On July 30, 1981, a 29-year-old woman, identified as P.T., was abducted from a parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in East Atlanta, Georgia. A man with a gun forced his way into her car and threatened to kill her.
The man drove P.T. to two secluded locations in Cobb County, beat her, raped her three times, and bound her hands and her feet. He also robbed her, gagged her, and left her naked when he drove away in her car.
P.T. managed to partially untie herself and summon help from a passing motorist. The police were notified and the victim was taken to the hospital, where a rape kit was collected.
The victim, who was 5 feet 6 inches tall, described the perpetrator as a Black man with a medium complexion, a thin face, a high afro, about 5 feet 7 inches tall, and weighing about 120 to 125 pounds. She said he was wearing faded jeans, a light-colored shirt, and a western hat with a feather in the front.
On August 4, 1981, P.T. spotted her car outside of a store in Atlanta. She also saw a man leave the store and head toward the car. She called the police, but the man and car were gone by the time the police arrived.
Two days later, P.T. was driving past an apartment complex when she saw a man parking her car. A woman and children were also inside. P.T. contacted the police and directed an officer to the apartment complex. When an officer walked toward the apartment building to find an address to call for backup, the man and the passengers got out of the car and left.
Police impounded the car. A canvass of the neighborhood turned up the name of 21-year-old Robert Clark as the driver of the car.
At the time, Clark was about 6 feet 1 inch tall and about 180 pounds. The police telephoned Clark. He agreed to meet them but did not show up.
On August 23, 1981, the police arrested Clark for motor vehicle theft. At the time of his arrest, police did not consider him a suspect in the rape case, as he did not match P.T.’s description. He said he had gotten the car from a dancer he had met at a lounge.
He became a suspect after admitting that he was driving the stolen car on August 6, 1981–the second time P.T. spotted the car–and that he was untruthful about how he had obtained the car.
Several days after the attack, P.T. had looked through books of photographs at the police department. She had selected a photograph of someone other than Clark.
On August 25, 1981, P.T. was shown a photographic lineup that contained Clark’s picture. She said Clark looked like the perpetrator, but her identification was tentative.
On August 27, 1981, P.T. identified Clark from a live lineup. Clark was the only person in the lineup whose photograph was in the photographic lineup.
At that point, Clark told the police that he had gotten the car from Tony Arnold. Arnold more closely resembled P.T.’s initial description of her attacker. But by then, P.T. had identified Clark as her attacker, and the police never investigated Arnold.
Clark was charged with rape, kidnapping and robbery.
On May 24, 1982, Clark went to trial in Cobb County Superior Court. The trial lasted three days.
P.T. testified that there was no doubt in her mind that Clark was the assailant.
A forensic scientist from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) testified that a microscopic examination of the vaginal slides from the rape kit had revealed the presence of spermatozoa. No blood typing was performed, however, because the vaginal swabs from the rape kit had been lost prior to trial, and the remaining slides did not contain enough material for successful typing.
The defense maintained that Clark had been mistakenly identified and that he had received the car from Floyd Antonio Arnold, whom Clark had identified as Tony Arnold.
The defense presented the testimony of only one witness, who testified that she had seen Tony Arnold in a car of the same make and color as P.T.’s car. The witness’s description of Arnold resembled P.T.’s initial description of her attacker. Arnold, who was in prison serving a sentence for a conviction in Dekalb County for child cruelty, was brought to the court, and the witness identified him as the driver of P.T.’s car.
On May 26, 1982, the jury convicted Clark of rape, robbery and kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.
His conviction was upheld on appeal.
In December 2003, Clark, whose case had been taken by the Innocence Project, filed a petition for post-conviction DNA testing. The prosecution opposed the motion. The trial court scheduled a hearing on the motion in March 2004. At the hearing, Clark requested DNA testing of two slides made from vaginal swabs and a shirt P.T. had wrapped around her lower body to cover herself after the rape.
