City of Tampa Agrees to Pay Exoneree Robert DuBoise $14 Million in Wrongful Conviction Settlement

Florida death-row exoneree Robert DuBoise (pic­tured) will receive $14 mil­lion from the city of Tampa as com­pen­sa­tion for the 37 years he was incar­cer­at­ed for a rape and mur­der he did not com­mit. On February 15, 2024, the Tampa City Council unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to approve the set­tle­ment. The set­tle­ment resolved a 2021 suit Mr. DuBoise filed against the City of Tampa, four Tampa police offi­cers, and the foren­sic odon­tol­o­gist who tes­ti­fied against him. The suit alleged that the offi­cers and odon­tol­o­gist con­spired to present fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence against Mr. DuBoise and that the offi­cers also con­spired with jail­house infor­mant Claude Butler to false­ly tes­ti­fy against Mr. DuBoise. 

Mr. DuBoise was exon­er­at­ed in 2020 after DNA test­ing point­ed to two oth­er per­pe­tra­tors. After the set­tle­ment was approved, Mr. DuBoise told CNN, ​“I spent 37 years impris­oned for a crime I was total­ly inno­cent. This is what hap­pens when the police focus on the wrong per­son, make up evi­dence to fit their the­o­ry and don’t inves­ti­gate to find the truth. Lives are ruined and com­mu­ni­ties are less safe.” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said, ​“The cred­i­bil­i­ty of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem requires scrupu­lous accu­ra­cy and adher­ence to the high­est inves­ti­ga­tion stan­dards. Today’s Tampa Police Department is light years ahead of where we were four decades ago in tech­nol­o­gy and train­ing. We hope this set­tle­ment helps Mr. DuBoise in his healing.” 

Other exonerees have also received sig­nif­i­cant set­tle­ments when offi­cial mis­con­duct con­tributed to their wrong­ful con­vic­tions, cre­at­ing a hid­den cat­e­go­ry of costs in the death penal­ty sys­tem. In May 2021, a fed­er­al jury in North Carolina award­ed intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row exonerees Henry McCollum and Leon Brown $75 mil­lion dol­lars for the wrong­ful impris­on­ment stem­ming from their con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in the 1983 rape and mur­der of an 11-year-old girl. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked the broth­ers to the mur­der, but they were con­vict­ed on the basis of false con­fes­sions extract­ed by coer­cive police inter­ro­ga­tions. In May 2020, the city of Cleveland agreed to pay $18 mil­lion dol­lars to set­tle a civ­il rights law­suit by three for­mer death-row pris­on­ers who, as a result of police mis­con­duct, spent more than a com­bined 80 years impris­oned for a mur­der they did not com­mit. In 2018, Gage County, Nebraska raised prop­er­ty tax­es to cov­er a civ­il judg­ment in the case of the ​“Beatrice Six,” who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed after being threat­ened with the death penal­ty. A jury award­ed the exonerees $28.1 mil­lion, which exceed­ed the small county’s entire annual budget.