Last year, Robert DuBoise was exonerated after spending nearly 37 years in prison for the rape and murder of a woman in Florida — a crime he didn’t commit.
Robert lost decades of his life due to a wrongful conviction based on the pseudoscience of bite mark comparison and an unreliable jailhouse informant’s testimony. But Florida’s exoneree compensation law has unfair barriers that exclude him and other innocent people from getting the justice they deserve.
That’s right — because of past unrelated, minor offenses, Robert is ineligible for compensation after spending nearly four decades in prison, including three years on death row, for something he didn’t do. Florida state lawmakers can fix the exoneree compensation law this year by passing House Bill 589.
Robert DuBoise attending one of the Buccaneers games (Image: Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
Florida’s law is the only one in the country that bars exonerees with unrelated convictions from being compensated for the years they lost to wrongful imprisonment. It needs to be fixed so that people like Robert, who have been robbed of their freedoms and a chance to build a career and family, are included.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
