Robert DuBoise and Tina Jimerson Exonerated Decades After Wrongful Capital Prosecutions in Florida, Arkansas

A Florida man and an Arkansas woman, con­vict­ed of mur­der in sep­a­rate cas­es involv­ing junk sci­ence and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, have been exon­er­at­ed, decades after being wrong­ful­ly capitally prosecuted.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Christopher Nash dis­missed all charges against for­mer Florida death-row pris­on­er Robert DuBoise on September 14, 2020, grant­i­ng a motion filed by the office of State Attorney Andrew Warren. The motion was the cul­mi­na­tion of an inves­ti­ga­tion by Warren’s Conviction Integrity Unit, the Innocence Project, and the Innocence Project of Florida, which found that DuBoise’s con­vic­tion had been the prod­uct of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid bite-mark tes­ti­mo­ny, false tes­ti­mo­ny by a prison infor­mant, and the prosecution’s fail­ure to dis­close favor­able treat­ment the infor­mant had received for his tes­ti­mo­ny. DuBoise had been con­vict­ed in 1983 and sen­tenced to death after his tri­al judge over­rode the jury’s unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tion for a life sen­tence. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that the tri­al court had improp­er­ly dis­re­gard­ed the jury’s sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion, and resen­tenced DuBoise to life in prison. 

Several days ear­li­er, on September 10, a Dallas County, Arkansas judge grant­ed a motion filed by the 13^th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney seek­ing dis­missal of all charges against Tina Jimerson (pic­tured with mem­bers of her defense team from the Center on Wrongful Convictions). Her exon­er­a­tion fol­lowed a unan­i­mous fed­er­al appeals court rul­ing in April 2020 find­ing that her tri­al pros­e­cu­tor — now a jus­tice of the Arkansas Supreme Court — had know­ing­ly with­held and destroyed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in her case.

DuBoise’s Wrongful Conviction and Death Sentence

DuBoise was wrong­ful­ly incar­cer­at­ed for 37 years. He was released August 27, 2020, one day after Hillsborough pros­e­cu­tors and the inno­cence lawyers pre­sent­ed Circuit Judge Christopher Nash with evi­dence that not only had the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty repu­di­at­ed the type of bite-mark iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tes­ti­mo­ny offered in his case, but a review of the autop­sy pho­tographs had shown that there had been no bite mark in the first place. The par­ties also pre­sent­ed the court with DNA evi­dence from an untest­ed rape kit that exclud­ed DuBoise and impli­cat­ed two oth­er men. At that time, Judge Nash reduced DuBoise’s sen­tence to time served and sched­uled a September 14 hear­ing date for the dis­po­si­tion of the charges against him.

In dis­miss­ing the charges, Judge Nash told DuBoise, ​“This court has failed you for 37 years. … I think it would be rea­son­able for you to feel a lot of resent­ment and bit­ter­ness about those 37 years. But you instead seem to have an uncom­mon capac­i­ty for grace and for­give­ness. … I wish you hap­pi­ness going forward.”

DuBoise became the 30^th for­mer death-row pris­on­er exon­er­at­ed in Florida since 1973, and the 172^nd death-row exoneree nation­wide in that peri­od. He is the fifth for­mer death-row pris­on­er exon­er­at­ed in 2020. Data is avail­able on the jury vote in 24 of Florida’s death-row exon­er­a­tions. DuBoise case is the 22^nd in which jurors did not unan­i­mous­ly vote for death.

Jimerson’s Wrongful Capital Prosecutions

Jimerson, along with co-defen­dants John Brown, Jr., and Reginald Early were cap­i­tal­ly tried for the 1988 mur­der of Myrtle Holmes by then-deputy Prosecuting Attorney Robin Wynne. Wynne, who became a jus­tice on the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2015, also charged the men with rape. A fourth sus­pect, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly impaired man named Charlie Vaughn, con­fessed and plead­ed guilty to first-degree mur­der to avoid the threat of a death sentence.

No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Brown, Vaughn, or Jimerson to the crime. Vaughn impli­cat­ed Early and Brown as his accom­plices in rap­ing and mur­der­ing the vic­tim and impli­cat­ed Jimerson as the get­away dri­ver. Six mem­bers of the jury vot­ed to acquit after DNA evi­dence con­tra­dict­ed Vaughn’s false con­fes­sion and exclud­ed him and Brown from the rape. On retri­al, Wynne dropped the rape charges and repros­e­cut­ed the cap­i­tal mur­der charges, and Jimerson and her co-defen­dants were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to life.

In 2014, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (CWC) dis­cov­ered that the Dallas County sher­iff had inten­tion­al­ly plant­ed an infor­mant in the same jail cell as Vaughn and that the infor­mant had secret­ly record­ed state­ments from Vaughn. CWC inves­ti­ga­tors were able to iden­ti­fy and con­tact the infor­mant, who con­firmed that he had told Vaughn he would face exe­cu­tion if he didn’t impli­cate the oth­er defen­dants. Wynne false­ly respond­ed to a pre-tri­al dis­cov­ery request by stat­ing he had ​“no knowl­edge of any infor­mant who led to or assist­ed in mak­ing the arrest in this mat­ter,” and police omit­ted any ref­er­ence to the infor­mant from their records of the case. Wynne sub­se­quent­ly had the tapes destroyed.

In September 2018, an Arkansas fed­er­al dis­trict court grant­ed Jimerson a new tri­al, find­ing that Wynne had with­held and destroyed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence. On April 29, 2020, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the dis­trict court’s deci­sion based on what it called Wynne’s ​“bad faith” mis­con­duct. The appeals court wrote that Wynne and law enforce­ment had ​“worked togeth­er to inten­tion­al­ly con­ceal [the recording’s] exis­tence from the defense,” ​“effec­tive­ly con­cealed the fact that a record­ed con­ver­sa­tion took place,” and destroyed the record­ing. It also wrote that Wynne pro­vid­ed ​“untruth­ful answers” to the defen­dants’ requests seek­ing dis­clo­sure of all record­ings, active­ly pre­vent­ing the defen­dants from learn­ing about it. 

In an emailed state­ment fol­low­ing the exon­er­a­tion, the Center for Wrongful Convictions said ​“Tina was sen­tenced to life for a 1988 rob­bery and mur­der that she did not com­mit, hav­ing become a sus­pect after report­ing her own rape by a white man to the police. She ulti­mate­ly was impli­cat­ed by a men­tal­ly chal­lenged man who was coerced to make incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments by a jail­house infor­mant.” Jimerson spent 32 years wrong­ful­ly impris­oned pri­or to her release.