After serving 37 years in Florida State Prison for murder and rape, a Tampa man has been cleared of the crimes by recently discovered DNA evidence, says the Innocence Project and the Hillsborough State Attorney’s office.
Today, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren filed a motion to free Robert Dubois, who he says was wrongfully convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Barbara Grams, who was found beaten to death behind a dental practice in 1983.
“Wrongful convictions erode the foundation of our justice system. For 37 years, we’ve had an innocent man locked up in prison—while the real perpetrator was never held accountable for this heinous crime,” State Attorney Warren said in a statement. “The family of the victim, Barbara Grams, deserves to have the truth, and this new evidence helps reveal that truth to all of us.”
Today's announcement comes after an 11-month investigation from the Innocence Project and the Conviction Review Unit of the State Attorney’s Office, found previously “lost” DNA evidence that determined Dubois was in fact not a forensic match with evidence collected from the 1983 murder investigation.
At the time, saliva and hair samples from the crime scene were deemed inclusive, but Dubois was still found guilty by a jury based on reconstructed bite marks that the prosecution said matched his teeth, as well as testimony from a state inmate.
“Forensic DNA testing was not advanced enough in 1983 for use in prosecution, so rape kit samples recovered from the victim were collected and stored away. Evidence stored from DuBoise’s trial was presumed to have been destroyed in 1990, making new DNA testing seemingly impossible,” says the Hillsborough State Attorney’s office. “However, in August 2020, in the course of her thorough review of the case, CRU Supervising Attorney Teresa Hall was able to locate rape kit samples that were not used during the trial, still intact, at the Hillsborough Medical Examiner’s Office. The samples were retrieved, and the CRU and Innocence Project promptly sent them for DNA testing.”
According to the new samples, DuBoise's DNA was not present, and pointed to the identities of two other men—one “classified as a ‘major contributor,’ who is now a person of interest, and one classified as a ‘minor contributor.’”
The State Attorney’s Office did not release their names, stating that is a new and ongoing investigation, and the persons of interest do not pose a threat to the community.
“Robert has spent more than 36 years in prison because of discredited bite mark evidence and the testimony of an unreliable jailhouse informant. The presence of DNA from two other people is indisputable scientific proof that he is innocent. Robert has spent decades determined to show that he was wrongfully convicted, and we are eager to see him fully exonerated. We are thankful that the CRU joined us in this effort to seek justice for Robert, the victim, and their families,” said Innocence Project attorney Susan Friedman, who represents DuBoise.
Friedman’s work also uncovered evidence that the injury on the victim was not a bite mark, and significant inconsistencies in the jailhouse informant’s testimony.
The Innocence Project is now working to get DuBoise released from the Hardee Correctional Institution as soon as possible. Tomorrow, Judge Christopher Nash will hear the motion promptly at 8:30 a.m., and if the motion is approved, DuBoise could be released later that day, says Hillsborough State Attorney’s office.
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This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2020.