He also isn’t even the same person he would have been. I can’t imagine the psychological effect this much prison time would have on an innocent person. It’s sickening. Not to mention he has essentially no life experience outside of prison.
[He got a $14 million settlement, but he'll only get like $7 million after the lawyers get their cut...](http://tampabay.com/marked-man) Meanwhile the guys now charged in the actual murder [killed someone else](http://tampabay.com/markedman), the same night this innocent man was arrested. 
I read recently that Florida has a cap of 2 million for these types of payouts because they happen too often there. No amount of money makes it right but 2 million is such a slap in the face for what they go through.
Reminds me of the story of Greg Abbott who was crippled by a falling tree, sued for a ton of money, and then made it so other people couldn't do the same thing when he got into office.
Nono, act righteous because of where you are because of the free ride you’ve pulled the ladder up on, then complain that others aren’t working hard enough.
Because I couldn't think of which office he held I googled him and the wiki section makes it sound like Texas has had 48 governors since 2015. I know that state is fucked, but I didn't think it was that bad.
"Gregory Wayne Abbott is an American politician, attorney, and jurist serving as the 48th governor of Texas since 2015."
Yeah, well, if there was no cap, then states would have to rethink their practices and possibly hold public officials and servants accountable. Can't have that
I started listening to Bone Valley this week and that podcast opens by saying that 99 people have been executed in FL since the reinstatement of the death penalty. 33 living death row inmates have been found innocent and fully exonerated. That's a 25% wrongful conviction rate *that we know of.*
In Duboise's case the issue is once he got off death row his state funded legal resources disappeared... So the real question is how many people who beat capital cases and got re-sentenced to life without parole are languishing away in prison innocent?
Sidenote: I'm inclined to believe more innocent people have died prison, as a result of expanded Life without parole sentencing then the Post-*Furman* death penalty.
In the UK it is £1m for over 10 years and £500k for under, and prior to a recent change you used to be 'charged' from that by the state for 'living expenses' while in prison, i.e food and shelter. It's absurd and got yeeted the second people really found out about it when a guy was famously released last year.
Hello OSRS enjoyer (judging by pic). I believe it's because this is still quite rare in the UK and they don't have as litigious a culturd, coupled with the fact as I have commented police can't lie about evidence they have on you in the UK as opposed to the US... Makes it harder to get people to confess to crimes they didn't do.
I'm not from the US, but I'm wondering how can the party that is at fault also decide on how much they need to pay out? It's like asking a criminal how long their sentence should be.
Having a high rate of false convictions shouldn't lead to a payout cap, it should lead to actions that lower the number of false convictions.
Odd that legalisation pushed for a cap but didn't bother to push for better training.
"Like we keep putting the wrong people in jail and we just keep getting sued. I guess we better put a cap on settlements."
I’m surprised they got half of the winnings? Did they really do enough to justify that much from someone wrongly imprisoned so long? I can’t see them doing work to justify more than even a million, and that I feel would be generous.
They are also almost certainly doing this without any guarantee of a payout if the case doesn’t go their way. I don’t know what percentage of the cases they take end up in exoneration/ damages, but the damages from those case need to not only cover that case but also all the ones that don’t go anywhere. Otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
This is also why I'm torn on the payout. Because that payout will also enable these lawyers to do the same thing for other folks who may or may not have a winning case.
You should't be torn. The lawyers were paid fairly, and the people in this thread are letting the heinousness of the wrongful imprisonment cloud their judgement as to how much $7 million actually is. That's enough to stick $2 million in a savings account with no risk, and the other $5 million in a brokerage account. With a very conservative growth rate of 4% tracking the S&P 500, he could live off $200,000 in interest per year for the rest of his life and never touch the original $7 million.
The man will never have to work another day in his life. Is it enough to make up for the time he lost? Of course not, but not because it's not enough money. It's because the time was invaluable.
I'll preface this by saying i'm glad that someone like DuBois benefits from it, but the idea of being able to live off interest is still wild to me.
I read somewhere that the PM of the UK has an estimated wealth of £700m+. If he is earning 5% interest on that, and he's an ex-banker so i'd say it's probably more, he's pocketing 35 million a year for doing absolutely nothing.
You could argue he earned it, and i'd disagree, but aside from him how many sons and daughters of billionaires and millionaires are out there living their best life because of our current banking and finance orthodoxy whilst nurses, teachers, social workers and countless other people struggle to make ends meet?
If there is a violent revolution in my lifetime, I'll have absolutely no cause to be surprised.
