Robert DuBoise, the Tampa man who spent 37 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, took part in a Reddit Ask Me Anything on May 30, answering dozens of user-submitted questions. They ranged from the anger he feels over his wrongful conviction to other possibly-innocent men he met behind bars to his first meal after prison.
Tampa Bay Times reporters Dan Sullivan and Christopher Spata, who wrote The Marked Man, a four-part series detailing DuBoise’s conviction and exoneration — and the story of the men now said to have committed the murder — also took part in the online conversation.
We’ve collected some of the top questions submitted by Reddit users, edited for length and clarity.
How on earth do you get over the anger of it all? I’m angry for you.
ROBERT DUBOISE: There’s a lot of people angry for me because I won’t be. I don’t let anger control my life or my mind like that. I chose not to be bitter. I don’t want to hate anybody, and I don’t. So instead I choose to have compassion. When I was locked up I was dumbfounded. How’d this happen to me? How am I sitting in a death row cell? It was like I was in a bad dream I couldn’t wake up from. I was in defense mode, trying to think of any way I could to prove my innocence. But I wasn’t angry. I’ve seen what hatred does to people in prison.
In 37 years, you must have gotten to know a lot of other prisoners. Are there any people still behind bars who you’re confident are just as innocent of their crimes as you were?
ROBERT DUBOISE: Yes. There’s one guy that comes to mind immediately and that’s John Merritt. He was on death row with me, and his sentence was commuted and he’s now in general population. He says he’s got the paperwork that shows someone else did it, but he can’t seem to get a foothold anywhere to get help. I’ve talked to him many times over the years, and all John does to this day is the same thing I was doing for years: sits there and writes letters to people, goes to the law library and researches.
You’d be surprised how many guys go to prison for 18 months for small crimes and end up having to stab someone to defend themselves in prison, and now 30 years later they’re still in prison. I knew a guy named Frank who was at Florida State Prison for an 18-month sentence ... but a group of guys tried to rape him and he stabbed one of them, and 30 years later, because of that charge, he’s still in prison. And he was only 18 at the time that happened.
CHRISTOPHER SPATA: There aren’t any great estimates on how many innocent people are in prison, but the University of Michigan maintains the National Registry of Exonerations. They have logged more than 3,500 exonerations in their database since 1989. Most were wrongful convictions for murder. We also included this quote from the former state attorney for Hillsborough County, Andrew Warren, in our series about Robert: Imagine that of the 15,000 felony prosecutions his office handled each year, they got 99.9% right. “That means in 15 cases a year, people are wrongfully convicted.” He was talking about just the prosecutor’s office in Hillsborough County, Florida.
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Explore all your optionsDid you manage to stay hopeful that you’d be exonerated that whole time? What was it like to live with the potential that you weren’t going to be freed?
ROBERT DUBOISE: I did keep my faith that I was going to be proven innocent . At some point, especially after the third parole hearing that was denied, I had to think to myself even if I die here, I just want the truth to come out at some point for my family.
How much money you getting for the false imprisonment?
ROBERT DUBOISE: I’m not getting $14 million. I’m only going to get roughly half of that after legal costs and attorneys and everything. Money doesn’t restore anything.
CHRISTOPHER SPATA: Robert sued the City of Tampa, the Tampa Police Department, the expert dentist and the detectives who worked on the case. The case settled a few months ago with the defendants admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to pay Robert $14 million. Then the state required him to pay back the $1.85 million in compensation he previously got due to his wrongful conviction.
Besides the first day in prison, what was the hardest day mentally for you?
ROBERT DUBOISE: Every time they had an execution, it was difficult for me to accept it. Seeing the hearse drive out of the prison with another person I knew. Or later when I was in population, seeing someone who I had just seen that morning being carried out on a stretcher only to be put in a coroner’s van because he had been murdered. It happened quite often back then. The biggest struggle for me was dealing with what I was seeing, the unnecessary violence and death. And usually every time a guy got killed, it was over something so stupid. Like someone thought they looked in their cell. Or someone grabbed a bar of state soap, which was free, but another guy thought it was his.
As you’re adapting to the prison life, you have to understand, you have to have respect. You have to give respect, and you have to get it. But some of these guys take respect in the wrong way. They think that if someone accidentally bumps into them, that they have to regain respect in the prison’s eyes.
