Networked Knowledge - Media Report

This version of the report has been prepared by: Dr Robert N Moles

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On 30 December 2007  The Plain Deaker reported “Whatever Happened to . . . : Clarence Elkins, wrongly convicted, still seeks justice”.  

It said:
Q: What's up with Clarence Elkins?
A: The man who spent seven years in prison for crimes he didn't commit continues to seek justice in the courts..

He was wrongfully imprisoned for the 1998 rape and slaying of his mother-in-law and for the rape of a niece. The key witness recanted, but the courts would not give Elkins a new trial, and prosecutors would not back down until DNA that he gathered pointed to the probable suspect. Two years after he walked out of an Ohio prison, Elkins attended the pretrial hearing of Earl Mann, indicted this year in the slaying and rapes. No date has been set for a trial, but Elkins has pledged to attend that, too.

Elkins has court appearances in his future. Despite a $1 million settlement from Ohio for his imprisonment, he filed a civil-rights suit in U.S. District Court against the Summit County prosecutor's office, the county and Barberton police for his arrest and imprisonment. A Stark County judge in June granted him a divorce from his wife, Melinda. He also served three days in jail in Canton in 2006 for drunken driving. Now most of the Ohio settlement is gone. He said he gave the money to his children, to lawyers, to people who took out loans to help him fight for his freedom.  Elkins supports himself with his hands. "I'm working construction, carpentry, all that," Elkins said. In his free time, he sometimes hunts deer. This year, he didn't get a buck.

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