Legislation authorizing the state to pay $1.85 million to Robert DuBoise, who spent 37 years in prison, including three years on death row, for a sexual attack and murder he didn’t commit, has won Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature.
According to a report on the case conducted for the Florida Legislature, Duboise’ conviction was based on unreliable testimony by a jailhouse snitch and the now-discredited field of bite-mark evidence. DNA testing of evidence thought lost has ruled him out as the killer of a woman in Tampa on Aug. 18, 1983.
“I never lost faith that today would come. Now the world knows DNA proves I did not commit this crime,” Duboise told the Innocence Project, which worked his case, upon his release in 2020.
“To walk out of this nightmare and hug my mother and sister after almost four decades, knowing I was innocent, is bittersweet. I can never regain the birthdays, holidays, and precious time I lost with them, never mind the life I could have made for myself. I am grateful to be here now with a chance to move forward, but I know there are more innocent people like me still behind bars,” he added.
DeSantis also signed legislation authorizing nearly $1 million in compensation for a South Florida man imprisoned for 16 years for an armed robbery he did not commit, one in an array of “claims bills” approved during this year’s legislative session.
Leonard Cure stands to collect $817,000 in cash plus 120 hours in free tuition at a Florida college, university, or career center. In-state tuition at the University of Florida next year would cost $6,380, or around $23,000 counting books, living expenses, and fees.
He was convicted for robbing a Dania Beach Walgreens of $1,700 at gunpoint on Nov. 10, 2003, and sentenced to life in prison. This notwithstanding evidence he was at work at the time; the Broward County Conviction Review Unit subsequently discovered an ATM receipt placing Cure more than 3 miles away that morning.
He’d started serving his sentence in 2005 and was released in 2020.
Claims bills
The state government enjoys immunity from lawsuits, so the Legislature needs to pass “claims bills” like these to authorize compensation to people who’ve been harmed by state and local officials. Other than the DuBoise and Cure settlements signed on June 9, DeSantis signed additional bills to:
- Pay $5.95 million to the estate of Molly Parker, injured on Dec. 12, 2019, when a Florida Department of Transportation truck laden with dirt fill and weighing 40,000 pounds failed to stop at an intersection in her path. She suffered massive trauma, including head, spinal cord, and organ injuries and died 10 days later.
- Pay $2.8 million to Maria Garcia, run over by a Pinellas County School District bus as she crossed a street with the light on Feb. 13, 2029, sustaining multiple bone fractures, organ damage including a lacerated spleen and two collapsed lungs, a degloving injury to one of her legs that required skin grafting. The school board has already paid her $200,000.
- Pay $1.25 million to the survivors of Jason Sanchez, killed when a Miami-Dade County bus drove into his path and he ran into it on May 13, 2019.
- Pay $1.2 million to the survivors of Hilda Medrano, killed on Dec. 1, 2013, when an Okeechobee County sheriff’s cruiser responding to a call at an estimated 90 miles per hour without emergency lights or siren plowed into a car she in which she was a passenger. Also killed was the car’s driver; a back-seat passenger was severely injured.
- Pay $5.95 million to Kristin Stewart, then an elementary school teacher who suffered major orthopedic and organ injuries when a Sarasota County-owned truck, while executing an illegal U-turn, struck and dragged her while she was out jogging on May 13, 2020.
- Pay $795,000 for the care of Jamiyah Mitchell on behalf of the South Broward Hospital District, arising from a medical malpractice claim arising from her birth on Oct. 8, 2008, which resulted in hypoxia and brain damage.
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix