On June 27, a wrongfully convicted Louisiana man was released from prison after serving 17 years for a robbery he didn't commit. Royal Clark Jr. was sentenced to 49.5 years behind bars for allegedly robbing a Burger King in Terrytown in 2001, however, it wasn't until the New Orleans Innocence Project convinced the Jefferson Parish district attorney’s office to reexamine fingerprint evidence, that he was proven innocent.
The IPNO began representing Clark last year, which is when they asked the D.A. to run fingerprint testing on a cup used by the perpetrator prior to the burglary. Clark's conviction rested solely on an eyewitness account who wrongfully identified him as the burglar.
The results proved the crime had been committed by a serial robber currently serving a 30-year sentence for similar crimes. The IPNO then filed a motion to throw out Clark's conviction on account of the evidence, leading Judicial District Court Judge Donald Rowan to approve Clark's release.
One day after his 42nd birthday, Clark was released from Louisiana's Angola prison and was met by his mother, father, sister, and son. He was asked by a reporter if he ever gave up hope, to which he replied: “I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and say I didn’t. Every man in that position, they don’t think about home sometimes because it [is] so far away.”
"There is currently no clear law that gives prisoners a right to ask for these forensic database searches in cases not involving DNA," the IPNO said in a press release, according to NOLA. "If the [DA's Office] had refused to re-examine and run the prints, Mr. Clark would likely have stayed in prison until he was 74 years old for a crime he did not commit."
