An independent retest of DNA evidence used to arrest and convict Michael Clark for a murder he says he did not commit now appears to exclude him, throwing into doubt the entire case, according to a new court document filed Monday.

The new revelation contradicts key testimony made by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s former star forensic scientist Yvonne Woods at Clark’s 2012 trial, which helped lead to his conviction.

At his trial, Woods, who goes by Missy, said that Michael Clark’s DNA matched genetic material she analyzed from inside a jar of Carmex lip balm that had been recovered at the scene of an unsolved 1994 murder.

But the recent retesting by Bode Technology in Lorton, VA, found that, in fact, “the DNA collected from its swab inside the Carmex container is not consistent with Michael Clark,” according to the new court filing.

“This is vindication and hope,” Adam Frank, Clark’s defense attorney who filed the motion, told The Denver Gazette on Monday.

“The interests of justice demand that the Court vacate Mr. Clark’s wrongful conviction,” his court motion said.

This new disclosure also raises significant questions about the full scope of Woods’ alleged misconduct at the CBI lab and whether people have been wrongly imprisoned because of it – a fear at the heart of the scandal.

Frank has contended since 2019 that Woods’ conclusions and testimony were deeply flawed after a University of Denver DNA expert disputed her findings and methods. But the judge in the case refused an evidentiary hearing and allegations of wrongdoing went unheard. That decision was overturned in December 2023 by the Colorado Court of Appeals and a hearing was ordered.

By then the CBI scandal was just starting to break. As of late last year, the agency acknowledged that Woods, once considered its most prolific and esteemed forensic scientist, had skipped steps in testing, deleted data or otherwise compromised findings in 1,003 cases over the course of her 29-year career at CBI.

Notably, the Clark case was not among those that CBI identified in its year-long internal investigation.

Woods now faces 102 felony counts including forgery, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and cybercrime and is awaiting trial. Among the allegations are that she failed to fully test evidence.

In November 2024, the Boulder County district attorney’s office agreed to retest the Carmex container at an outside lab. The results were released to prosecutors and the defense earlier this month.

"Our office is committed to reaching the right result in this case," a spokesperson for that office said in an emailed statement Monday about the retesting results, adding that additional DNA analysis will continue. Details of those additional tests were not disclosed.

The statement said the district attorney's office will be meeting with Bode representatives, analysts from CBI, and other DNA experts to evaluate "other evidence presented at the original trial," which will take several weeks. 

District attorneys and law enforcement agencies are the only ones given full access to potentially tainted evidence and are the only ones who can ask for a retest, CBI has said.

So far, there have only been 14 requests out of the 1,003 cases CBI identified as having problems, or roughly 1.3%.

Defense attorneys have complained that they are left without full knowledge of which cases may need to be reopened.

Laura Schile, a national forensic science expert and DNA evidence consultant, reviewed Bode’s findings included in the court filing for The Denver Gazette and called them “very significant" which "gives support for exclusion."

She cautioned though that she had not seen the complete report or all the data.

Schile said the Bode report shows there was a mixture of at least three people's DNA in the Carmex and she said based on the lab's findings it is statistically more likely that the DNA belongs to three unknown individuals rather than Clark's and two others.
 
Clark’s DNA swab was the only one Woods tested, according to court testimony.

Clark was an immediate and leading suspect in the Nov. 1, 1994, murder of Marty Grisham but no arrest was made at the time because there were no witnesses, no physical evidence and the gun used was never found. Back then Clark admitted stealing checks from the victim and once owning the same kind of common gun used in the killing but has said for more than 30 years he did not kill Grisham.

It was not until Boulder police revisited the case in 2009 that the jar of Carmex found outside Grisham’s apartment was sent to CBI and tested by Woods. Her conclusion that the DNA inside the container was a partial match to Clark led to his arrest and her testimony was considered key to his conviction.

“That was categorically false testimony,” Frank said on Monday.

However, the former Boulder police detective who led the reopened murder investigation previously told The Denver Gazette that the DNA evidence, while important, was not crucial to the conviction and that Clark was guilty.

In addition to the now suspect DNA evidence, there are also allegations of juror misconduct during the trial.

It is unclear what will happen now. A four-day hearing on both the DNA evidence and the alleged juror misconduct is scheduled for May 27. Frank has asked for either a new trial or for the conviction to be overturned.

“Every day he continues to be held in custody is a tragedy,” the new filing said.