Clarence Elkins is an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of his mother-in-law, Judith Johnson, Melinda Elkins's mother, and the rape and assault of his niece, Brooke. He was convicted solely on the basis of testimony of his 6-year-old niece who testified that Elkins was the perpetrator. Brooke later voiced doubts about her identification, claiming that in her initial statement when she said "He looked like uncle Clarence", she simply meant that he reminded her of Elkins as opposed to being a positive identification and that she only identified him in her testimony because Summit County Prosecutor Maureen O'Connor (now Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court) and lead prosecutor Michael Carroll urged her to. Brooke recanted her statement and Elkins appealed on that basis, but his appeal was denied. The family finally raised funding to test DNA found at the scene and he was excluded. Once again, his appeal was denied. The judge ruled that because the jury convicted Elkins without the DNA results, it was likely that he would have been convicted even if the DNA did not match. Elkins' wife, Melinda, conducted her own investigation. She eventually identified Johnson's next door neighbor, Earl Mann, a convicted sex offender, as a likely suspect. Elkins collected a cigarette butt from Mann, who was serving time at the same prison, and provided it to his defense attorney for testing. Mann's DNA from the cigarette butt was found to be a match to the DNA found at the crime scene. Elkins was finally exonerated after serving 6.5 years in prison.

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