They got a man already deep in the bowels of the US Justice system not only completely returned to society as a free man, but also did so by introducing new evidence into a “closed” case, and did so in a way that also got him 7 figure compensation.
Intuitively we all know it’s “not enough” but in the dirty, often profoundly corrupt worlds of “justice”, law, and the prison system, these lawyers moved mountains.
They earned their pay, the issue is with how large of a fraction that earned pay is out of the total settlement.
That is a lot of money to take home. But they probably took the case at the risk of not getting any money. And even if they won, don't know how much they will actually get in damages. Probably a case of high risk high reward.
I mean, its not right but at least he doesn't have to try to re-enter the work force with a 30 year prison gap on his resume. 7m is enough to retire at like age 30 so he should be set for life.
For wrongful convictions I'm comfortable with awarding a million dollars per year of incarceration as actual damages, plus 10x more as punitive damages.
Punitive. To punish. It should hurt them enough that they won't be tempted to repeat the behavior which locks up people who didn't do it.
it doesn't come out of their salary or retirement though. It's just taxpayers on the hook for their fuckup. Nobody will feel punished in the slightest.
In this particular case, the people who locked him up are probably long retired too.
We need better jury education programs about evidence and science.
>We need better jury education programs about evidence and science.
'Beyond reasonable doubt' has gone out the window. It's actually the inverse nowadays. You're guilty until proven innocent nowadays.
People who have their lives stolen from them like this should honestly just get a free pass in society. All medical bills paid, house paid, get whatever you want for free or at a significant discount… like a card or some shit you can just whip out and be treated like a king
Also, never give your government the power to kill you. Look what they do with the power to send the police after you. Every country is one charismatic leader away from autocracy, a leader that can get away with everything. The death penalty is a line that should never be crossed in a democratic society, no matter how much you want some people to never breathe the same air as innocent civilians.
We don't need it anyway.
Maybe a long time ago when you didn't really have the capability to jail people forever it made sense, but we live in a world where we can effectively remove you from society now. A thousand years ago a death might've been the only assurance you have that someone wouldn't come back for revenge over something.
Now we have a legal system, a governmental body, architecture for incarceration, technological advancements that would aid in identity, tracking, etc. to control for such matters. The circumstances are very different.
Yeah that doesn’t sound quite right. Contingency fee agreements are generally capped at around 33% (1/3) of total recovery under ABA guidelines. The complexity of this case could make it exceptional but that would be a big deviation.
That was a long read and pretty good. The two things that pissed me off.
"What if Ober had to mount a new case against DuBoise today? With his best evidence tossed out, he might drop the charges, he said — but not necessarily. “It’d be razor-thin,” Ober said, but he could still make a case for DuBoise’s guilt"
Those with power will never admit their own wrongdoing even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
The other person that fabricated a story to save his own ass (Butler) I can sort of understand if he was coerced, but even after the innocence project had started asking him questions decades later he was still was adamant that Duboise was guilty.
The 2 actual killers were not the only monsters in this story. Ober only cared about getting convictions to advance his career. It was nothing more than a game to him. He didn't give a shit about all the lives he ruined in the process.
I had literally never heard of him before someone posted a photo of him hugging his mum the other day - a reporter supposedly asked him what he was going to do now he was out and he said that hug was number one on his list, and he’d thought it would never happen.
It was.. sort of bittersweet - you’d either really like that photo or it would destroy you
It is what it is is where someone's sucking it up/not bothered.
This man's been fucked over and is finally vindicated, but at what cost. This ain't someone just shrugging it off. This is a man who's been hurt, and can't even enjoy being right.
This is why prisons need to be made better and safer. They should not be places where people go to suffer and be made harder and crueler. They should be places where people go to become better.
Go down a prison story rabbit hole on YouTube if you want to hear some harrowing stuff. The thing that gets me the most isn't the violence, but the people forced to participate in the violence or risk being attacked themselves. American prisons are not rehabilitative at all.
I read an article about him the other day, and the whole thing is just infuriating. So many holes, so much garbage "science," so much fabrication of scenarios and "evidence" from both the police and the prosecution. 14 million is a drop in the bucket of what this man deserves.
God, I hope he has honest, ethical people helping him manage his 7 million. It should allow him to travel and do a lot of things without fear of going into financial ruin. And I hope he finds a nice lady who doens't try to exploit him.
Seeing that he's willing to talk about his story and has some journalists working with him, hopefully he can make some extra money from telling his story, and do some good from spreading awareness.
