Lee Clark

As part of that investigation, police interviewed a woman who lived near the Bowling’s home. She told police that she had hosted a party months after the shooting death of Bowling and that it was attended by both Clark and Storey. At the party, she alleged the teenagers explained how they had planned the murder of Bowling because he knew too much about a prior theft that Storey and Clark had committed.

Days after speaking with the party hostess, police upgraded Storey’s charge from manslaughter to murder and also connected Clark to the case for the first time, arresting him as a co-conspirator despite the fact that he had a corroborated alibi. In an attempt to strengthen their case against Clark, three days after Clark’s arrest, police then spoke to a hearing and speech-impaired witness who’d been in a different room in the Bowlings’ home when the shooting occurred. Police claimed the man identified Clark from a photo lineup as a boy he saw running through the Bowling’s yard on the night of the shooting. However, none of the other people present at the Bowling home on the night of the incident reported seeing anyone outside.

The Trial

At Clark and Storey’s trial in January of 1998, the State’s theory largely relied upon the party hostess' police statements suggesting that the two teens had conspired to kill Bowling in an act of revenge. The speech and hearing-impaired witness, who had a very difficult time communicating through the court interpreter at trial, continually mentioned Storey’s name as the person he had seen at the Bowling home on the night of the shooting. In contrast, when it came to Clark, Childers repeatedly testified that a person he described as “Darrell” was not in the courtroom—despite the fact that Clark was sitting at defense counsel’s table. The prosecutor eventually walked behind Clark at the defense table, and the interpreter concluded that the witness was speaking about Clark as the boy he saw running through the yard.

To further support its theory of intentional homicide (versus an accidental, self-inflicted shooting), the State relied upon the testimony of the coroner, who was not trained as a medical doctor, because no autopsy was ever performed on Bowling’s body. The coroner testified that his “gut feeling” told him that the gunshot wound could not have been self-inflicted because it was not a close-contact wound. After a week-long trial, the jury convicted Clark and Storey of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and they were sentenced to life in prison.

Newly-Discovered Evidence

In late 2021, podcasters Susan Simpson and Jacinda Davis began interviewing witnesses related to Clark’s case as part of a re-investigation of the circumstances of Brian Bowling’s death. They interviewed both of the State’s key witnesses, discovering two critical pieces of information that were previously unknown to Clark or any of his prior counsel:
1. The party hostess was coerced into giving false statements and testimony regarding the remarks Storey and Clark purportedly made; police threatened that they would take her children from her if she failed to comply with their demands.

2. The hearing and speech-impaired man had been misunderstood at trial due to his unique way of communicating. In 1976, the man had witnessed an unrelated, factually similar shooting and he was unable to effectively separate the facts of that case from the circumstances surrounding Bowling’s 1996 shooting death. In fact, the man never identified Clark as having run through the Bowling’s yard when Bowling was shot, as he had never observed any boy outside in the first place.

This newly-discovered evidence shattered the State’s theory of Clark’s involvement in the shooting death of Bowling and strongly supports what Clark had been telling everyone for more than 25 years–he is innocent.

Lee Clark Exonerated | December 8th, 2022

On December 8th, 2022, Lee Clark walked out of the Floyd County Jail and into the arms of family in time to celebrate his first Christmas as a free man in more than two decades. His release came just moments after a hearing on his extraordinary motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. The Rome Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office agreed that Clark’s conviction should be overturned and quickly dismissed all underlying charges against Clark, officially exonerating him of the 1996 shooting death of his friend.

“You never think something like that is going to happen to you,” said Lee Clark, who was arrested when he was just 17 years old. “Never would I have thought I would spend more than half my life in prison, especially for something I didn’t do. I'm just glad the truth finally came to light after 25 years. I'm so thankful for the Georgia Innocence Project and Proof Podcast for what they did. Without them, I would still be in prison."