On November 30, 2001, a Burger King in Terrytown was robbed. The robber ordered a meal, ate his food, and drank from a Burger King cup, which he left at the scene. After throwing some items away, he went to the restroom. He emerged with a gun and announced a robbery, walking an employee to the front door at gunpoint. There, he pointed his gun at the manager and demanded that she open the safe. The rest of the staff was ordered to the floor. Money was placed in the robber’s blue bag. He then forced the manager to open the registers and took money from them before fleeing. When police arrived, staff provided a description of the robber and his clothing. Several latent fingerprints were collected, including from the cup that the robber used and left on a table.
Nearly two months later, police received a tip from a confidential source, who gave police nicknames of two Black males who were committing armed robberies of fast food restaurants in the area. Royal Clark’s nickname was similar to one of those provided. His photo was included in a photographic lineup. One employee made a tentative identification; another made a positive identification of Mr. Clark. Another employee made a positive identification of Mr. Clark but, at trial, that employee could not identify him in the courtroom. Police claimed that the fingerprints from the cup handled by the robber were unusable and, falsely, that DNA testing could not be performed because the print dusting process contaminated the evidence. The state reiterated this falsehood in its closing statements. Though there were obvious discrepancies in the descriptions given by the six state witnesses who testified, a non-unanimous jury convicted Mr. Clark of armed robbery and he was sentenced to 49.5 years in February 2004.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana initially sought DNA testing of the cup used by the perpetrator, but that evidence could not be located. The fingerprints, however, were located and several were found to be suitable for entry into the national fingerprint database. Three prints on the Burger King cup were left by a man with a history of armed robberies, not Mr. Clark. Royal Clark was exonerated and released from prison in June 2019, having served over 17 years in prison for a robbery he didn’t commit. Sadly, Mr. Clark was free for fewer than three years before passing away in June 2022.
