Robert DuBoise, sentenced over a 1983 rape and murder he did not commit, says he hopes others in his position now ‘get justice’

Robert DuBoise, sentenced over a 1983 rape and murder he did not commit, says he hopes others in his position now ‘get justice’

A Tampa, Florida, man who has been authorized to receive $14m for spending nearly four decades in prison over a rape and murder which he did not commit says he hopes his case makes it easier for the unjustly convicted to achieve justice before it’s too late for them.

“I’m just grateful,” Robert DuBoise told the New York Times of the compensation that Tampa’s city council voted to pay him to settle a lawsuit over his wrongful conviction. He said he hoped others in his position now “get justice and can move on without having to spend the rest of their life fighting the system that has already wronged them”.

DuBoise was 18 at the time that 19-year-old Barbara Grams was raped and beaten to death as she walked home from her Tampa restaurant job in August 1983. A medical examiner determined that someone had bitten Grams on one of her cheeks, prompting investigators to take bite samples from multiple men, including DuBoise.

  • loobkoob@kbin.social
    741·
    10 months ago

    $14m seems far too low:

    • 40 years at $350,000 per year
    • 480 months at $29,170 per month
    • 14,600 days at $960 per day

    Those don’t sound too bad until you get to:

    • 350,400 hours at $40 per hour.

    $40 an hour in exchange for losing most of your life - and the vast majority of your best years - is a fucking disgrace.