Body part or metal cane? Jury rejects cane defense

The two sisters testified the man was masturbating, smiling and waved his body part at them as they screamed in horror.

But the 29-year-old Marco Island man told jurors the two were mistaken: He was actually holding a metal cane.

A Collier County jury deliberated less than an hour this month before rejecting Chad Allen Clark’s version of events and finding him guilty of indecent exposure in a public place, his car, on Pine Ridge Road.

Clark, who has since moved to Arkansas, bowed his head as if in prayer and cried as he sat with defense attorneys David Agoston and James Chandler.

Citing the impending birth of Clark’s baby, Chandler asked Judge Rob Crown to hold off sentencing for 45 days and asked for probation and mental-health counseling.

But Assistant State Attorney Maria O’Neill, who prosecuted Clark with Thomas Gorman, urged the judge to sentence Clark immediately, noting that a 3-year-old girl was in the car when Clark exposed himself to the women as they drove on Pine Ridge Road early one morning in February.

“She didn’t see anything, however she could have,” O’Neill said, adding that the victims couldn’t be in court for sentencing. “It was a traumatizing experience for them.”

She said one had nightmares and ended up tinting her car’s windows.

Clark begged the judge to let him go home for his baby’s birth. “Don’t take me away from my newborn,” Clark said, crying. “I want to be there, but I will come back.”

The judge, however, refused to hold off sentencing or grant a furlough, saying that was up to the sheriff to decide whether to allow Clark to go home and return to serve his time.

“A number of folks were exposed to this behavior,” Crown said.

He adjudicated Clark guilty, fined him $250, and sentenced him to a year of probation and 60 days in jail, saying he likely would be released by the time his baby was born. He also ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.