Defense seeks to sway jurors away from vote for death
Hoping to convince a jury to spare Rodney Clark’s life, the convicted murderer’s lawyers on Monday presented testimony about both his troubled past and potential for redemption.
Clark was found guilty last month in the June 20, 1987, strangulation killing of Dana Fader, 27. He was not arrested until late 2012, following a DNA match to evidence collected from the suburban Lake Worth crime scene.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, based partly on Clark’s prior rape conviction for which he served eight years in a Mississippi prison. The Palm Beach County jury is expected to hear final arguments Tuesday and then begin deliberations.
The punishment phase of the trial began Sept. 6 — two of Fader’s three children testified about growing up without her — but was interrupted by Hurricane Irma.
Public Defender Carey Haughwout says there are a myriad of reasons to sentence Clark to life in prison rather than send him to death row. She said her 50-year-old client suffered early in life, when he was raised by an abusive mother in his birthplace of Jackson, Miss.
“She was mean one day and good the next,” testified Johnny Jones, a one-time step-dad to Clark when the defendant was a toddler.
The mom’s preferred method of discipline was setting fire to a piece of paper and holding it near the child, Jones said.
Asked by prosecutors Brian Fernandes and Reid Scott if he ever reported the burning paper punishment to police, Jones said he never did but always tried to look after Clark and his siblings.
Clark and Jones, 69, exchanged smiles and waves when he entered and departed Circuit Judge Charles Burton’s courtroom.
Frank Figgers, another witness from Clark’s hometown, told the jury about the difficulties that African-Americans faced in Mississippi in the 1960s because of segregation and civil rights violations.
Figgers, who works as a community development specialist and leads history tours in Jackson, said Clark was likely exposed to poisoning from lead paint in his childhood house in a poor, black neighborhood.
Michael Sweet, a pastor from Jackson, testified that he met Clark and became fast friends with him in 2011 when Clark, unemployed and homeless, took shelter in his ministry.
“A very good person, a man that’s trying to change his life,” Sweet said of Clark, noting he took and passed random drug and alcohol tests.
When prosecutor Fernandes pressed Sweet about whether Clark ever reported his status as a sex offender, or mentioned the Fader murder, Sweet said no.
Clark’s lawyers called medical experts to discuss Clark’s diagnoses of brain damage, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, diabetes, spinal pain, and other ailments. The defense says Clark, a father of two, is in a wheelchair today because he fell from the top of a house while working for a roofing company.
The prosecutors want the jury to