BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — A Colorado man will likely be retried in a 1994 murder in Boulder months after his release from prison due to a mishandling of DNA evidence connected to the case, a Boulder County judge ruled Thursday.
Michael Clark was released from prison in April after spending more than a decade incarcerated for the murder of Marty Grisham. His conviction was vacated after the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office reviewed what they said was new evidence, conducted by an independent lab that produced different DNA results than what was introduced during Clark's trial in 2012.
At the time, the prosecution called former Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods to testify, which helped prosecutors place Clark at the scene of the crime.
Woods, who had worked for the agency for nearly 30 years before she resigned, was charged in January with 102 felonies for allegedly tampering with DNA evidence in at least 1,003 cases. Those allegations have cost the state millions of dollars, helped create a backlog of evidence examinations and thrown multiple criminal cases into disarray. The case against her is still moving through the courts.
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Clark’s conviction was the first to be vacated in the aftermath of the scandal.
On Thursday, Ken Kupfner, a prosecutor with the Boulder District Attorney’s Office, said he believes they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clark was responsible for Grisham’s shooting death. But Adam Frank, Clark’s attorney, maintained his client’s innocence, telling the judge during the hearing that there would need to be a full week of motions hearings in this case to get ready for the retrial.
He requested a five-day motions hearing to take place in February 2026 to accommodate their DNA expert’s availability and said the date was necessary for some upcoming motions.
When asked by the judge what motions would be filed, Frank said he planned to file a motion to dismiss the case based on “outrageous government conduct.”
After a back-and-forth, the judge set a motions hearing for Feb. 23, 2026, and a retrial to tentatively start on May 11, 2026.
Denver7 sat down with both Frank and Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty following Thursday's hearing.
"It's not too late to do the right thing," Frank said. "Now we're right back where we were in 1994 with no evidence that Mike did anything wrong."
Dougherty told Denver7 his office has other evidence that supports Clark's guilt.
"We put a tremendous amount of time and effort into analyzing all the evidence, all the testimony, tracking down all the witnesses, and determined that the right thing to do is to go to another trial," Dougherty said.
Until the tentative trial date, Clark remains out on bail.
Denver7's Claire Lavezzorio contributed to this report.
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