#DNA clears man who served 37 years in prison for 1983 crime

Former inmate Robert Duboise, 56, and Innocent Project Staff Attorney Susan Friedman meet reporters outside the Hardee County Correctional Institute.
AP

Robert Duboise, 55, was released Thursday from the Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, where his mother, sister and an attorney greeted him as a free man for the first time in nearly four decades, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

“It’s an overwhelming sense of relief,” Duboise told reporters, adding that he wasn’t angry for being wrongfully convicted in the case that relied on bite-mark evidence and a jailhouse informant. “I don’t have room in my life for bitterness. If you keep hatred and bitterness in your heart, it just steals your joy from everything else.”

Duboise, who was originally sentenced to death, saw his sentence later reduced to life in prison following an appeal. He was convicted in the 1983 murder and rape of Barbara Grams, 19, who was attacked as she walked home from her job at a Tampa mall, the newspaper reports.

The Innocence Project picked up Duboise’s case in 2018 and notified the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit. Teresa Hall, the attorney who heads the department, told a judge Wednesday old DNA samples from a rape kit did not match Duboise, clearing the way for his Thursday release.

Without a legal basis for keeping Duboise incarcerated, Judge Christopher Nash ordered he be set free and amended his life sentence to time already served. A Sept. 14 hearing has been set to overturn his conviction, the newspaper reports.

Duboise learned Wednesday that he would soon be set free, but he had doubts, he said.

”After all these years, you always have to wonder if they’re going to throw another curve in there somewhere,” he told reporters.

Recent tests of the DNA samples from the rape kit in the case did include DNA from two other men, including one who is now a person of interest in the 1983 slaying, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said.

Former inmate Robert Duboise, 56, meets reporters with his sister Harriet, left, and mother Myra, right, outside the Hardee County Correctional Institute.

AP

Former inmate Robert DuBoise, 56, stands outside the Hardee County Correctional Institute.

AP

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“I hope God has mercy on his soul,” Duboise said. “I’m not his judge.”