What was the first thing you wanted to eat or do for fun once you got out?
ROBERT DUBOISE: I focused so many years on proving my innocence that I never thought about it. My dream had always been to have a wife and kids, but when I got older, I recalculated.
My family and friends don’t get it. They say you have to do something for fun. I had to live in a serious environment for all those years. I never thought about fun, it was basically survival.
Is there a particular technological change that has positively or negatively impacted your life now that you’re free?
ROBERT DUBOISE: The phone. Before I went in, if you wanted to go somewhere you used paper maps. No Google Maps or a cell phone. Not to mention things you can look up on the internet now that you would have had to drive, who knows how many miles to find. A part, a piece of furniture — you can browse without going anywhere.
I stayed up all night with the phone the first few nights. At first I couldn’t answer it when my lawyer Susan called me. I was tapping it because I didn’t know how to slide it. It was overwhelming at first. I’d seen cell phones in prison, that people would get once in a while, but I would never use them.
Have you encountered people who treat you badly for having spent time in prison, in spite of being exonerated?
ROBERT DUBOISE: Not badly, but I’ve had a lot of issues with having no history. It’s been hard for me to get insurance. Even the light company, TECO, was going to charge me a $715 deposit to turn my lights on because I had no history. I imagine there’s some people who have to be a little hesitant, but nobody has treated me differently.
How do you feel about the dentist who claimed your teeth marks matched?
ROBERT DUBOISE: If anything, I feel pity for him — and the ex-district attorney Mark Ober and the detectives — because they became so desensitized to humanity and so focused on convictions that they can’t admit any remorse for what they’ve done.
CHRISTOPHER SPATA: Me and Dan Sullivan from the Times interviewed Dr. Souviron, and he told us that he does feel “terrible” about what happened, and he fully admits that he was wrong for testifying so definitively that Robert was a “match.” Today he would only say that he “could not exclude” Robert. An excerpt:
“Today, I would never say what I said 37 years ago,” Richard Souviron, the dentist who’d matched DuBoise’s teeth, told the Times after DuBoise’s exoneration. Though he still wouldn’t rule DuBoise out, “There could have been a million other people whose teeth fit.” The science had been new at the time, he said, and he was wrong to make a definitive judgment. ... It was painful, he said, to know he helped send an innocent man to prison.
What was your first meal outside of prison? And how was it?
ROBERT DUBOISE: The first meal was a wedge salad and fried okra at Ulele, which I can’t really say if I enjoyed it or not. I don’t think I was even thinking about it. I think I was just sitting there with my attorneys and my family. One of the first things I did was rewire my aunt’s house. She likes to watch her TV shows. The house is 105 years old. Every time someone turned on a light everything went black.
From your perspective, how has the system changed since you were wrongfully convicted, and how has it remained the same? Additionally, do you believe systemic poverty played a role in your conviction? If so, how?
ROBERT DUBOISE: The system has changed obviously just because of technology. You have cameras everywhere, you have cell phones that can identify your location. How is it still messed up? You still have rogue people in office who have no desire to admit that their system did something wrong. Which makes it more difficult for people to prove their innocence. I think my long hair and being poor played a definite role to this cop’s so-called hunch.
DAN SULLIVAN: One big thing that is different now is the use of DNA in criminal cases. DNA testing is a staple of modern criminal investigations. Police also routinely use things like cell phone signal analysis and video surveillance in investigating crimes. These things didn’t become a routine part of criminal investigations until years after Robert’s conviction. In the 1980s, investigations were often based more on conversations with people and what detectives could gather from talking to those who knew or had encountered the victim. From a legal perspective, much has changed. Evolving case law and changing court procedures have made it more difficult for people to be sentenced to death. At the same time, Florida no longer allows parole and the state limits things like gain time and early release. This means people spend more time in prison than they once did.
Related: Robert DuBoise went to prison for murder. DNA told a different story, about serial killers.
So, what are you planning to do with your time now? Did you have a hobby that you wanted to try on the outside?
ROBERT DUBOISE: I pretty much do it. Work. Work, and help my family and friends as much as I can. What makes me function is helping the people in my life and doing what I can to feed the homeless or help someone that can’t afford a repairman. Everybody’s trying to get me to play golf. That’s just not me. I have too many other things I could be doing.
