TAMPA, Fla. — Sept. 14 marks four years since Robert Duboise was released from prison.
The Hillsborough County man, wrongly accused in the 1980s, spent 37 years behind bars for a rape and murder he did not commit.
This year, Duboise received a total of $19 million from the city of Tampa and the state of Florida as compensation for the time he spent wrongly incarcerated.
On Friday, DuBoise shared his story with some of the city's top influencers at the Café con Tampa event in downtown Tampa, talking about the importance of the dedicated unit that helped exonerate him.
“I just put it in God's hands and kept going,” said DuBoise, sharing his story and answering questions about how he spent nearly four decades behind bars — and how he spent nearly every waking minute working toward his release.
“I wrote up to 28-page letters every day and sent something in the mail. So, that's what I was focused on,” he said.
This year, DuBoise collected $17 million from the city of Tampa and $2 million from the state as compensation for the better part of his adult life spent behind bars.
Despite that, he says he isn’t angry and still lives modestly, working as an air conditioning tech.
DuBoise told listeners he’d spent some of the money on a new house for his sister and her kids. And also spends part of his time helping others who claim they too have been falsely convicted.
“So, if I can get them connected with the right people who can at least look at it and give them some help, and guidance through this process then that's what I'm trying to do,” DuBoise said.
Duboise’s exoneration was made possible with help from Hillsborough's Conviction Review Unit.
The state attorney who helped launch the program, Andrew Warren, also spoke at Friday’s event.
“The system is imperfect,” Warren said. “That's why we have to go above to do our jobs, that we're always achieving justice.”
Warren was also asked about the status of the Conviction Review Unit since his suspension by Gov. Ron DeSantis two years ago.
At the time, the program had a prosecutor assigned full-time to review such cases.
“Look, you'll have to ask the state attorney’s office what they're not doing with conviction integrity,” Warren said. “But this is what leadership looks like. Exonerating the innocent.”
A spokesperson for the state attorney's office said that since Suzy Lopez was assigned to the office, the full-time prosecutor who had been working in the unit left the office for another job earlier this year and that they are interviewing for a replacement.
In the meantime, they say the chief attorney has been handling cases submitted for review, and three people, they said, have been released from prison after petitioning the unit during Lopez's tenure.
Ultimately, DNA processes, unavailable at the time of DuBoise’s conviction, provided evidence that exonerated DuBoise and led to the identities and prosecutions of two other men.