GIST: "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."
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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