In October 1996, just outside of Rome, 15-year-old Brian Bowling died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound while playing Russian roulette in his bedroom with his best friend, Cain Storey. Family members and responding officers quickly determined a tragic accident had occurred.
One of Bowling’s relatives, however, struggled to accept Brian’s role in his own senseless death. When the lead detective in the case initiated a sexual relationship with that relative, things took a sinister turn.
Seven months after the accident, even though he was nowhere near the Bowlings’ home at the time of the shooting, 18-year-old Daryl “Lee” Clark, a friend of Bowling and Storey, was arrested and charged with conspiracy and murder. The state’s new theory was that Storey and Clark hatched a plan to kill Bowling because he had supposedly talked to police about a group of boys taking a safe from Storey’s dad.
There was plenty of evidence to show that the police theory of conspiracy and retribution killing was wrong. But that evidence was hidden from Clark and never heard by the jury. He was convicted in a trial that was fundamentally unfair and sentenced to life in prison.
The truth was discovered decades later when a podcast called “Proof” and the Georgia Innocence Project reinvestigated the case. They uncovered that the lead detective had manufactured evidence, hidden evidence favorable to Clark, testified falsely at trial, had a sexual affair with the victim’s relative, and threatened and coerced a state’s witness into testifying falsely. Years after Clark’s trial, the lead detective was fired and decertified based on similar unethical and illegal behavior, but no one told Clark, who was still in prison.
The Georgia Innocence Project filed court documents demonstrating Clark’s innocence and showing how he was convicted due to the state’s misconduct. The state agreed that Clark’s convictions couldn’t stand and the court overturned them. Clark was fully exonerated and freed from prison, 25 years after his wrongful incarceration nightmare began.
Most people cannot imagine what Clark endured. He was only 18 when the state locked him away for life. He suffered the daily deprivations, degradations and dangers of prison, and was housed with violent criminals. He did not leave prison until he was 43, with no money, no Social Security savings, decades of medical neglect, and relationship and mental health challenges. “Twenty-five years of my life is gone. I can’t get that back,” Clark explains. “I’ve missed so much stuff. I don’t have kids. I don’t have anything. Without compensation, I ain’t got no future.”
Yet Georgia is one of only 11 states in the country that does not have a statutory process designed to compensate innocent, wrongfully convicted people like Clark. Instead, a survivor of wrongful incarceration must find and persuade a state lawmaker to introduce an individual compensation resolution in the Georgia General Assembly on that person’s behalf. The resolution then has to go through the complicated, unpredictable and often highly politicized legislative process of becoming a law.
That legislative process failed Clark last year. Even though Clark’s compensation resolution resoundingly passed the House, it was never even called for a vote in the Senate. With no compensation, Clark has scraped by financially, assisted at times by caring community members. This year he will try again for compensation, and we implore our fellow lawmakers to do the right thing and approve Clark’s resolution and the pending compensation resolutions for the other innocent Georgians.
But to avoid the unpredictability and uncertainty of this compensation resolution process in the future, we also encourage our legislative colleagues to pass House Bill 533, the bipartisan Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act. Under the WCCA, survivors of wrongful incarceration, like Clark, would have their compensation claims heard and decided by an impartial administrative law judge. The WCCA allows the judge to award $75,000 per year of wrongful incarceration when claimants meet eligibility criteria, including affirmatively proving their innocence. A similar version of the compensation bill has passed the House for several years now with overwhelming bipartisan support, only to repeatedly stall in the Senate.
The state of Georgia ripped the ground out from under Clark when he was just a teenager. Now he is over 45 years old and simply asking for a foundation upon which he can rebuild his life. We as Georgians, and as a society, owe survivors of wrongful incarceration prompt and fair compensation. This year, we must pass the individual compensation resolutions and the WCCA to support innocent Georgians who’ve suffered one of the greatest of wrongs.
Credit: Photo contributed by the candidate
Credit: Photo contributed by the candidate
Credit: Photo contributed by the candidate
Credit: Photo contributed by the candidate
Rep. Katie Dempsey, a Republican, is from Rome and represents House District 13. She is the chair of the Appropriations Human Resources Subcommittee.
Rep. Scott Holcomb, a Democrat, is from Atlanta and represents House District 101. He is a former prosecutor.
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