On this date, 11 February 2012, an inmate in Ohio by the name of Bobby Joe Clark, had committed suicide by hanging himself in prison. Some investigators believed that he was factually innocent of the crime which he served his sentence. I will post a news sources about him before giving my comments.
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| Bobby Joe Clark |
Prisoner's death stirs
doubts about murder conviction
Apr. 30, 2012
Written by
John Jarvis
CentralOhio.com
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|
Files of the Bobby Joe Clark 1998 murder
trial fit into a single box stored at The Marion County Prosecutors Office.
Clark's recent suicide has stirred doubts about his murder conviction although
he confessed to killing Harold "Sleepy" Griffin. / James
Miller/CentralOhio.com
|
MARION
-- A Marion police officer and others doubt a man who died serving a life
sentence in a Lucasville prison committed the murder for which he was
convicted.
The
suicide of Bobby Joe Clark, 48, not only led to the firing of three corrections
officers, but stirred Marion police Maj. Bill Collins' doubts about Clark's
conviction in 1999.
Prison
staff discovered Clark dead, hanged in his cell Feb. 11 in the Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility. Three corrections officers -- Matthew Robbins, Jeramy
Osborne and Edwin Koch -- were placed on paid administrative leave, then fired,
after an investigation showed they did not monitor Clark as required.
Collins,
an early investigator of the 1995 murder of Harold "Sleepy" Griffin,
of Detroit, at a house in Meeker, said learning of Clark's mid-February death
rekindled his suspicion that Clark did not commit the crime.
"To
this day that still bothers me that he was convicted and sent to prison for
this crime back in '99, because it was my belief and a lot of other officers'
belief that he didn't commit the crime and really had no part in the crime
whatsoever, and he ended up being convicted and sent to prison even though
there was no body, really no evidence connecting him to the crime," Collins
said.
The confession
In
a taped confession in December 1998, Clark told authorities he killed Griffin.
He said he was on drugs when he committed the crime, was paid by people at a
party in Meeker, and was angry because Griffin, a black man, was kissing a
white woman. Clark, a white man, said he opposed the mixing of races. He
expressed remorse about the killing and didn't want to receive the death
penalty. He also asked to not be sent to the Lucasville prison because he
feared he might face retribution for his racist tattoos.
Clark
called then-Detective Dennis Potts of the Marion County Sheriff's Office to
tell him he'd been having trouble sleeping at night and needed to talk to the
officer. Clark told Potts he became angry when he saw Griffin rubbing his hands
all over a woman, who was a longtime acquaintance. He said he walked into a
house where another acquaintance told him he'd pay Clark $1,000 to "take
care of him messing with my old lady. ..."
He
said he pulled a sawed-off shotgun from the back of his pants and shot Griffin
twice in the head, after which the other man shot Griffin once between the
eyes. He said the shotgun was thrown into a pond in Killdeer Plains Wildlife
Area.
Former
Marion County Prosecutor Jim Slagle said he thinks Clark killed Griffin, but
suspects others were involved in the killing.
"He
wasn't claiming to be the sole perpetrator," Slagle said Thursday.
"He came into the sheriff's office and confessed to committing the crime
and had a fair amount of information about the crime. This was some time after
the crime had been committed. ... I think the evidence was primarily his
confession and the fact that parts of his confession could be corroborated --
knowledge someone who did not participate in the offense would not have."
Clark
repeated his confession to a psychiatrist and to a psychologist, who determined
he was competent to stand trial and to plead guilty, Slagle said.
"The
evidence against him was primarily his confession," he said. "We did
not have eyewitnesses to the crime or scientific evidence that linked him to
the crime. It was an unsolved homicide at the time that he turned himself
in."
Of
Collins' doubts, Slagle said, "I don't know if Bill Collins has ever seen
Clark's interview or confession. ... It would be hard to have an informed
opinion without evaluating that information."
The
investigation of Griffin's death remains open, said Chief Deputy Al Hayden of
the Marion County Sheriff's Office. Anyone who has information about the
killing is asked to call the tips line at (740) 375-8477 or the sheriff's
office at (740) 382-8244.
"Minus
his confession ... there was no smoking gun, no eyewitness," Hayden said.
"We've never recovered a body, never recovered a weapon. ... But he
confessed multiple times to multiple people."
While
the case is open, is it not active, he said.
"I
have no leads or no information or nothing that would warrant any more
investigation right now," he said.
He
said he understands the opinions of others who suspect Clark did not commit the
homicide.
"I
think anytime that you lack any kind of evidence other than a confession, those
doubts are going to be there," Hayden said. Clark was known among the
police community as "not real stable. It wouldn't shock anybody that he'd
come in and confess to something he didn't do. But again, there's no evidence
to support it."
The doubts
Collins'
doubts arise in part, he said, because Clark told police he killed Griffin,
from whom undercover officers had bought drugs in 1993, and two or three other
men in Indiana. Checks for missing people and unsolved killings in Indiana
turned up nothing, he said.
Attorneys
J.C. Ratliff and Javier Armengau asked to be removed as Clark's court-appointed
attorneys at an April 20 hearing. They said they disagreed with Clark about
whether he should plead guilty.
In
a letter dated Dec. 17, 1998, Slagle wrote to Clark to tell him that if Clark
fully cooperated with the investigation he would not prosecute him for a death
penalty offense and would ask the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
to imprison him somewhere other than Lucasville -- assurances he sought before
he would provide additional information.
"We
would not have prosecuted a case if we didn't believe he committed the
murder," Slagle said Thursday. "It was a case in which he admitted to
involvement in the crime. There was more than one interview. The interviews
were videotaped and recorded. He, in those interviews, had a fair amount of
knowledge about the crime that would not have been known by the general public.
He was then represented by counsel. ... Again, in court, he admitted to his
involvement, knowing his plea of guilty would mean him spending all or most of
his life in prison. So, as I say, we didn't have cooperating witnesses and
didn't have scientific evidence. What we had was his word. ... There wasn't
really any reason for him to admit that if it weren't true. That would be hard
to understand."
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|
Files of the Bobby Joe Clark murder trial
included a letter from former Marion County prosecutor Jim Slagle offering to
waive the death penalty in exchange for Clark's full cooperation.
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MY
COMMENTS:
Just
like the case of Timothy Cole, I am well aware that innocent people have died
in prison. When a defendant is facing a capital trial, he is ten times more
likely to be treated fairly than when he is facing a prison sentence. Unlike
Timothy Cole who died of asthma in prison, Bobby Joe Clark committed suicide.
As we can never bring back a wrongfully executed person from the dead, we also
CANNOT bring back a wrongful prison death.
I
am personally satisfied that the prosecutors did not seek the death penalty as
they did not have enough evidence to convict him, that was the right thing to
do. I suspect that Clark only confessed to the crime and pleaded guilty as he
wanted to go to prison to protect himself from other gang members. I think it
was the right decision that he only went to prison and not death row.
I
do not agree that they should fire the prison guards as the prison population
is very big and the law enforcement officials are understaffed.
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