Sparkle Rai’s killer moved off death row, resentenced to life plus 25

Last year, a Fulton County Superior Court judge resentenced Clark, who will turn 68 this month, to life without parole plus 25 years. Clark has been moved to Smith State Prison in Tattnall County.

Lawyers working on his behalf had argued in court for years that Clark was intellectually disabled.

In recent years, the story of Sparkle Rai, described by the press as a “bubbly former cheerleader,” has been the subject of multiple TV documentaries and true-crime podcasts.

Bennet Reid Jr., Sparkle Rai’s father, said the family had been aware Clark would be resentenced to something less than the death penalty.

“Personally, I would have said he should have stayed on death row, but I went with what was recommended to me by people a little bit smarter than I was,” Reid told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

After 15 years on the state’s death row for male inmates at Jackson, Clark is the second state inmate to have his capital sentence reduced to life in prison in the past year. The other inmate, Dallas B. Holiday, was resentenced to life in prison after spending nearly four decades on death row. Both men have low IQs, which raised questions about whether it was constitutional to execute them.

After Sparkle Rai was found slain, years went by and no one was initially charged in the killing, with police having no suspects and little to go on.

The case went cold until 2006, when five men were charged in Sparkle Rai’s murder, including Cleveland Clark, who was at the time serving a 20-year sentence in Mississippi for unrelated crimes. Charged along with Clark were his brother Carl V. Clark; Sparkle Rai’s father-in-law, Chiman L. Rai; and others.

Authorities said Chiman Rai, an Indian immigrant and businessman who lived in Louisville, Kentucky, at the time of the murder, paid $10,000 to the Clark brothers and their associates to carry out the killing.

Credit: Joey Ivansco/AJC

Credit: Joey Ivansco/AJC

“Her father-in-law couldn’t accept her marriage to his son because she was not Indian, and that was further escalated by that the fact that she was an African American woman,” then-Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard told the AJC in 2006.

Police said Cleveland Clark relied on two teenage girls to gain entry into Sparkle Rai’s apartment under the guise of needing to use the restroom. He followed them inside, stabbed the young mother repeatedly and strangled her with a vacuum cleaner cord — all in the presence of her 6-month-old baby girl, who was not injured.

Psychologists and doctors who tried to evaluate Clark over the years estimated him to have an IQ of 68 or 64, and a third expert found him to have an IQ of 57 but said he hadn’t put in a full effort on that test. Both the Georgia and U.S. Supreme Courts have ruled it unconstitutional to execute a person who is intellectually disabled, which is generally defined as having an IQ of 70 or below.

In its 2002 opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution of intellectually disabled people would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, while not serving the purposes of deterrence and retribution often used to justify the death penalty. The high court also noted that intellectually disabled individuals faced a higher risk of wrongful execution and “may be less able to give meaningful assistance to their counsel.”

One state expert said Clark was faking intellectual disability, court records show. Another expert found he functioned at the level of a 9- or 12-year-old child, while others said he had refused to participate in psychological testing.

Clark was also diagnosed with a variety of combinations of intellectual disability, bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia, learning disabilities and antisocial personality disorder.

One expert said Clark adamantly denied he was intellectually disabled and described himself as a “Robin Hood,” stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Family members said Clark was unable to tell time, count money or make change, and could barely read or write and had only ever held a series of menial jobs for short periods, court records show.

During his 2009 trial and sentencing, a judge had Clark dragged out of the courtroom after repeated, obscenity-strewn outbursts.

Sparkle Rai and her husband had been married about a month when she was killed. Police said the husband found his wife’s body when he got home.

Chiman Rai had previously lived and worked in Jackson, Mississippi, where he had owned and operated a grocery store. When he heard his son had gotten married, Chiman Rai sought to have his new daughter-in-law killed, authorities said. He reached out to people he knew in Jackson.

His contacts then put him in touch with the Clark brothers, who both had substantial criminal histories already. Cleveland Clark had an extensive criminal record in his home state of Mississippi, including once pleading guilty to a manslaughter charge; locking a handful of people in a freezer in a Winn-Dixie while holding up the store and taking $2,500; firing a gun at police officers; duct-taping a man inside his home and stealing cash from him; and stealing at least two cars.

Credit: Joey Ivansco/AJC

Credit: Joey Ivansco/AJC

Chiman Rai was convicted in his daughter-in-law’s murder and sentenced to life without parole. He died in 2022 at age 83, having remained in the custody of the Georgia state prison system until the end of his life, state records show.

Her father said they try to keep Sparkle’s memory alive through their granddaughter.

“I’m always reminded of my daughter. It’s never going to go away,” Bennet Reid told the AJC last year. “But we’ve raised her daughter, my granddaughter, and she’s doing quite well for herself, and we’re doing well as a family.”

The Fulton County district attorney’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the AJC.

The attorney listed in recent court papers as most recently representing Cleveland Clark could not be reached for comment. His former attorneys declined to comment.

AJC staff writer Rosie Manins contributed to this story.