The murder conviction of Michael Clark should be dismissed due to a 32-year delay that led to crucial evidence being lost or destroyed, a bungled police investigation and “outrageous conduct” at the state crime lab, according to defense motion filed late Friday afternoon.

Clark, now 50, was convicted of first-degree murder in October 2022 in a case that had languished for nearly two decades. He was sent away for life without parole for the shooting death of Marty Grisham in Boulder in 1994.

Clark has maintained from the start he did not commit the crime.

In April 2025, Clark’s original conviction was set aside due, in part, after an independent retest of DNA evidence in the case — considered key to him being found guilty — found differing results.

Clark was then released on bail after serving 12 years in prison.

For months, speculation swirled around whether prosecutors would attempt to retry him. In September, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty announced he would do so.

The 72-page defense motion filed in Boulder County Friday seeks to dismiss the case for good.

It is a case that has been closely watched in legal and scientific circles both in Colorado and nationwide, as it embodies the unprecedented scandal that has engulfed the state’s forensic lab and upended the Colorado judicial system.

Yvonne Woods, a former go-to forensic scientist at the lab who worked on the Clark case, is accused of altering data and skipping key steps in her DNA testing throughout her 29-year career at CBI.

So far, CBI has identified 1,045 cases with problems tied to Woods, or roughly one-in-10 of the more than 10,780 cases she had worked on. Woods, who goes by Missy, resigned rather than be fired in 2023 just before the scandal was made public.

She is now facing 102 felony counts, including cybercrime, forgery, perjury and attempting to influence a public servant. She is awaiting trial in Jefferson County.

Friday’s motion in the Clark case lays out three main arguments for dismissal:

The decades-long delay in prosecution makes it improbable if not impossible to mount an effective defense as witnesses are deceased, memories have faded, and evidence has been destroyed, the motion said.

The delay violates Clark’s 14^th Amendment rights to due process, the defense contends.

Also, police and prosecutors at the time allegedly failed to thoroughly explore alternative suspects, notably Grisham’s ex-wife and his two children who had animosity towards him and a potential financial gain from his death, according to the motion.

And, notably, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s forensic science lab allowed shoddy, rushed results in cases, including Clark’s, that violated accepted scientific standards by turning a blind eye to Woods’ alleged misdeeds, the motion adds.

Adam Frank, Clark’s defense attorney, called the re-prosecution after so many years and with so little evidence a “moral obscenity.”

Further, he claims in his motion that Dougherty, who is running for state attorney general, made his decision to retry out of “politics, not justice.”

Frank also alleges conflict of interest in the district attorney’s actions because one of his fundraisers is Ryan Brackley, who was the original prosecutor in Clark’s first trial and then became Wood’s defense counsel. Brackley now serves as an assistant district attorney for the 18^th Judicial District.

The Boulder County District Attorney’s office could not be reached late Friday for comment.

In April, Dougherty said vacating the first conviction “was the right thing to do” due to the “totality” of problems with the case. In addition to DNA questions, the defense has alleged juror misconduct in the first trial.

Five months later, though, the Boulder County district attorney said his office decided to retry the case after it had “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.”

Boulder County Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Kupfner said at a hearing in September prosecutors believed “we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt (Clark) was responsible for the death of Marty Grisham.”

The second trial could come later this year.

Clark was a teenager on Nov. 1, 1994, when Grisham was shot four times as he answered the door of his Boulder apartment. Although Clark quickly became a suspect because he admitted he had stolen checks from Grisham and forged them for a total of about $4,500, he was not arrested at the time.

Prosecutors said then the case was too shaky.

Although Clark once owned the type of gun that could have fired the fatal bullets, it was never recovered. There were also no witnesses and no physical evidence.

In 2011, the case got new life when a Boulder detective sent a jar of Carmex lip balm, found at the scene the morning after the murder, to the CBI to determine if DNA testing could be done.

It landed with Woods, who concluded that male DNA found inside the Carmex container was consistent with Clark’s and that he was a major contributor, presumably putting him at the scene. She testified at trial and the jury convicted.

But after reports in 2023 that Woods had been allegedly manipulating DNA results for years, Dougherty agreed to have the lip balm retested by an independent lab in Virginia.

When the lab tested the remains of what was on Woods’ original swab, the findings were the same. But in two other tests using other swabs, the results were not consistent with hers, according to the motion.

Clark was considered “statistically excluded,” Dougherty acknowledged in his motion to set aside the conviction last year.

Frank theorized the discrepancies in the retesting results may point to contamination in the lab.  He alleged CBI allowed its scientists “unjustified leeway” in their findings and that quality control was lax.  

For instance, he argued that, in the Clark testing, a technical review that was supposed to check Woods’ conclusions lasted less than one minute. Typically, a technical review can last several hours, the motion said.

Also, the defense argued in its motion that authorities failed to thoroughly investigate Grisham’s former wife and two children, including his late son, who also had the type of gun used and had had a bitter relationship with his father. The son committed suicide in 2007.

The defense contends that, because there was not a proper investigation at the time and evidence was not preserved, it is impossible to try to recreate one three decades later. That creates a “fundamental unfairness” and warrants a dismissal on lack of due process grounds, the motion says.

A hearing is scheduled for May 5 to set a deadline for the prosecution’s response. It is unclear when the judge will decide.