The Boulder County district attorney has requested new DNA testing in the murder case of a defendant who was convicted largely based on the analysis done so far, Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic investigator Yvonne Woods, who goes by the name Missy.

In a Nov. 1 court filing, Michael Dougherty said additional testing should be completed by early January 2025.

He said both he and defense attorney Adam Frank agreed the results of the retest would give them “a better understanding of how the case is going to go.”

Frank said Monday that the CBI has been gathering evidence to determine what, if any, retesting can be done.

Michael Clark, now 49, was convicted in 2012 of killing Marty Grisham in Boulder in 1994 and is serving life without parole. Frank asked that his client’s conviction be overturned.

Boulder County District Judge Andrew Hartman on Monday ordered an evidentiary hearing in early January that will likely focus on DNA testing. No specific date has been set.

At issue is the 2011 DNA analysis carried out by veteran CBI forensic expert Woods on the Clark case. Back then, Boulder police asked him to test a small jar of Carmex lip balm found outside Grisham’s apartment the morning after the murder.

For 30 years, Clark has maintained his innocence.

However, Boulder police had long considered him a prime suspect, but were unable to make an arrest based on circumstantial evidence and the case went cold. That changed in 2011 when Woods got involved.

She concluded that Clark’s DNA matched the partial profile she developed from inside the Carmex container, indicating that he was at the scene. She testified at her trial that the “major component” of the profile inside the Carmex jar matched Clark’s Y chromosome DNA.

He was convicted and has been in prison for 12 years.

But last year, the CBI acknowledged that the agency had discovered that for years Woods had intentionally deleted data, altered or omitted testing steps, misreported findings and covered his tracks to avoid detection. So far, the CBI has found irregularities in 809 cases Woods has worked on since 1994.

The investigation is ongoing, but it has sent shockwaves through Colorado’s criminal justice system as an unknown number of convictions in cases he worked on may now be in limbo.

Frank, who entered the case in 2018, said his client’s case could be the first in which a conviction is overturned because of Woods’ cheating.

On October 31, The Denver Gazette reported on the Clark case and its intersection with the CBI scandal.

As recently as 2019, Frank argued that Clark’s original public defender was ineffective at trial because he did not call an independent DNA expert to counter Woods’ findings. As part of a motion to appeal, Frank attached a letter from Phillip Danielson, a professor of forensic genetics and leading DNA expert, who said Woods’ analysis and testimony at trial were oversimplified, incomplete and misleading.

Danielson said Woods’ findings should have concluded that the DNA evidence found in the Carmex jar was inconclusive at best if it did not completely clear Clark.

Frank also included an affidavit from a public investigator that there was juror misconduct at the trial. One juror admitted to going to the crime scene during the trial to look around, and another said Carmex’s evidence was a frequent topic of discussion among jurors before deliberations. Throughout the trial, the judge urged the jury not to go to the scene, do independent research or discuss evidence before deliberations. The offenses were never reported at the time.

Frank requested an evidentiary hearing as part of his motion in 2019, but District Judge Hartman denied the request. In December 2023, the Colorado Court of Appeals overturned Hartman and ordered a hearing.

He originally asked for the hearing to take place next month, but said his client has waited 12 years and may wait a little longer.