Conviction overturned in 1994 Boulder murder case

A judge revoked the condemnation in a 1994 Boulder murder case on Friday due to defective DNA tests for the dishonored Colorado Research Office, Scientific Yvonne “Missy” Woods.

It is the first case that was expelled since the CBI that began in 2023 discovered hundreds of criminal investigations in which Woods cut the corners in his DNA tests, a scandal that has already cost him Colorado millions of dollars and shook the state criminal justice system.

The Judge of the District Court of Boulder, Nancy Woodruff Salomone, annulled the sentence for first -degree murder of Michael Clark, 49, who has been fulfilling a sentence of life without probation since he was sentenced in 2012 for the death of shooting at the employee of Boulder City Marty Grisham.

A hearing for June 6 is scheduled in which the Boulder County District Prosecutor Michael Dougherty will announce if Clark will try again for positions derived from the 1994 murder.

“This is a very good day,” said Adam Frank, Clark’s lawyer. “Michael Clark’s conviction is gone.”

Dougherty had filed a motion on Friday afternoon asking the judge to annul Clark’s conviction because Woods’s interpretation of DNA tests in the case of Grisham is now in doubt after an independent laboratory withdrew the evidence of the crime scene.

“According to these results, as well as in the significant claims of jury’s misconduct and the ineffective assistance of the lawyer, our office determined that the conviction must be emptied,” Doughtery said in a statement. “It is the right thing, after considering the three problems. In the light of the charges in this case, we will carefully analyze the bottom of the evidence to determine the correct and fair result.”

The jury’s misconduct claim involved the discovery that one of the jurors ignored the judge’s instructions and visited the crime scene during the trial, according to the prosecutor’s motion.

With the unemployed conviction, Clark bond of $ 100,000 is restored, according to prosecutors. It is expected to be transferred to the Boulder County prison from the Fremont Correctional Center on Monday, and is eligible to be released if you publish the bond. He is married and has three children.

“We want to take him home with them as soon as possible,” Frank said.

Within the investigation of the years of misconduct of a CBI scientist: “God does not allow someone in prison that should not be”

Clark was always suspicious in 1994, killing, but researchers only had circumstantial evidence at that time. It was the Woods DNA test of a carmex lip balm container that is in the scene that led researchers to finally load Clark in the cold case in 2012.

Doughy’s motion to vacate said the original independent laboratory Woods analysis and created a new show of the Carmex container. It was the proof of that new sample that found new results that could statistically exclude Clark.

“There could be a number of reasons for these results, including advances in DNA technology,” said the prosecutor’s motion. “Regardless of reason, this is a new evidence.”

Grisham, who worked as Information Services Director of the City of Boulder, received four times on November 1, 1994, after he responded to a blow to the door of his apartment. The murderer fled before Grisham’s girlfriend could see him.

The murder was a cold case for almost two decades before the Boulder police reopened it in 2009. In 2011, Woods took DNA samples from the Carmex container and determined that they excluded 99.4% of the world’s male population, but could include Clark.