For the first time in more than 25 years, Georgia men Darrell Lee Clark and Cain Joshua Storey will be home for Christmas, thanks to a true crime podcast that uncovered their wrongful murder convictions and attorneys from the Georgia Innocence Project.
Clark and Storey walked out of the Floyd County jail as free men Thursday after the Rome Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office agreed that their convictions for the 1996 shooting death of a friend should be vacated. They were embraced by tearful friends and family who gathered to greet them.
“You never think something like this is going to happen to you,” Lee Clark said in a statement. “I never would have thought I would spend more than half my life in prison, especially for something I didn’t do. I’m glad the truth has finally come out after 25 years. I’m so thankful for Georgia Innocence.” Project and Proof Podcast for what they did. Without them, I would still be in prison.”
Lawyers with the Georgia Innocence Project said Clark’s exoneration was obtained after they presented new evidence of police misconduct in the police investigation of the 1996 death of 15-year-old Brian Bowling.
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Lee Clark, left, and Joseph Storey, right, were released from prison Thursday after serving 25 years for a murder they didn’t commit. His release was secured after the Proof podcast discovered new evidence in his case.
(Courtesy of Fox 5 Atlanta)
On October 18, 1996, Bowling was hanging out with his best friend, Cain Joshua Storey, in his parents’ trailer home. He was on the phone with his girlfriend when she told him they were playing Russian roulette with a gun Storey brought. The stupid and dangerous game ended tragically. Bowling pulled the trigger on the gun, sending a bullet through his head and killing him.
Investigators initially believed Storey’s account of the accident. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter. But in the months that followed, police reopened the investigation at the behest of Bowling’s distraught family, the Georgia Innocence Project said.
In the course of their investigation, they interviewed a woman who lived near the Bowling home. She told investigators that Storey and Clark had gone to a party she had thrown a few months after the shooting. She alleged that at her party, the pair of 17-year-olds had told her they had planned Bowling’s murder because she knew too much about a previous robbery Storey and Clark had committed.
After further investigation, Storey’s manslaughter charge was upgraded to murder and Clark was arrested as an accessory, despite Clark having a corroborated alibi. Police relied on the testimony of a hearing and speech impaired witness that he had been in a different room in the Bowlings’ home when the shooting occurred. They claimed that the witness had identified Clark from a row of photos as someone he had seen running around the backyard that night. No one else at the Bowling home reported seeing anyone outside.
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Cain Joshua Storey gives an interview to FOX 5 Atlanta after his release from prison. Storey was present when 15-year-old Brian Bowling shot himself on October 18, 1996.
(Courtesy of Fox 5 Atlanta)
At trial, the state based its case on the testimony of the hostess of the party that the children had conspired to kill Bowling in an act of revenge, and on the witness’s identification that Clark was fleeing the house.
The hearing and speech impaired witness, Charlie Childers, had difficulty communicating with the court. He repeatedly said that Storey was present at the house the night of the shooting, but also said that a person he called “Darrell” was not present in the courtroom, even though Clark was sitting at the courtroom table. defending. Childers told the court, through an interpreter, that “Darrell” was a “black boy” with “black hair” who had a wife, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. The description didn’t fit Clark, who uses his middle name Lee, is white, single, and has brown hair.
The state also heard testimony from the county coroner, who had no formal medical training, because an autopsy was not performed on Bowling’s body. The coroner told the court that he had a “gut feeling” that the gunshot wound was not self-inflicted, because it was not a close contact wound.
Despite the shaky evidence and Clark’s alibi, the trial concluded within a week and both men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
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Lee Clark was wrongfully imprisoned for more than 25 years after being convicted of a murder he didn’t commit.
(Courtesy of FOX 5 Atlanta)
It wasn’t until 2021, more than two decades later, that Susan Simpson and Jacinda Davis reexamined the facts of the case on their Proof podcast.
Simpson and Davis re-interviewed key trial witnesses. They found a better interpreter for Childers, who revealed that he had never told police that he had seen Clark the night of the shooting. Most of his testimony concerned an unrelated crime he had witnessed a decade earlier.
The hosts of the Proof podcast also spoke to the hostess of the party, who recanted her testimony, saying she had been coerced by police, allegedly threatening to take her children away from her and asking her for sexual favors. A new witness interviewed on the podcast corroborated her fear of police retaliation.
With this new evidence in hand, lead attorney Christina Cribbs and accountability counselor Meagan Hurley of the Georgia Innocence Project secured a new trial for Clark. At Thursday’s hearing, the district attorney and a superior court judge agreed that Clark should be exonerated of all charges, FOX 5 reported.
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“We are elated to see Lee and his family finally get the justice they have been longing for. This would not have been possible without the support of the Bowling family and a district attorney’s office that was willing to take a fresh, objective look at a case. old.” Cribbs said. “The Bowling family suffered a great loss when Brian died. His strength, his open mind, his willingness to question information that has been presented as ‘fact,’ and his search for the truth are inspiring.”
“Official misconduct was certainly a contributing factor in the Lee case, just as it has been in more than 50 percent of wrongful conviction cases. What we need to take away from this is that unrestricted power, without “With the proper checks and balances, it leaves the opportunity ripe for mistakes and misconduct. Proper supervision, along with educational initiatives designed to prevent and correct wrongful convictions, is key,” Hurley said. “Prosecutors have a duty to see that justice is done in their cases, and that must include a commitment to the principles of integrity, fairness and accountability. It is imperative that they be willing to take corrective action when they see injustice, even when the injustice is perpetrated by the police”.
The judge reduced Storey’s charge to the original charge of manslaughter, which carried a 10-year sentence, and gave him credit for time served.
Both men returned home to their families in time for the Christmas holidays.
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“It’s a real shock. I’ve been behind prison walls for 25 years and I go out and see how the world has changed,” Clark told Fox 5.
His father, Glen Clark, was thankful to God that justice had finally been served.
“Let me tell you something. The Lord is shining, He is shining today,” he said.
