Jeffrey Clark

Cause of Conviction: Murder

County: Meade

Trial/Plea: Trial

Race: White

Year: 1995

Sentence: Life

Time Served: 22

Date Sentence Vacated: July 14, 2016

Reason Sentence Vacated: DNA testing​

Cause of Wrongful Conviction: Perjury; Invalidated Forensic Science; Police Misconduct

​Jeff Clark and his co-defendant, Garr Keith Hardin, were convicted after a 1995 trial of the 1992 murder of Hardin’s girlfriend, Rhonda Sue Warford. Mr. Clark and Mr. Hardin’s defense was one of complete innocence to the crime. The Commonwealth’s theory was that Clark and Hardin were involved in satanic worship, which allegedly served as the motive for the murder. To that end, the Commonwealth argued that blood found on a cloth in Hardin’s home was that of animal blood used in a ritualistic sacrifice. The only physical evidence that allegedly tied Clark and Hardin to the victim was a single fingerprint lifted from Clark’s car belonging to the victim (about which the Commonwealth’s expert testified couldn’t be dated or time stamped) and a hair found on the victim’s sweatpants that was deemed, through microscopic hair analysis, to “have characteristics similar to Hardin’s head hair”  (about which the Commonwealth argued was “exactly like” Hardin’s hair). A jailhouse snitch testified that Clark had confessed the murder to him not once, but twice. After a trial, a letter surfaced indicating that the snitch had lied at trial about Clark’s “confessions” in order to gain the Commonwealth's favor and receive shock probation.

In July of 2009, KIP got involved in the case and moved for DNA testing of the physical evidence in the case, namely the hairs found at the scene and the blood-stained cloth. The Circuit Court denied the motion. Eventually, the Kentucky Supreme Court remanded the case back to the trial court, directing the Commonwealth to release the evidence for DNA testing. Mitochondrial DNA testing subsequently affirmed the hair did not match Hardin or Clark. Testing also proved that the blood found on the cloth was not animal blood but human blood belonging to Hardin, as he had consistently claimed.

Thereafter, KIP, representing Clark, and the National Innocence Project, representing Hardin, filed another CR 60.02 Motion for New Trial, arguing that the DNA testing in the case proves their clients’ innocence. On July 14, 2016, Judge Bruce Butler entered a 25-page order vacating the clients’ convictions and sentences. He found that the newly-discovered DNA results undermined the credibility of the Commonwealth’s case and that no credible evidence was presented at trial supporting the Commonwealth’s inaccurate and misleading theory of Satanism. The Court also found that the testimony and credibility of the investigating officer in the case had been significantly undermined by the fact that he had been criminally investigated for giving false testimony in other cases, including that of exoneree Edwin Chandler, and that his testimony was material in the jury’s determination of Clark and Hardin’s guilt. The Court quoted Bedingfield and noted that Clark and Hardin were convicted based on “suppositions that we now know to be fundamentally false” and that this false evidence “casts a long shadow” on the trial.

The Commonwealth appealed the ruling, but on August 24, 2017, the Kentucky Supreme Court denied the appeal and upheld the trial court’s order vacating the convictions of Clark and Hardin.

For more information on the case:

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5284