After Years Fighting for His Freedom, TIP Client Thomas Clardy Is Coming Home

Originally published by FOX 17 Nashville (WZTV) on September 2, 2026, written by Karen Aguilar.

Thomas Clardy will walk out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on September 15, more than two decades after his 2005 conviction in a shooting at a Madison auto repair shop that killed one man and injured two others. Clardy has maintained his innocence throughout, a claim the Tennessee Board of Parole itself weighed when it recommended his exoneration. A federal judge overturned his conviction in 2023 and Clardy spent nearly two years free, until the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, at the urging of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, sent him back to prison.

Thomas would have died in prison had the governor not just commuted his sentence.

Jason Gichner Executive Director. Tennessee Innocence Project

Governor Bill Lee’s decision to commute Clardy’s sentence doesn’t erase that conviction, but it does mean Clardy gets to go home. TIP Executive Director Jason Gichner, who represented Clardy and has spoken with him almost daily through the case, called it the outcome Clardy never stopped believing in. Clardy’s fiancée, Keondra Cooper, held the same belief. She and Clardy named their daughter Innocence.

The case is a reminder of how fragile a wrongful conviction reversal can be: a court restores someone’s freedom, and a higher court can take it back, even when the parole board and the people closest to the case believe an injustice occurred. Clemency became the tool that finally got Clardy home.