Florida Exoneree Robert DuBoise Sues Tampa Police Alleging Fabricated Evidence Sent Him to Death Row

Death-row exoneree Robert DuBoise (pic­tured) is suing the City of Tampa, four Tampa police offi­cers, and the foren­sic odon­tol­o­gist who false­ly tes­ti­fied against him, alleg­ing that they fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence that led to his wrong­ful con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. DuBoise was exon­er­at­ed in August 2020 after a Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed his case and new DNA evi­dence exclud­ed him as the per­pe­tra­tor of the rape and mur­der for which he was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death 37 years ear­li­er. DuBoise’s con­vic­tion was based on junk-sci­ence bite-mark evi­dence and false tes­ti­mo­ny from a prison infor­mant. DuBoise’s attor­ney, Dan Marshall of the Human Rights Defense Center, said, ​“This case is a prime exam­ple of what can go wrong when the police do not use prop­er pro­ce­dures. An inno­cent man goes to jail for decades.” 

The law­suit alleges that four offi­cers who were involved in the orig­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­spired with Dr. Richard Souviron, the foren­sic odon­tol­o­gist, to present fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence at tri­al. The offi­cers reached out to Dr. Souviron for help in this case after hear­ing him speak at a meet­ing of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, where he said,“If you tell me that is the guy that did it, I will go into court and say that is the guy that did it.” The offi­cers used beeswax to take a mold of DuBoise’s teeth because, accord­ing to the law­suit, ​“anoth­er offi­cer in the Tampa Police Department oper­at­ed a hon­ey busi­ness on the side.” Beeswax was not an accept­ed method of iden­ti­fy­ing teeth marks. Dr. Souviron com­pared that mold to a wound on the vic­tim, ini­tial­ly say­ing that the per­son who left the bite mark would have a miss­ing front tooth or a gap between the upper front teeth. Despite DuBoise not hav­ing such a gap, Dr. Souviron then claimed DuBoise’s teeth were a match to the victim’s wound. When a dif­fer­ent den­tist lat­er exam­ined the victim’s wound, he con­clud­ed that it was not a bite mark at all.

The law­suit fur­ther alleges that the offi­cers con­spired with Claude Butler, the jail­house infor­mant who tes­ti­fied at DuBoise’s tri­al. According to the Florida Innocence Project, ​“Knowing that their phys­i­cal evi­dence was poor at best, the defen­dant offi­cers alleged­ly then con­spired to get two infor­mants, includ­ing one sus­pect fac­ing a long-term sen­tence for unre­lat­ed crimes, to turn state’s evi­dence.” Police alleged­ly met with Butler on sev­er­al occa­sions, help­ing him to fab­ri­cate a con­fes­sion from DuBoise.

DuBoise says he is not bring­ing the law­suit because he is bit­ter, but because ​“we are try­ing to move for­ward. Make sure it does not hap­pen to some­one else.” He wants ​“to help fix a bro­ken sys­tem.” DuBoise said that if he does not take a stand now and demand jus­tice then, ​“you’re going to have some­body else’s son get into death row for some­thing they didn’t do.” 

Florida law allows the state to pro­vide $50,000 com­pen­sa­tion for each year that some­one was wrong­ful­ly incar­cer­at­ed. DuBoise was incar­cer­at­ed for almost 37 years, which means he would be owed $1.85 mil­lion. For DuBoise to receive that mon­ey, the Florida state leg­is­la­ture must vote to approve the award. Representative Andrew Learned sub­mit­ted House Bill 6501 to the Florida State leg­is­la­ture for the 2022 ses­sion, call­ing for the $1.85 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion for DuBoise. ​“Taking a man’s lib­er­ty, almost his life, is an uncon­scionable error by our State. DNA evi­dence that was ini­tial­ly ignored fin­gered the real crim­i­nal so now Robert is free, but with­out any com­pen­sa­tion for what we took from him,” Rep. Learned said in a state­ment on Twitter. Marshall says they are fil­ing the law­suit because it ​“is impor­tant to put a more real­is­tic val­ue on some­body’s free­dom for 37 years, for miss­ing out on every impor­tant part of some­body’s life. He has­n’t been able to get mar­ried or have kids. He missed the death of his father.” 

Financial set­tle­ments and jury awards fol­low­ing wrong­ful con­vic­tions have become an under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed hid­den cost of the death penal­ty. Gage County, Nebraska, was forced to raise prop­er­ty tax­es and seek a state bailout after the ​“Beatrice Six” suc­cess­ful­ly sued the coun­ty for offi­cial mis­con­duct in the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions that led to their wrong­ful con­vic­tions. The $28.1 civ­il judg­ment against the coun­ty exceed­ed its entire annu­al bud­get. North Carolina death-row exonerees Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were award­ed $75 mil­lion by a fed­er­al jury in May 2021. The two men sought dam­ages from sev­er­al law enforce­ment depart­ments involved in the offi­cial mis­con­duct that result­ed in them being sen­tenced to death and spend­ing 31 years in prison. Exonerees in Cleveland and Philadelphia were also grant­ed mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar awards to com­pen­sate for mis­con­duct that con­tributed to wrongful convictions.

Florida has the high­est num­ber of death-row exon­er­a­tions with DuBoise being the 30^th death-row pris­on­er to be exon­er­at­ed in Florida since 1973. The state has exe­cut­ed 99 pris­on­ers dur­ing that peri­od, or one exon­er­a­tion for every 3.3 exe­cu­tions. DuBoise is the 172^nd doc­u­ment­ed death-row exon­er­a­tion in the U.S. since 1973. Prior to DuBoise, Florida’s last death-row exon­er­a­tion was in the case of Clifford Williams, Jr., who was freed in March 2019 after serv­ing 42 years for a mur­der he did not com­mit. In June 2020, Florida autho­rized $2.15 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to Williams for his wrongful conviction.