Robert C Dubois, Age 91 Open report >> Lives: Sarasota, FL, in zip codes 34237 and 34235; Photo: Based on junk-science bite-mark evidence and false testimony from a prison informant, Robert DuBoise (pictured with his mother, Myra, following his release) was convicted of raping and murdering 19-year-old Barbara Grams. In 2006, DuBoise sought post-conviction DNA testing, but an evidence search at the time revealed that all evidence admitted at trial, which included evidence collected as part of the rape kit, was destroyed in 1990. Please avoid sharing any personal information in the comments below and join us in making this a hate-speech free and safe space for everyone. Burke, former Sgt. DuBoise was released from the Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, Florida, August 27, 2020, one day after Hillsborough prosecutors and lawyers from the national Innocence Project and the Innocence Project of Florida presented Circuit Judge Christopher Nash with evidence of his innocence. Despite testimony that the informant did not work as a cooperating informant, the CRUs re-investigation revealed that the jailhouse informant was, in fact, an informant; that he had provided information on other murders and rapes in the Tampa Bay area; and that one of the detectives was the informants handler. Additionally, a memorandum from the State Attorneys file that was disclosed during the Innocence Project and CRUs joint post-conviction re-investigation indicated that the jailhouse informant strongly inferred that he was looking for a sentence reduction in exchange for his cooperation with law enforcement and the prosecutor on the DuBoise case. He has always maintained his innocence, but any hope of reversing his. During the detectives canvas, DuBoise was identified as a person of interest after a local resident told police that he caused problems at their regular hangout. Burke and John Counsman and Sergeant R.H. Price.. . One violent felony or more than one nonviolent felony will disqualify a person from Floridas Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act which grants $50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment by the State. It wont be easy. Based on a comparison of the impression and mold, Dr. Souviron determined DuBoise was a match to the mark left on the body and he was arrested immediately. They punish the innocent while allowing the actual perpetrator to go free. Grams was attacked and beaten to death while walking home from her job at a restaurant on 19 August 1983. Robert has spent decades determined to show that he was wrongfully convicted, and we are eager to see him fully exonerated, said Susan Friedman, DuBoises Innocence Project attorney. He was convicted of her murder and initially sentenced to death. Investigators have two new persons of interest in the case. ROBERT DUBOIS SALES at PR Winter Park, Florida, United States. I hope that my story helps others to keep fighting to prove their innocence. After cooperating with law enforcement and providing a sworn statement in DuBoises case, he was offered a plea and sentenced to five years in prison. 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These people do not work for the Innocence Project of Florida. The woman had been beaten and sexually assaulted. Robert DuBoise A man in Florida who was exonerated after spending 37 years in prison for a 1983 rape and murder filed a lawsuit against police officials and the forensic dentist who testified against him, claiming they "knowingly fabricated" evidence used to convict him. All Filters. In fact, the victims injury was not a human bitemark at all, Daniel Marshall, an attorney for the Human Rights Defense Center, wrote in the lawsuit. Robert Duboise served 37 years in Florida State Prison for the death of Barbara Grams, a 19-year-old Tampa woman police found beaten to death behind a dental practice in 1983. On 11/07/2006 STATE OF FLORIDA filed an Other - Other Criminal lawsuit against DUBOIS, ROBERT BRANDON. The lawsuit claims beeswax was not an accepted method of identifying teeth marks in murder cases and was used only because another officer in the Tampa police department operated a honey business on the side. During the medical examiners autopsy, he found a pattern injury on the victims face that was determined to be a human bite mark inflicted around the time of her death. The only physical evidence implicating Mr. DuBoise was fabricated bitemark evidence that supposedly matched Mr. DuBoise to an injury on the victims body. DuBoise was just 18 when he arrested. Once again, I apologize to Robert on behalf of the entire justice system for all he has gone through. On Sept. 11, 2020, the State filed its response asking that the Court find DuBoise innocent of the charges against him and to signify the Courts ruling as an exoneration of Mr. Robert DuBoise. The CRU also issued a Summary Fact Finding Report that stated that if Mr. DuBoise would be retried today, there would be clear and convincing evidence that he is innocent of the charges against him.. Robert DuBoise hugging his mother Myra DuBoise following his release from prison after 37 years on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020 in Bowling Green, Florida. According to the lawsuit, investigators initially focused on him after an attendant at a gas station across the street from where Grams was found told police three boys named Robert, Bo and Ray had been causing trouble. Jerry Lambe is a journalist at Law&Crime. This directly contradicted the Assistant State Attorneys statement to the jury that the informant was in prison and that he would be going right back to prison to finish serving his sentence. (Page 2) After testifying in court against DuBoise and once a death sentence was secured, the informant received a further sentence reduction to time served and he was immediately released. In brief remarks during the hearing, DuBoise, who was 18 at the time of the crime, said he had a lot of roadblocks thrown in my path. To date, at least 33 known wrongful convictions and indictments stem from bite mark evidence, and the misapplication of forensic science was involved in 45 percent of DNA exoneration cases. The informant was facing multiple life sentences for kidnapping, armed robbery and battery of a law enforcement officer. The Innocence Project of Florida served as local counsel on the case. He served three years on death row before the Florida Supreme Court vacated his death sentence. Floridas last death-row exoneration was in the case of Clifford Williams, Jr., who was freed in March 2019 after serving 42 years for a murder he