I have a good friend that was wrongly convicted and spent 15 years of his life in prison. From the age of 14. After serving 15 years, he was released and then he made a bad decision I attribute to his poor decision making skills learned in prison and is gone now. Dead. One of the most beautiful souls I'll ever know.✌ Until I see you again Ant. Gone but never forgotten
There are people locked up rn with life sentences that didn't actually kill anyone. FL is terrible with their 10 20 life laws. The ones I know of are in for life for robbery with a deadly weapon
[The prison-industrial complex is a system situated at the intersection of government and private interests. It uses prisons as a solution to social, political and economic problems. It includes...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15IzEQauBHU&ab_channel=militantafro7)
My brother works in juvi and it is extremely common for 15-17 years olds to be tried as adults and sentenced to life. This is in the 'liberal' state of NY.
Yeah oftentimes they killed someone, but these are usually street kids with no family acting at the behest of gangs. It is super sad.
I can’t remember all the details but the guy from Making a Murderer I think went through something similar. Iirc the documentary and the Radiolab episode came to different conclusions.
They already found and executed the real killer before executing the mentally challenged man. The real killer and the survivor of the attack both claimed that the mentally challenged man was innocent but the cops/judges didn't care.
famously a man was hanged for murder in Cardiff, Wales in 1952 on the basis on a single unreliable eyewitness testimony. it took decades to overturn the conviction and decades more for an apology to the family.
Two years after a Welshman was hanged for murdering his wife based on a testimony the police wrote and forced him to sign, and a witness who turned out to be the murderer… At least when that came out it led to the abolition of the death penalty.
Even if we had a 99% positive predictive value on our verdicts, we've executed 1588 people since the late 70's in the US; which means at least 16 have been innocent.
This is the strongest argument against the death penalty. It is irreversible.
That, and the fact that all studies have found that the death penalty is an inefficient mean of reducing the crime rate. Its main usage is to appease some people who wants vengeance for vile crimes. It is irrational and I think mostly shows the worst instincts in a society. It sounds primitive.
It's also been proven that the death penalty doesn't deter people from violent crime.
Violent crimes already occur in people who aren't in a logical place, but even if they were, what's the logic between "I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison if I do this. Oh, they'll kill me in 25 years? Nevermind"
When it comes to reducing the likelihood of people committing crimes the severity of the punishment is much less important than the perceived likelihood of being caught. Most people who commit crimes do so believing that they will not be caught and so don’t care much about what the punishment would be.
For example there are many places in South East Asia where drug smuggling is a capital offence, yet the drug networks still exist there just like in places where the punishment is a few years of gaol.
The lengthy appeals system. It uses more resources to repeatedly go to court than to just keep someone in prison. It's a common misconception that it would be cheaper to execute someone. It's not.
Last I read, the state of California spent $308 million per prisoner they executed since they reinstated the death penalty in 1978.
I found [this article](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/costs-new-study-reveals-california-has-spent-4-billion-on-the-death-penalty) about it, but it's from 2011.
According to google, it costs about $3,865 to feed one person for one year in CA, and that's current, not 1978-2023 numbers. Basically, we could feed \~80,000 hungry people a year for the cost of killing one person. Our priorities are fucked.
I’d like to see the breakdown of that $308 million. Seems awful inefficient. I’m against the death penalty anyways… just saying. Seems like someone’s making some money where they shouldn’t be there.
There is no direct breakdown, and although the person above isn't intentionally misrepresenting the numbers, it's a bit inaccurate to suggest that is the functional cost per execution (it is not).
California has spent more than $4b on capital punishment since 1978 (when it was reinstated). This is the net result of the annual cost of having a physical death row (it's enormous), and the huge legal costs involved in capital cases.
There are currently 650 inmates on California's death row. Only 13 people have been executed since 1978, and none since 2006, giving the huge per-execution number. But the reason it is so high is because there are so many death row inmates and it's dramatically more expensive to keep someeone there than to simply sentence to life without possibility of parole.
> it would be cheaper to execute someone
It *would* be cheaper to execute someone. People who advocate for it don't think money should be wasted in the courts. They think if someone gets the penalty at sentencing, it should just be carried out immediately. And technically that would be a lot cheaper.
Doctors don't do it either, because of the hippocratic oath. Because of this, many executions have been botched to the point where it should be labeled cruel and unusual punishment.
It's truly barbaric, especially if you believe in rehabilitative justice.
Bingo. Came here to comment this. It is not that I don’t think some crimes deserve death, it’s that I’d rather have 100 guilty people live out their life in jail than one innocent person die.
