Darrell Lee Clark, and Cain Joshua Storey were freed last week after a true-crime podcast helped to uncover evidence of police misconduct in their cases Photo / Georgia Innocence Project via The New York Times
Darrell Lee Clark, and Cain Joshua Storey were freed last week after a true-crime podcast helped to uncover evidence of police misconduct in their cases Photo / Georgia Innocence Project via The New York Times
Darrell Lee Clark and Cain Joshua Storey credited the podcast Proof with helping to uncover evidence of police misconduct that led to their release from prison after more than two decades.
Two Georgia men who were sentenced to life in prison in the 1996 shooting death of their friend werefreed last week after a true-crime podcast helped to uncover evidence of police misconduct in their cases, lawyers for both men said.
The two men, Cain Joshua Storey and Darrell Lee Clark, were both 17 years old in 1996 when their friend, Brian Bowling, 15, died from a gunshot wound to the head while he was in the bedroom of his mobile home in Floyd County, Georgia, the lawyers said.
Just before he died, Bowling had told his girlfriend on the phone that he was playing Russian roulette with a gun that Storey, who was in the room, had brought to the house, the lawyers said.
But at trial in 1998, prosecutors argued that Clark and Storey had conspired to kill Bowling because he had told the police that Clark and Storey had stolen a safe containing US$3,200, court documents said.
A jury convicted Clark and Storey of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, the documents said. Both were sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
The men said in interviews this week that they would still be in prison if two podcasters, Susan Simpson and Jacinda Davis, had not explored their case in detail in the podcast Proof, which has released 17 episodes so far.
Simpson and Davis uncovered evidence that the police had coerced one of the state’s key witnesses and had taken advantage of another with hearing and speech impairments, lawyers for the men said.
That evidence helped persuade prosecutors to support motions to grant the men a new trial, which a judge approved Thursday, the lawyers said. Prosecutors then dismissed the murder charges against Clark, his lawyers said.
Under a deal with prosecutors, Storey pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter for having brought the gun to Bowling’s house. He was sentenced to 10 years, time he has already served, said his lawyer, Luke Martin.
Both men were released from Floyd County Jail last Thursday night.
“They found the truth and revealed it all, and I can’t express enough gratitude for what they did,” Clark said in an interview Monday, praising both the podcasters and his lawyers at the Georgia Innocence Project.
Storey said in an interview Tuesday, “Without them, none of this would be possible. Those sweet angel people.” He said he told Simpson and Davis, “Can I cut some grass for you? What can I do to pay you back? There’s nothing I can do.”
According to court documents, Simpson and Davis interviewed a key witness late last year, a man with hearing and speech impairments who was believed to have identified Clark as a boy he had seen running from Bowling’s home after the shooting.
Cain Joshua Storey after his release. Photo / Georgia Innocence Project via The New York Times
The man, who had difficulty communicating through a court interpreter and did not use American Sign Language, appeared to identify Clark in court only after a prosecutor walked over and stood behind him at the defence table, the legal filings said.
Using the man’s former teacher as an interpreter, Simpson and Davis learned that the man had never actually seen Clark on the night of the shooting and that he was in fact recounting an unrelated but similar shooting that he had witnessed in 1976, the court documents said.
Late last year, the podcasters interviewed a second key witness, who had initially claimed to have hosted a party where she heard Storey and Clark describe how they had killed Bowling, the court documents said.
The woman told the podcasters that she had never actually heard Storey or Clark confess to the murder, the documents said. Instead, the woman told the podcasters that she had been coerced into making false statements after one officer sought sexual favours from her and another threatened to call the state’s child welfare agency and have her children taken away from her, the court documents said.
Storey said he did not know the extent of the police misconduct until the podcast uncovered it.
“I’m not angry,” Storey said. “It’s really sad, though. They’re supposed to serve and protect, not lie and manipulate.”
The Floyd County Police Department declined to comment on the case, and the Floyd County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Clark said he had been introduced to Simpson about four years ago by another prisoner represented by the Georgia Innocence Project, Joey Watkins, whose case was explored in the podcast Undisclosed, also co-hosted by Simpson.
Despite some initial reticence, “I started opening up to her and bared my soul,” Clark said.
Simpson said, “I knew if what he was saying was true, something had really gone off the rails and had to be investigated.”
The Georgia Innocence Project said that the Bowling family supported the men’s bid to have their murder convictions overturned. Two Bowling family members even spoke in support of them in court last week, the group said. A member of the family did not immediately respond to calls Tuesday.
Storey said that it had “hurt and hurt” to have the Bowling family believe for years that he had killed Brian Bowling.
“When they finally came around to knowing the truth and said, ‘We forgive you, and we know you didn’t kill him, and we love you,’” Storey said, “that meant more to me than anything.”