did not commit. View FREE Public Profile & Reputation for Robert Dubois in Titusville, FL - See Court Records | Photos | Address, Emails & Phone Number | Personal Review | $70 - $79,999 Income & Net Worth Beyond that, wrongful convictions threaten public safety, putting an innocent person behind bars while the actual person who committed the crime goes free.. After 37 years in prison for wrongful conviction, Robert DuBoise completes path to freedom at Buccaneers-Rams game. In 2020, despite previous assurances that all the biological evidence from the rape kit was destroyed, slides from the victims autopsy were also found at the office of the Medical Examiner for Hillsborough County. I am Australian and want you to know that that there are others around the world that care about people such as yourself and support the Innocence Project and the work they do. When investigators began to identify suspects, they also came across a local resident who referred to Robert DuBoise as someone who caused problems at a hangout place in the area. Robert DuBoise following his exoneration after 37 years on Monday, Sept. 14, 2020, in Tampa, Florida. Thursday morning, the courtmoved to reduce DuBoises sentence to the exact amount of time he has already spent behind bars. The Conviction Review Unit will continue to work with the court to finish exonerating DuBoise,Hall said in a phone interview with Oxygen.com. He concluded that the original bite mark conclusions are unsupported by science and, most critically, found that although three experts at trial concluded that the mark on the victims cheek was a bite mark, the injury in this case was in fact not a bite mark. On Wednesday, they moved to free him after he spent 37 years behind bars. Innocence Project Client Robert DuBoise Re (August 27, 2020 Tampa, Florida) Today. The Innocence Project began investigating DuBoises case in 2018 due to both the unreliable informant testimony and flawed bite mark analysis on which the case rested. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, against former Tampa police Detectives Phillip Saladino and K.E. A few weeks later on September 14, 2020, the court vacated his wrongful convictions and the State dropped the charges against Robert DuBoise in a virtual hearing, exonerating him after 37 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. DuBoise was released after new DNA testing of the crime scene evidence that was thought to have been destroyed excluded him as the assailant. Florida State Attorney's Office, Floridas newly established Conviction Review Unit agreed to review DuBoises case in September 2019, according to a, For one thing,the injury on Gramscheek likely wasnt a bite mark at all and even if it was, bite marks are no longer considered reliable evidence in identifying suspects, according to new expert testimony referenced in. Based on the junk science of bite mark evidence and the unreliable testimony of a jailhouse informant, DuBoise was convicted and sentenced to death. Photo of Robert DuBois hugging his mother by Martha Asencio-Rhine, Tampa BayTimes. Robert N Dubois Address: 3600 Oak Tree Ln Titusville, FL 32780 Name: Robert N Dubois Address: 3600 Oak Tree Ln Titusville, FL 32780 Phone: (321) 544-5346 Dwelling Type: Single Family Dwelling Unit Length of Residence: Under one year Median Home Value: $975,000 Median Household Income: $578,000 Vehicle: 2003 NISSAN FRONTIER Report ID: 42214660 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. Weve had an innocent man locked up for a crime that he did not commit, while the real perpetrator was never held accountable for this horrific murder, Andrew H. Warren, the Hillsborough County state attorney, said at a news conference on Wednesday. Floridas newly established Conviction Review Unit agreed to review DuBoises case in September 2019, according to a timeline the state attorneys office provided to Oxygen.com. DNA evidence proved Robert DuBoise, who was released from prison last month, did not commit 1983 crime Robert DuBoise, 55, meets reporters with his sister Harriet, left, and mother Myra,. The dentist, Dr Richard Souviron, gained notoriety as an expert after testifying in the murder trial of serial killer Ted Bundy that one of his Florida victims had a bite mark that matched his teeth. A Florida man who was wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering a woman walked free Thursday after 37 years behind bars. This court has failed you for 37 years, Nash said during the remote hearing. 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. Robert DuBoise, 56, wasfreed from prison in August 2020 after long-shelved, untested DNA evidence from a rape kit proved he was innocent of the slaying of 19-year-old Barbara Grams in Tampa. In the federal lawsuit filed this week, DuBoises attorneys name as defendants the city of Tampa, four police investigators and a forensic dentist who testified a bite mark on Grams cheek was from DuBoise based on a faulty beeswax mold made of his teeth. A free man for the first time since he was a teenager, Mr. DuBoise must now put his life back together after almost 40 years in prison, the lawsuit says. DuBoise is not alone in being convicted based on unreliable bite mark evidence at least. Use tab to navigate through the menu items. Im comforted by knowing that weve provided the truth now to this community, and especially to the victims family who were given false closure based on a false story all these years.. The jury unanimously recommended that DuBoise be sentenced to life, but his trial judge, Henry Lee Coe III, overrode their recommendation and sentenced DuBoise to be executed in Floridas electric chair. After three years on death row, the Florida Supreme Court reversed Robert DuBoises death sentence and substituted it with life plus fifteen years. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. John Counsman, and forensic dentist Dr. Richard Souviron. Another leading factor in wrongful convictions nationally is jailhouse informant testimony, playing a role in 17 percent of the 375 DNA-based exoneration cases. In the early morning of August 19, 1983, a young womans body was found behind a dental office in Tampa, Florida. The inmate claimed that DuBoise had confessed to raping and murdering Grams alongside two other men, Teresa Hall,supervising attorney for the Conviction Review Unit, saidin a Thursday hearing. Dan Sullivan, After 37years, hes free. Thank you for visiting us. DNA testing showed that DNA from two males was present and excluded DuBoise, Victor DuBoise and Raymond Garcia. 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