An innocent man was wrongly sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit and spent nearly four decades in prison – but now he’s out he insists he’s not bitter.
Robert DuBoise was just 18 when 19 year old Barbara Grams was sexually assaulted and brutally killed in August 1983 while returning home from her restaurant job in Tampa, Florida.
The prosecution’s case rested on a wound on Barbara’s cheek, identified by a medical examiner as a bite mark. Despite having no clear suspects, a petrol station attendant near the crime scene singled out Robert as part of a group known to “cause problems”.
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Investigators collected bite samples from several men, including Robert, and a forensic dentist concluded that his teeth matched the mark on Barbara’s cheek.
Robert was found guilty of the murder and initially given a death sentence, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. It wasn’t until 2018 that the Innocence Project Organisation persuaded prosecutors to re-examine the case, reports the Mirror.
(Image: Innocence Project)
DNA testing, not available during the early 1980s, implicated two other men – Amos Robinson and Abron Scott. Both were already serving life sentences for another murder.
In 2020, Robert was finally freed from prison, having spent 37 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. Robert has shared that he’s learned to let go of any bitterness.
In a recent Reddit AMA session with Tampa Bay journalists Christopher Spata and Dan Sullivan, he opened up about his ordeal.
When quizzed on how he deals with the anger from his situation, Robert replied: “There’s a lot of people angry for me because I won’t be. I don’t let anger control my life or my mind like that. I chose not to be bitter. I don’t want to hate anybody, and I don’t.
(Image: Innocence Project)
“So instead I choose to have compassion. When I was locked up I was dumbfounded. How’d this happen to me? How am I sitting in a death row cell? It was like I was in a bad dream I couldn’t wake up from.
“I was in defence mode, trying to think of any way I could to prove my innocence. But I wasn’t angry. And I’ve seen what hatred does to people in prison.”
Now 59, he also disclosed that despite being knocked back at parole hearings, he never lost hope of proving his innocence. “I did keep my faith that I was going to be proven innocent. At some point, especially after the third parole hearing that was denied, I had to think to myself even if I die here, I just want the truth to come out at some point for my family,” he said.
Robert, who hadn’t breathed free air since the early ’80s, has found acclimatising to modern life a huge challenge. In a heartfelt piece, he shared his toughest tech struggle: “The phone. Before I went in, if you wanted to go somewhere you used paper maps. No google maps or a cell phone.
“Not to mention things you can look up on the internet now that you would have had to drive, who knows how many miles to find what you were looking for. A part, a piece of furniture, you can browse without going anywhere.
(Image: Innocence Project)
“I stayed up all night with the phone the first few nights. At first I couldn’t answer it when my lawyer Susan called me. I was tapping it, because I didn’t know how to slide it. It was overwhelming at first. I’d seen cell phones in prison, that people would get once in a while, but I would never use them.”
Despite Florida’s policy to compensate wrongfully imprisoned individuals with $50,000 for every year locked away, a snag known as the “clean hands” rule robbed Robert of this due because of minor thefts in his youth, including stealing tools and siphoning petrol.
Undeterred, Robert championed for legislative change and bagged himself a victory: legislators granted him $1.85 million. His crusade didn’t end there as he pursued legal action against Tampa city, the detectives involved, and a forensic dentist whose testimony about a bite mark contributed to his wrongful conviction.
In February, the Tampa City Council unanimously agreed to award Robert $14million. However, he insists that he’ll only receive about half of that sum after legal expenses and attorney fees, and no amount of money could compensate for his losses.
“I’m not getting $14million, I’m only going to get roughly half of that after legal costs and attorneys and everything. Money doesn’t restore anything,” he stated. In March, Abron Scott confessed to the murders of Barbara and another Tampa woman, Linda Lansen.
Amos Robinson is still awaiting trial. Both men continue to be persons of interest in at least three other unresolved cases in Tampa Bay.
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