners are currently waiting for the IP clinic to evaluate their cases.

"Most of our clients are poor, forgotten and have used up all of their legal avenues for relief," the Innocence Project says. "The hope they all have is that biological evidence from their cases still exists and can be subjected to DNA testing."

There's an extensive screening process required for determining if DNA testing would prove the innocence of a convicted person.

And there's a flip side to the DNA testing. In about half the cases of post-conviction DNA testing, the test results "further implicate the defendant." So it cuts both ways.

Now two things need to happen in short order.

The district attorney should pursue prosecution of the man whose DNA did match that in the rape for which Clark was convicted.

And the General Assembly should approve just compensation for Robert Clark.