Florida man cleared after 37 years in jail for rape and murder as new DNA evidence comes to light

If he had been executed, his case would never had been re-investigated, and we would have unknowingly executed/murdered an innocent man.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/florida-man-cleared-37-years-103001821.html

Matt Mathers
,The Independent•August 27, 2020

A man who has spent 37 years in a Florida jail has been cleared after new DNA evidence found him not guilty of rape and murder, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren announced on Wednesday.

Mr Warren told a press conference that his conviction review unit has determined that Robert DuBoise, 55, did not commit the 1983 murder and rape of 19-year-old Barbara Grams, who was attacked while walking home from her restaurant job in Tampa.

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DuBoise’s exoneration came after Mr Warren’s office partnered with the New York-based Innocence Project, an organisation that works to free people that have been wrongly imprisoned, and which flagged up the case last September.

Experts working on DuBoise’s case unearthed new DNA evidence following an 11-month investigation. They uncovered a rape kit stored at the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office this year after all evidence was thought to have been destroyed.

Test results from that rape kit found that Mr Duboise and two other people implicated by a jailhouse informant were not involved. Mr Warren said that the DNA did match, two other people, including one of whom is now a person of interest in the investigation.

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The jury recommended that DuBoise be sent to death row. An appeals court later reduced the sentence to life imprisonment.