Florida man cleared of rape and murder convictions after 37 years in prison

[mysteryowl]

Source: The Guardian

After 37 years behind bars, a Florida man was formally cleared on Monday of a 1983 rape and murder which DNA evidence proved he did not commit.

Robert DuBoise was convicted at a trial that relied on a testimony from an unreliable jailhouse informant and faulty bite-mark analysis. He was released from prison last month.

On Monday, a hearing before Hillsborough county judge Christopher Nash resulted in an order wiping away the convictions and life sentence, and removing DuBoise from the state sex offender registry.

"This court has failed you for 37 years," Nash said during the remote hearing. "Today, it has finally succeeded."

DuBoise, 55, was convicted in the 1983 murder of 19-year-old Barbara Grams, who was raped and beaten while walking home from her job at a Tampa mall. He was sentenced to death, then re-sentenced to life.
[snip]
The exoneration was a result of cooperation between prosecutors and the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted prisoners. Susan Friedman, the Innocence Project lawyer representing DuBoise, said he maintained his innocence on Death Row and often in solitary confinement in six Florida prisons.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/14/robert-duboise-exonerated-37-years-prison

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OMG!

The work of the innocence project is amazing and so needed!
Gratitude.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I had a friend long ago who knew a man who'd been wrongly convicted.

The Innocence Project got his friend out.

They are doing so much good!

[Mike 03]

2. Maybe it's time to take a hard look at whether forensic odontology is an actual

science. It has helped to put away some bad dudes (Ted Bundy), but it is also responsible for a large number of miscarriages of justice. Maybe it should be more like polygraph evidence--a useful aid, inadmissible in court. I've even seen cases where insect activity, or a belt buckle impression, was mistaken for human a bite mark.

[BComplex]

3. WTF? Why did it take 35 years to get DNA evidence straightened out. You can go to Ancestry.com

in a week or two and know everything about everyone.

WTF is wrong with this country?

[C Moon]

4. Here's an original newspaper clipping from the case.

The poor guy's life was ruined because they thought his teeth matched the bite marks.

[SpankMe]

5. And the actual killer has probably gone free. n/t

[mysteryowl]

7. Serial killer, from the news reports at the time

[Fla Dem]

6. Glad his Mom and sister are still alive. Hope he has a meaningful life gong forward.

[Midnight Writer]

8. "Bite mark evidence" is phony. This is not the first case overturned that relied on it.

Skin is too elastic and human teeth are not sharp enough to leave a conclusively identifiable impression.

[angrychair]

12. To be fair

a lot of the things we've used to convict people is junk science:
Bite impressions
Fingerprints
Lie detectors
Voice analysis
Handwriting analysis
Even DNA evidence itself...

All have, at the very least, significant caveats (DNA, fingerprints) or are outright junk science (lie detector, handwriting analysis).

This man was sent to prison because they wanted a conviction, not the truth.

[forgotmylogin]

9. "Today, it has finally succeeded." ????!!!!???

I wouldn't call taking nearly 40 years of someone's life needlessly a "success" in any respect.

[marble falls]

10. The system is still failing him. How do they ever make him whole? 37 years.

[mysteryowl]

11. He could use a Go-Fund-Me

People would donate.

[NurseJackie]

13. How many have been wrongfully executed? They can't be un-executed.

[NNadir]

14. There is no compensation that can address what has happened to this man's life. n/t.

[DFW]

15. In such cases

If the prosecuting D.A. is still alive, he or she should serve out the rest of this man's life sentence. Taking away the years between age 18 and age 55 is something no exoneration or amount of money can truly compensate for. It is a cruelty beyond the imagination of anyone who has not been its victim. It is, in and of itself, a crime, a robbery of unspeakable proportion, one for which restitution can never truly be made.