After spending 37 years behind bars, a man from Florida was cleared of rape and murder charges with the help of DNA evidence.
He was first convicted in a 1983 rape and murder charges.
DNA evidence proved that he did not commit the crimes.
Rober DuBoise was convicted at a trial that relied on testimony from an unreliable jailhouse informant and a faulty bite-mark analysis.
He was released from jail in August this year.
On Monday, a hearing before Hillsborough county judge Christopher Nash resulted in an order that cleared him away from the convictions and life sentence and removing DuBoise from the state sex offender registry.
During the remote hearing, Judge Christopher Nash said:
This court has failed you for 37 years. Today, it has finally succeeded.
55-year-old DuBoise was convicted in the 1983 murder of 19-year-old Barbara Grams.
Grams was raped and beaten to death as she was walking to her house from a job at a mall in Tampa.
DuBoise was sentenced to death and was then re-sentenced to life by the authorities.
At the hearing on Monday, expert testimony showed that the bite-mark evidence on the left cheek of the victim was unreliable.
Beeswax was used to look at the impression of DuBoise’s teeth, and DNA conclusively suggested that he was not the one that had attacked Grams.
The informant’s testimony has also been discredited.
The exoneration was a result of full cooperation between the Innocence Project and Prosecutors.
The Innocence Project works to free people that are wrongly convicted in cases.
Susan Friedman, the Innocence Project lawyer representing DuBoise, said that DuBoise had maintained his innocence.
As a result of the wrongful conviction, the state took 37 years away from the man.
DuBoise was just 18 when he was sentenced to death.
DuBoise was released from Jail on August 27, 2020, and was reunited with his mother and sister.