When Green Bay Packers defensive lineman Kenny Clark was nine years old, his father, Kenny Sr., was found guilty of the second-degree murder of Misael Rosales and sentenced to 55 years to life in 2005, without the possibility of parole. As of last week, Kenny Sr. is a free man. 

 

 

 

 

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In May 2004, Kenny Sr., who previously spent 20 months in prison after being convicted of felony armed robbery in 1990 at age 20, was inside Muscoy Liquor in Delmann Heights, an area in San Bernardino, California. While there, Rosales “backed his car into Kenny Sr.’s SUV,” according to a 2016 ESPN story. While Monroe Thomas, Rosales’ friend who was with him at the liquor store that night, confessed he never saw Kenny Sr. pull the trigger, he admitted that he saw the elder Clark “‘with a pistol in his hand … waving it around’ before Rosales was shot.” He also admitted that Clark Sr. struck him while the two were in the parking lot. Two weeks later, police arrived at the Clark household and arrested Kenny Sr. The jury trial lasted eight days, resulting in a guilty verdict for Kenny Sr. 

However, months later, Thomas completely flipped his story, telling Kenny Sr.’s wife, Nicole, by phone that he “was on probation at the time of the murder, and he claimed to Nicole that police threatened him with a return to prison if he didn’t testify against Kenny Sr.” Further, the acts that took place at the scene of the crime were different in Thomas’ latest story as he described “a confrontation with other men at the scene, saying one punched him and another had a gun.” 

Kenny Sr. continuously maintained his innocence and fought through the justice system to prove as much for decades through various legal filings and appeals. For example, with Thomas’ new confession in hand, San Bernardino Superior Court granted an evidentiary hearing in 2007. However, the judge denied the petition because Thomas admitted, when “the judge strongly warned Thomas that he would face felony perjury charges if he contradicted his trial testimony,” that his original testimony was the truth. 

Thomas flipped his story again via a written declaration delivered to the court six months after that evidentiary hearing, writing: “Every day now, I see Kenny sitting there, doing life in prison for a crime I know he did not commit, all because on three occasions, when I had the chance to tell the truth, I didn’t do it.” The court was not swayed and denied Kenny Sr. another evidentiary hearing. 

In April 2018, Kenny Sr. and his counsel sought to overturn the conviction by filing another petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. With district court judge Dolly Gee presiding, Kenny Sr. argued that Thomas’ recantation of his pre-trial and trial testimony should essentially outweigh and overrule his actual pre-trial and trial testimony.  Kenny Sr. further pleaded that four eyewitnesses had come forward – 11 years after the fact, to be precise – and confessed that someone else had shot and killed Rosales. 

The Central District of California was not convinced and agreed with the magistrate judge’s recommendation that Kenny Sr.’s petition be dismissed with prejudice as the petition was untimely and his “claim of actual innocence did not meet the exacting standard set forth in Schlup v. Delo.” 

Kenny Sr. and his counsel appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2019. However, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision, keeping Kenny Sr. in prison. 

“Ultimately, although Clark presented a significant amount of new evidence, the district court correctly concluded that the new evidence was not reliable, and Clark therefore did not meet his burden to demonstrate it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Kenny Jr. told Tyler Dunne of Go Long (formerly of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) in a 2022 interview that it was all a “‘he-said, she-said’ situation. … Kenny Jr. cites the fact that the surveillance camera shows his father in a baseball jersey with no shirt underneath, no visible gun.” 

Light at the end of the tunnel finally appeared in May 2022, when the California Supreme Court granted an order for Governor Gavin Newsom “to grant clemency and an early parole hearing” to Kenny Sr., according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The California Board of Parole held an initial suitability hearing on February 9, 2023, granting Kenny Sr.’s release.