Clark McMillan

The Crime

On Oct. 26, 1979, a 16-year-old girl, identified as S.D., and her 18-year-old boyfriend, D.K., sat in a car near the entrance to Overton Park — known locally as a “lovers lane” — in Memphis, Tennessee. A Black man, armed with a knife, approached and forced them out of the vehicle.

The man took $20 from D.K. and then marched them into the woods. He ordered D.K. to lie face down on the ground and then raped S.D. He fled on foot.

The Investigation

After the crime, the couple, unable to find their car keys, flagged down a passing car and were driven to her Sunday school teacher’s home. Police were called and they were taken to a rape crisis center where evidence was collected. 

Semen was visually identified on S.D.’s blue jeans and examination of the vaginal swabs revealed motile spermatozoa. No testing was performed except for visual inspection and a presumptive screening for seminal fluid, which was positive. 

At the time of the attack, police were investigating the possibility of a serial rapist due to a number of robberies and rapes in the Overton Park area. They created a photographic lineup that included a photograph of 22-year-old Clark Jerome McMillan, who had been acquitted in 1978 of a rape charge. At the time of that trial, Mr. McMillan was in a wheelchair because he had been shot by a police officer. 

When shown the lineup, the victim picked no one and her boyfriend selected a filler. 

Mr. McMillan was arrested on Oct. 30, 1979, and placed in a live lineup. S.D. identified Mr. McMillan as her attacker. Her boyfriend again selected a filler.

Mr. McMillan was charged with rape and robbery with a deadly weapon.

Prior to his trial, Mr. McMillan told his defense lawyer that another man in the Memphis City Jail, David Boyd, had told him not to worry about being convicted because Mr. Boyd “was good for that crime.” However, Mr. McMillan’s defense lawyer did not investigate this lead further.

After Mr. Boyd was released and while Mr. McMillan was still in jail, Mr. McMillan saw newspaper accounts of two additional robbery-rapes and four attempted robbery-rapes in the Overton Park area. Mr. McMillan wrote to the prosecution and the judge to inform them of what Mr. Boyd had told him, suggesting that the latter was responsible for these additional crimes. His plea was ignored.

The Trial

In May 1980, Mr. McMillan, who wore a leg brace and walked with an obvious limp due to the police shooting, went to trial in Shelby County Criminal Court. S.D. and D.K. both identified him as their attacker. Although neither had ever mentioned that their attacker walked with a limp, S.D. testified for the first time that her assailant walked with a limp.

Mr. McMillan testified that he was at his sister’s house with his girlfriend at the time of the crime. His sister and girlfriend testified and corroborated his testimony.

On May 15, 1980, the jury convicted Mr. McMillan on both charges. He was sentenced to 119 years in prison.

All of his appeals were denied. 

The Exoneration

Mr. McMillan contacted the Innocence Project in 1996 and his case was accepted a year later. 

Due to the age of the case and a lack of cooperation by his trial defense attorney, tracking down his case material and negotiating a protocol for testing took years.

Kemper Durand, a Memphis defense attorney, became co-counsel with the Innocence Project, and on July 11, 2001, a judge signed an order allowing for DNA testing to be conducted. The evidence was sent to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).

The TBI reported on April 19, 2002 that DNAtesting of the evidence, including the blue jeans and the rape kit swabs, excluded Mr. McMillan from the crime.

The Innocence Project filed a motion to vacate his conviction and to dismiss the charges. On May 2, 2002, with the consent of the District Attorney General, the conviction was vacated and the charges were dismissed. 

Mr. McMillan was held in prison after his exoneration on an unrelated gun possession charge from 1979, for which he had been given two years in federal prison. The Bureau of Prisons granted him time served and he was freed on May 15, 2002, after spending 22 years in prison.

A few months later, the DNA profile from the evidence was submitted to the FBI Combined DNA Information System (CODIS) and was linked to Mr. Boyd, who by that time was in prison in Texas after being convicted of a 1983 rape in Houston.

In 2004, the Tennessee Board of Claims awarded Mr. McMillan $832,000 in compensation. He died October 1, 2017.