Wrongfully Convicted Man Sues Police After Spending 37 Years Behind Bars - Reports

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th October, 2021) A man who spent 37 years in a US prison for rape and murder he did not commit is suing police officials and a forensic dentist involved in his wrongful conviction, the Tampa Bay Times newspaper reports.

Robert DuBoise, 56, spent three years on death row in the 1980s. His sentence was then reduced to life in prison, but after newly tested DNA evidence proved last year that he did not commit the 1983 murder of Barbara Grams, DuBoise was freed from prison in August 2020.

According to The Tampa Bay Times, a lawsuit filed this week in Federal court accuses three former detectives, a former police sergeant and a forensic dentist of fabricating bitemark evidence that falsely implicated DuBoise in the murder of Grams.

The body of Barbara Grams was found on August 19, 1983, in a yard outside a dental office in Tampa.

The 19-year-old had been raped and beaten and investigators said they found a bite mark on her cheek. Police used beeswax for a bitemark comparison, a dubious method that led to investigators claiming that DuBoise's teeth matched the mark, The Tampa Bay Times said.

Untested DNA samples from a rape kit in the Grams murder case were located in 2020, and the newly tested DNA did not match DuBoise, although it did match "a person of interest" whose identify has not been publicly disclosed, the newspaper said on Saturday.

DuBoise could get $1.85 million for the years he spent wrongfully incarcerated if two bills related to his compensation are passed in the Florida legislature.