A Florida man was released from prison after spending 37 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.
DNA evidence proved that Robert DuBoise, 55, did not commit a rape or a murder after he was convicted in 1983. The jury convicted DuBoise based on evidence from a jailhouse informant and unreliable data from a bite mark analysis.
Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Christopher Nash cleared DuBoise’s life sentence and removed him from the state’s sex offender registry as part of his ruling.
“This court has failed you for 37 years. Today, it has finally succeeded,” Nash said on Monday.
Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren celebrated DuBoise’s release from prison after working on the case alongside the Innocence Project. He said the county was “finally” making the situation right after 37 years.
Susan Friedman, an Innocence Project attorney who represented DuBoise, noted that the county “took 37 years away from Robert” in a sentence that included time on death row, solitary confinement, and transfers between seven Florida prisons from the time he was first locked up at age 18. DuBoise thanked those in the state offices who helped clear his name and get him released from prison.
“There are really true-hearted people in these offices now,” DuBoise said. “It’s been amazing. I’m just very grateful to all of you.”
Warren has been working with the Innocence Project to review any cases that relied on bite mark analyses that have since been discredited. He said he believes the effort is important to release anyone who might have been wrongfully convicted.
“This won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. Wrongful convictions deprive victims and their families of justice; they deserve the truth — not false closure based on a false story. Beyond that, wrongful convictions threaten public safety, putting an innocent person behind bars, while the actual person who committed the crime goes free,” Warren said.
DuBoise was released from prison on Aug. 27, a few weeks ahead of his full exoneration hearing, which took place on Monday morning. He told the Tampa Bay Times that he has been working on adjusting to life outside of prison and learning the technology that he has missed out on while inside.
“Everything is brand new to me,” DuBoise said. “You might as well say I just came from another planet.”
