A true crime podcast about the 1996 death of a Floyd County teenager shot during a game of “Russian roulette” led to the exoneration in 2022 of Daryl “Lee” Clark. Now Clark, who served more than 25 years of a life sentence after being convicted of murder in 1998, is suing the county. He alleges he was set up by corrupt police officers who fabricated evidence and threatened a key trial witness into giving false testimony.
“During his past 22 months of freedom, Lee has struggled to pick up the pieces of his life and find his way forward,” says Clark’s lawsuit, filed Nov. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. “The scars of a quarter century of incarceration will plague and haunt him for the rest of his life.”
Brian Bowling, 15, was in his bedroom the evening of Oct. 18, 1996, on the phone with his girlfriend, case records show. He told her he was playing Russian roulette with his best friend, 17-year-old Cain “Josh” Storey, who had brought a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver to the Bowling family’s mobile home in Silver Creek, about 10 miles south of Rome. Clark says he was at his home in nearby Lindale.
Bowling was shot in the head and died the next day. Storey told Bowling’s family and county police officers that Bowling had accidentally shot himself. According to Clark’s lawsuit, there was no gunshot residue found on Storey’s hands, Bowling’s hands were not tested, no autopsy was performed and police initially reported the death as accidental.
The allegations in Clark’s 129-page complaint include that former county police officer Harry “Dallas” Battle, the lead investigator in Bowling’s death, began an affair with Bowling’s aunt, who pressed him to pursue criminal charges. Battle was fired by the county in 2007. He died in 2021.
Clark, a teenager when arrested in 1997 and who was convicted the following year, was Storey’s friend. He alleges that he’d had several previous run-ins with Battle, who harbored “a very personal and longstanding animus” toward him. Clark claims that Battle and other county officials botched the investigation, concealed evidence that Bowling accidentally shot himself, and, to appease his distraught family, invented a theory that his death was a gang-related murder.
“The police misconduct in Lee’s case stands out as particularly egregious given the number and severity of the incidents,” said Christina Cribbs, a senior attorney with the Georgia Innocence Project who represented Clark in his exoneration bid.
Battle’s termination followed his admission in an unrelated matter that he had sex with an informant, who accused him of rape. He was not indicted. In 2016, he was arrested by the GBI, accused of using a Taser on a restrained inmate in the Polk County Jail. He was not indicted, but resigned from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office while under investigation. The Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council revoked his law enforcement certification in 2019. Battle’s wife did not respond to phone messages.
County investigators “sought out vulnerable individuals who could be enticed or coerced into parroting the fictional narrative” of Bowling’s death, Clark’s complaint alleges. It includes claims against county police chief Mark Wallace, former county police officer David Stewart and former county coroner Craig Burnes.
Floyd County’s attorneys did not respond to phone and email messages. Stewart, now a deputy in the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office, did not comment. Attempts to contact Burnes via phone, email and Facebook were not successful.
Clark alleges that Battle and Wallace forced Storey to make a false confession. He also claims that Battle and Stewart coaxed misleading testimony from a Bowling family friend with impaired hearing and speech. The testimony referred to an unrelated shooting, it was later discovered.
In 2021, a key trial witness revealed to “Proof” podcasters that Battle and Stewart had threatened to take her children away from her unless she testified against Clark and Storey at trial. The witness added that Battle had repeatedly harassed her during the investigation by seeking sexual favors.
“She was obviously very hesitant to talk about the fact that her testimony, her story, played a role in these guys going to prison,” podcaster Kevin Fitzpatrick said. “And on the podcast, she apologizes to them.”
Clark further alleges that Battle convinced Bowling’s parents to exhume his body, then altered a drawing a friend had placed in Bowling’s casket, to support the gang murder theory.
Credit: Supplied
Credit: Supplied
“This was not an accident,” podcaster Susan Simpson said of Clark and Storey’s prosecution.
Clark also claims that Battle colluded with Burnes, who was not a medical doctor or a trained forensic pathologist, to support the theory that Bowling was murdered. Burnes failed to order an autopsy or consult a medical examiner in relation to Bowling’s death, Clark alleges.
Instead, Burnes “jammed rods in both the entrance and exit wounds in Brian’s skull” at the funeral home in a crude effort to discern the bullet’s trajectory, then billed the Bowling family $7,000 for an autopsy not performed, according to the lawsuit.
Burnes was imprisoned in 1999 on dozens of convictions of fraud, theft, racketeering and other charges, Georgia Department of Corrections records show. He was released from prison in 2003, then incarcerated again between January 2013 and March 2014.
Bowling’s sister and uncle spoke on behalf of the family during the December 2022 court hearing to release Clark and Storey from prison, and said they were innocent.
Clark and Storey were both 43 when freed. At the time, Clark said he couldn’t believe he’d spent more than half his life locked up for something he didn’t do.
“I’m just glad the truth finally came to light after 25 years,” Clark said. “I’m so thankful for the Georgia Innocence Project and Proof Podcast for what they did. Without them, I would still be in prison.”
In February, the Georgia House of Representatives approved a resolution to compensate Clark $1.8 million. The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Katie Dempsey, R-Rome, stalled in the Senate.
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