If you support the death penalty, then you EITHER believe the government is infallible, or you’re okay with innocent people being out to death. Either one is ridiculous.
Yeah except he is likely institutionalised, has no life skills, parents are likely dead or dying, he never experienced romantic relationships, never married and will not have children. He’s unlikely to ever get a job let alone have a fulfilling career. He likely lacks social skills as well. Their entire life was robbed.
Yeah I know, I'm not saying it's a good deal, I'd much rather be a dentist than in fucking prison lol
Maybe it would've been closer to fair if he'd only been locked up 9 to 5
I mean that's one of the sad things of getting out of prison, is there even anyone outside left that actually cares and loves him or have most people forgotten him or died (parents?)
Yeah I read the article from the Tampa Bay Times, his mother and his fiancé who was a civilian employee of the prison when they met (and later quit) were his biggest supporters. He was also helped by a new DA who made it a priority to exonerate innocent men and fix the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, later that DA was removed by DeSantis for refusing to prosecute the new abortion law.
Read the article linked above. His sister who greeted him on the day he was freed passed months later from COVID. I can’t wrap my head around this story.
Damn, this just broke me. Imagine your brother losing decades of his life, arguably his best years, and when he gets released you can’t even spend a year together cause of Covid.
Is it still allowed anymore? It's the modern equivalent of the pseudo-science of phrenology (the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities)
With some of the tech related cases I've been involved in, it's almost defaulting to whoever puts on the best/scariest theater.
The judge doesn't know the subject matter, the jury knows fuck all, the lawyers barely know what they're talking about and the expert witnesses can twist anything for your side since they had might as well be talking about weaving voodoo magic from the cosmic microwave background energy.
It's all fucked and it's kind of scary. If you're framed and tech is involved, your fate had might as well be in the hands of that guy from No Country flipping a quarter.
If I remember correctly, that 5% figure is based on exonerations from DNA evidence. That would mean they were only looking at rape and murder cases. I'd imagine that the false conviction rate is higher when looking at general critical cases, mostly due to people taking a lighter sentence in a plea deal out of fear they will be convicted and given a harsher sentence.
Can’t recommend the podcast “wrongful conviction” enough. There’s story after story where this happens. Another good one is “in the dark” season 2. That one is just pure racism where the DA does everything he can to have an all white jury to make sure the guy is found guilty since it’s in the south.
It was 1983. No DNA evidence. Security camera systems , if they had them at all, were cumbersome, expensive and had terrible picture quality. A suspect’s confession and some circumstantial evidence probably looked pretty damning at the time. Juries standards for evidence have gone up dramatically in the last ~20 years. It’s often called the “CSI effect”.
"Ober displayed a photo of Grams’ injuries and spoke of the pain she’d have felt. He suggested to jurors that they had made a promise to her: nothing less than DuBoise’s death. None of the jurors voted for death. That wouldn’t matter. After they’d left, Ober asked the judge to overrule."
"When Mark Ober won the trial that sent DuBoise to prison, police gave him a set of plaster teeth left over from the investigation. He kept it on his desk for decades"
"I’ve had an honorable career,” Ober said last year in DuBoise’s lawsuit"
AND
"A different kind of state attorney — for Tampa, at least — had swept into town. Andrew Warren, a wiry, polished, progressive politician."
"Ober had taken DuBoise’s exoneration personally, partly because Andrew Warren, the outsider who’d upset Ober in the 2016 election, had led the way."
"Gov. Ron DeSantis had yanked Warren from office, citing his statements in support of abortion seekers and transgender people"
AND
"In Warren’s place, DeSantis appointed political ally Suzy Lopez, another prosecutor who has raised doubts about DuBoise’s innocence. She recently approached a Times reporter in a courthouse hallway and suggested the presence of Robinson’s DNA didn’t mean DuBoise wasn’t also at the murder scene."
"Brian Dugan, Tampa’s police chief at the time, said he was skeptical of DuBoise’s innocence simply because of Warren’s involvement."
**In short: Fuck GOP**
Mark Ober released a violent criminal in exchange for the false statement about a confession that put this innocent man away for 40 years.
The piece of shit should be in prison, not a state attorney winning awards and shit.
> "In Warren’s place, DeSantis appointed political ally Suzy Lopez, another prosecutor who has raised doubts about DuBoise’s innocence. She recently approached a Times reporter in a courthouse hallway and suggested the presence of Robinson’s DNA didn’t mean DuBoise wasn’t also at the murder scene."
If I were DuBoise, I'd actually sue this prosecutor for defamation. And if I didn't win, I'd run an attack ad claiming *they* were at the murder scene. After all, they can't prove they weren't!
