Michael Clark, the man accused of a 31-year-old Boulder murder case but freed from prison on bail in April when his original conviction was set aside, will be tried for second time, a Boulder County prosecutor announced on Thursday.

The decision comes after months of speculation on whether Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who is running for state attorney general, would seek a new trial or drop the case against Clark after a retest of the original DNA evidence used to convict him was found to be potentially suspect.

It is a case that has become intrinsically entangled in the ongoing scandal at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s forensic lab where a former DNA expert is accused of compromising evidence for years.

Clark, 50, continues to maintain his innocence. He was first convicted in October 2012 more than a decade after the murder and served 12 years of a life sentence without parole.

At the brief hearing Thursday, Boulder County Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Kupfner said his office believes “we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt (Clark) was responsible for the death of Marty Grisham.”

Adam Frank, Clark’s defense attorney, bristled at the announcement of a second trial, declaring “the fact he is being re-prosecuted is a moral failing.”
Salomone set Nov. 17 as a deadline for both sides to file motions series and scheduled a multiple-day hearing on those motions for Feb. 23, 2026. The May 2026 second trial is expected to last roughly nine days.

Dougherty said in a statement on Thursday that vacating the first conviction “was the right thing to do.” But he added that his office subsequently  “carefully and thoroughly analyzed all the remaining evidence to determine the right path forward. Our request for trial dates is a reflection of that process and our decision of what justice requires. We look forward to the trial.”

Clark was 19 when Boulder city employee Marty Grisham was fatally shot Nov. 1, 1994, after answering the door at his apartment. There was no eyewitness to the crime, no physical evidence and the gun used was never recovered.

Still, back then Clark emerged quickly as the prime suspect in the murder after it was discovered he had previously stolen a fistful of checks about a month prior when he had been in Grisham’s apartment. Clark was friends with Grisham’s daughter in high school and had agreed to feed her father’s cat.  

Clark admitted to forging about $4,000 in checks and that he once owned the type of gun that could have fired the fatal bullets, but he has insisted from the beginning he was not at Grisham’s apartment the night of the murder and he did not kill him.

Police long believed Clark killed Grisham to cover up stealing the checks. 

Still, the case stalled for more than a decade after it was determined the evidence against Clark was too shaky to charge him. It was not until 2011, when Boulder Police Department investigators sent a small jar of Carmex lip balm found outside Grisham’s apartment to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for DNA analysis by forensic scientist Yvonne Woods, that the case found new life.

Woods, who goes by the name Missy, concluded and later testified at Clark’s first trial that the DNA profile found inside a Carmex container was a partial match to a swab taken from Clark, presumably placing him at the scene.

It was enough to convince the jury, and Clark was convicted of first-degree murder.

This was years before the scandal at the CBI lab broke open and it was revealed Woods allegedly had been altering and manipulating DNA results in criminal cases during her nearly 30-year tenure as the state’s go-to forensic expert.

CBI has now acknowledged that of the more than 10,780 cases Woods worked on in her career, it has found 1,045 irregularities, or roughly one-in-10.

Notably, the Clark case has never been included in CBI’s list of troubled cases.

Earlier this year Woods, 65, was charged with 102 felonies in connection with the alleged misconduct between 2008 and 2023, including cybercrime, perjury, forgery and attempting to influence a public servant. She retired in November 2023 rather than be fired just prior to the scandal becoming public. She is now awaiting trial in Jefferson County.

Armando Saldate III, the new director of CBI, told The Denver Gazette last month he was confident that the problems inside the state lab did not go beyond Woods. In an interview with Fox31 he reiterated what CBI has said all along: officials believe no one has been wrongfully imprisoned because of Woods’ alleged manipulation of DNA evidence.

Frank, Clark’s attorney, as far back as 2019, asked the Boulder County district court to hold an evidentiary hearing as part of his client’s appeal to discuss findings by an outside DNA expert that cast doubt on Wood’s methods and findings. The judge refused.

It was not until December 2023 that the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that the judge had erred, and a hearing was needed not only on the DNA question but also due to alleged jury misconduct. An investigator for the defense found that a juror during trial had visited the scene despite strict prohibitions from the judge.

By then, the CBI scandal was just starting to explode, and as more and more revelations of wrongdoing emerged, the appellate court’s decision for a hearing on the DNA findings took on new relevance.

Late last year Dougherty agreed that the Carmex jar’s contents should be tested by an independent lab in Virginia for comparison to what Woods’ found. In some of the new results, released in March, Clark was considered “statistically excluded” from the DNA found in the Carmex, according to a motion filed by Dougherty on April 11.

In a statement sent to The Denver Gazette Thursday, Frank criticized Dougherty decision.

“Now, in what appears from the outside to be an attempt to protect Ms. Woods and CBI from that damning conclusion, Michael Dougherty is prosecuting an innocent man for murder 30 years after the incident based on the same evidence his office had in 1994 when they concluded they should not charge Mr. Clark,” Frank said.

The district attorney’s office then said it would no longer object to vacating the first conviction because of the “totality” of problems surrounding the case, even though prosecutors still believed they had a strong circumstantial case against Clark. Setting aside a murder conviction is considered extremely rare.

Three days later, on April 14, Clark was released from Fremont Correctional Facility on $100,000 bond.

In a May interview with The Denver Gazette, Clark acknowledged he and his family knew he could face a retrial or return to prison but remained hopeful.

“I feel out,” he said then, “and I feel perfectly confident that I am staying out.”

Just prior to the hearing, Clark’s wife, Amy Clark, clutched her husband’s hand and then kissed it before he walked to the defense table.