(PatriotPostNews.com) – Nearly four decades after being falsely convicted and imprisoned, Robert DuBoise has been awarded more than 10 million dollars.
DuBoise, a Florida resident, was sentenced to death after being falsely convicted of assaulting and murdering a 19-year-old victim named Barbara Grams. The accused was 18 at the time of her death in 1983. During the past six years, DuBoise’s conviction—which was later reduced to a life sentence instead of the death penalty—has been under review by prosecutors.
The review that started in 2018 with advocacy by the group Innocence Project resulted in a January 11 settlement that gave the wrongly imprisoned man $14 million in compensation from the city of Tampa.
DuBoise has been out of jail since 2020 thanks to modern DNA testing methods that provided additional evidence in the case, suggesting that two other men were responsible for the crime.
In the fall of 2021, DuBoise filed a lawsuit against those responsible for his wrongful imprisonment, including law enforcement investigators, the city of Tampa, and a forensic dentist whose testimony solidified the accusations against the man. The dentist had said in court that DuBoise’s teeth were a match against a bite mark found on the young female victim.
A few weeks after the case was settled, the Tampa City Council concluded in a February 15 unanimous vote that the settlement was approved and officially gave the allotted $14 million to the 59-year-old man. DuBoise later expressed his relief that the grueling process had come to an end, noting that while money cannot “restore what I lost,” he does not intend to “waste my time with bitterness.”
The settlement comes after DuBoise was given another sum by the state of Florida for his wrongful imprisonment. In 2023, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that gave the man a sum of $1.25 million, acknowledging the mistake made by state authorities in his conviction.
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