At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court ruled that the GBI should test the shirt. The judge reserved a ruling on the two slides. In the portion of its written order granting the petition for testing of the shirt, the trial court concluded that Clark was indigent and ordered that any cost for the testing be paid from the state’s fine and forfeiture fund. The order did not require Clark to submit a reference sample for analysis by the GBI.
It did state that in the event that the court ordered the two slides to be tested, the testing of the slides should be performed by a laboratory that meets the standards set out in the state’s post-conviction testing statute.
“Both the State and Defense counsel will have an opportunity to submit a list of suitable testing facilities that are able to perform STR DNA testing on slides,” the judge ruled. “If the State and Defense counsel are unable to agree on a DNA testing facility to perform such tests, either party may set a hearing before the Court on the issue and the Court will hear and take into consideration the views of the parties before ordering which DNA testing facility shall perform the testing.”
Subsequently, Clark obtained a supplemental order requiring the GBI to test a towel and another shirt worn by the victim, in addition to the one wrapped around her lower body.
After the GBI failed to identify any semen stains on the items, Clark moved for the release of the shirts, as well as the slides, for testing by Dr. Edward Blake, director of Forensic Science Associates (FSA), a California DNA testing firm. The prosecution requested a hearing on the motion because it opposed the proposed use of FSA for the testing. The state did not oppose Clark’s request for additional DNA testing.
The state objected to the use of FSA because his laboratory did not meet the quality assurance standards of the DNA Advisory Board, a federal panel that had been established in 1994 to develop national quality assurance and proficiency standards for DNA laboratories.
The prosecution contended that FSA was not certified because it was not audited on an annual basis to ensure compliance with the DNA Advisory Board standards. FSA had not been certified because Blake declined to be audited. At the start of the hearing, the Innocence Project offered to pay for any testing at FSA.
The trial court ruled orally that the clothing and one slide would be delivered to FSA, and that the prosecution could keep the remaining slide for testing by a laboratory acceptable to the prosecution. The court subsequently issued a written order which required the state to pay for the testing at a qualified laboratory and the Innocence Project to pay for the testing at FSA.
The judge also ordered that the testing take place in two stages. In the first stage, the two laboratories would try to obtain a DNA profile from the slides. After one of the laboratories completed its testing, a reference sample would be obtained from Clark and shipped to both laboratories. In the second stage, the laboratories would independently obtain a DNA profile from Clark’s reference sample and compare it to any DNA profile obtained from the vaginal slides.
The court made no provision for testing of Clark’s reference sample by the GBI for inclusion in the state’s DNA database.
The prosecution then appealed the court’s order. On May 9, 2005, the Court of Appeals of Georgia reversed the lower court’s decision to allow FSA to perform testing in the case, ruling that because FSA was not certified, it did not meet the statutory requirements of the Georgia post-conviction DNA testing statute. The appeals court also ruled that Clark’s reference sample could be put into the state’s DNA database to determine whether it could be linked to unsolved crimes.
Consequently, in July 2005, the vaginal slide evidence was sent to Serological Research Institute (SERI), another California DNA laboratory that was certified.
The testing was completed in November 2005. A DNA profile of a male was identified on the vaginal slide, and Clark was excluded. The Innocence Project requested that the Cobb County District Attorney's Office conduct a search for the male profile in the Georgia convicted offender DNA database as well as the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
The profile obtained from the vaginal slide was consistent with the profile of Arnold. Records show that in addition to the 2003 cruelty to children conviction, he had been convicted of a sodomy charge in 1985.
The Innocence Project filed a motion to vacate Clark’s conviction. On December 8, 2005, the motion was granted. Clark’s conviction was vacated and the charges were dismissed.
In 2007, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a bill authorizing $1.2 million in compensation for Clark.
Arnold was convicted in 2007 of the rape of P.T. and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was also convicted of a rape committed in Fulton County in 1993 and a rape committed in 1995 in DeKalb County.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 07-27-2026
