Robert DuBoise spent 37 years behind bars, including three years on Death Row, before his exoneration in 2020 in the rape and killing of a Tampa woman.
DuBoise was 18 when he was arrested and 55 when he was released from prison after the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office concluded his conviction for the 1983 crimes should be vacated.
The Florida Legislature in 2008 passed a law, championed by the late attorney and Florida State University president Sandy D’Alemberte, that said the state should compensate people who were wrongly convicted of crimes — so long as they hadn’t previously committed felonies. Under the law, exonerees found innocent by the court that convicted them are eligible for $50,000 for each year they served in prison. The compensation is capped at $2 million.
DuBoise, who maintained his innocence throughout his decades-long ordeal, wasn’t eligible for compensation because, as a 17-year-old, he had been convicted of three unrelated felonies. He and his pro bono attorneys and lobbyists spent three years trying to convince Florida lawmakers to approve a special type of legislation known as a “claim” bill to provide $1.85 million to DuBoise. Lawmakers signed off on it in 2023.
Florida is the only state with a wrongful incarceration compensation program that excludes people with prior felonies, a restriction that makes the vast majority of exonerees in the state ineligible for payments. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 91 people in Florida have been exonerated since 1989. Five of those exonerees have received compensation.
State Rep. Traci Koster, R-Tampa, is among legislators who’ve sought to change the law to do away with what is known as the “clean hands” provision.
Koster, who is sponsoring such a bill for the legislative session that will begin Tuesday, pointed to DuBoise’s predicament as the impetus for her interest in making the change.
“One of the first meetings I took as an elected official was with one of these wrongly incarcerated folks. And I was blown away by the level of grace that this gentleman had for our state,” Koster, a lawyer who was initially elected in 2020, said before the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee unanimously approved the proposal (HB 59) last week.
Koster told the House panel that changing the law would help 18 exonerees “who’ve been denied compensation due to our overly restrictive barriers.”
“This totals approximately 300 years of wrongful incarceration. Six of these exonerees have waited over a decade to get justice,” she said, adding that the total cost of compensation for all of the men would be roughly $15 million. “And as I’ve said for the last four years that I’ve filed this bill, when we as a state get it wrong and incarcerate somebody, take away their liberty, then we as a state need to make it right.”
The bill also would extend from 90 days to two years a deadline for exonerees to seek compensation from the state and set up a process for people who receive compensation to repay the state if they receive a civil settlement.
DuBoise, 60, is advocating for the change.
The current law “is basically putting a target on anybody that’s been convicted of anything in their life,” he told The News Service of Florida in an interview.
An exoneree’s history “should be irrelevant if they know they convicted the wrong person,” DuBoise said.
People who are exonerated, like other ex-inmates, face myriad challenges after being released from prison. DuBoise, who was released amid the COVID-19 pandemic, said it was a challenge for him to open a bank account because he lacked identification.
“I didn’t know how to use a phone or anything,” he said.
Innocence Project of Florida executive director Seth Miller, whose organization was instrumental in helping get DuBoise’s conviction overturned and who championed the 2008 law, told the News Service that the state payments can help ease exonerees’ transition into communities.
“Our collective goal with all these men and women is to try to get them to a place of stability in all aspects of their lives. Everyone knows how financial stability is the key to everything else,” he said.
Sen. Jennifer Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican sponsoring the Senate version of the bill (SB 130), said it “standardizes” compensation for exonerees and saves them from having to pursue a claim bill from the Legislature. Special magistrates conduct thorough investigations of claim bills, which then have to get through the legislative process.
“These people are obviously behind the eight ball. They have no money. They have no savings. They’ve lost the ability to save for retirement, have housing and build a life support. So, they’re already starting at a pretty big disadvantage,” Bradley, an attorney, told the News Service.
DuBoise’s claim bill took three years to pass. He said lawmakers approving it “was very special to me.”
“I met all of them one time or another, and we kind of got to know each other. All of them were horrified by what happened to me. Their apology mattered,” DuBoise recalled. “They were thinking this could have happened to my child. It seemed real.”
DuBoise said the money allowed him to help his sister, who has autistic children, and his mother — things he always planned on doing but took much longer to accomplish.
“I just kind of help a lot of people, but I work every day, too, right?” said DuBoise, a Tampa resident who is a maintenance manager for a country club in Oldsmar. “I’ve been gone since I was 18 years old. I never learned how to have fun. So all these things people want to do every day, I’m just OK working and doing my thing.”
Koster acknowledged that her proposal has not garnered enough support in the past but remained hopeful the Legislature will sign off this year.
“All I'm doing is opening a door that is barely cracked for these folks and I'm just trying to open it a little wider. And since getting elected, it has been my mission to get this over the finish line,” she said.
DuBoise was sentenced to death for the killing of 19-year-old Barbara Grams. Although his sentence was later reduced to life in prison, it wasn't until 2018 that prosecutors agreed to give the case another look.
DNA testing that was not available in the early 1980s pointed toward two other men in the slaying, leading to DuBoise's release in 2020. Not long after that, DuBoise sued the city of Tampa, police officers who investigated the case and a forensic dentist who had testified that his teeth matched a purported bite mark on the victim.
The lawsuit was settled last year, but Tampa City Council voted to unanimously approve it and award DuBoise $14 million.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