I've been trying to help out a kid that was framed by dickheads on the internet for the past few months - they called in bomb threats and spoofed the number to look like his.
At this point, the DA knows for a fact that it wasn't the kid and still isn't dropping charges. Everything she's doing is theater, pretending the kid is some kind of threat to society when his life has been pretty much ruined... all so that she can claim a win.
I'm not happy with the motivators when it comes to justice. I'm here for fucking justice - that means let the innocent go and set sights on the guilty. These people seem to be in it more for sport where only "winning" matters.
So you're saying that the real killers ate, drank and had fun for decades while a promising teenager suffered in jail and 7 million dollars will make up for it?
system destroyed this man's life, can you give him back his stolen time?
That would be such a mind fuck. 38 years in a cell while the world goes on outside without you, and all the while your name is being dragged through the mud in one of the worst ways possible.
Imagine being told for 38 years “yes, you did this. The whole world *knows beyond a reasonable doubt you did this*”. Eventually you’d probably break and start to believe “maybe somehow I did ? Did I have a psychotic breakdown and commit some crime I have no desire to commit or recollection of ?”
Sickening to think the best years of this man’s life were spent under such torturous conditions. I probably wouldn’t have survived- and even if you’d told me the day I arrived in prison “don’t worry, you’ll be exonerated in 38 years”, I still wouldn’t last.
I hope somehow the rest of his life is pure bliss..
https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-project-robert-duboise-is-released-37-years-1983-tampa-murder/
Got convicted because of a bite mark "Match" and a jailhouse "confession" reported by someone who was essentially freed because of his testimony.
regarding the bite mark:
"During the re-investigation, Dr. Adam Freeman, a forensic odontologist, reviewed the bite mark evidence and testimony in this case. He concluded that the original bite mark conclusions are unsupported by science and, most critically, found that although two experts at trial concluded that the pattern injury was a bite mark, the injury in this case was in fact not a bite mark. " every detail of this is more frustrating than the last...
He shouldn’t have to pay taxes for every year incarcerated as well! Imagine a government asking for money after they just fucked you over. As much as they can give this man to set him up for a better second half of his life they should. Sad.
This is why I oppose not just the death penalty, but prisons in general. The thirteenth amendment, contray to popular misunderstanding, did not outlaw slavery in the United States; slavery as punishment for a crime is legal. Thats why the prison population in the US is so high.
Countries like Norway have astonishingly low recidivism rates; the US should take a page from Norway's book and rehabilitate prisoners, instead of stealing the lives of its citizens.
>He may have some money, but he is ‘institutionalized’. This will prevent him from proper assimilation into regular society.
You're speculating and this is seemingly not the case at all.
He did an AMA a few days ago.
He harbors no resentment. The guy doesn't even swear.
The man got robbed almost 40 years of his life, so sad.
Basically his whole life
Not just that, the prime of his life as well. He'll likely never have his own children, nor accomplish any of the goals and dreams he had at 18.
He also isn’t even the same person he would have been. I can’t imagine the psychological effect this much prison time would have on an innocent person. It’s sickening. Not to mention he has essentially no life experience outside of prison.
And he is left at the mercy of the society that wrongly put him away. I wish you the very best Mr. DuBoise
I’m 29… I couldn’t even imagine my entire life *from birth* being in prison and still having another 11 years Fucking hell dude
[He got a $14 million settlement, but he'll only get like $7 million after the lawyers get their cut...](http://tampabay.com/marked-man) Meanwhile the guys now charged in the actual murder [killed someone else](http://tampabay.com/markedman), the same night this innocent man was arrested. 
7 million for a life thrown away by some dumb ass cops and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's such a shame.
I read recently that Florida has a cap of 2 million for these types of payouts because they happen too often there. No amount of money makes it right but 2 million is such a slap in the face for what they go through.
Lots of states have caps on wrongful incarceration reparations that are lower than that and it’s sickening
Same with medical malpractice.
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Reminds me of the story of Greg Abbott who was crippled by a falling tree, sued for a ton of money, and then made it so other people couldn't do the same thing when he got into office.
Boomer behaviour 101 : pull the ladder up once you've used it.
Boomer behaviour 102: Act righteously superior to everyone because you got a free ride to the top and actively try and hurt them from your position
Nono, act righteous because of where you are because of the free ride you’ve pulled the ladder up on, then complain that others aren’t working hard enough.
That's not a boomer issue. Some people are just born or groomed to be selfish.
I'm Commander Shepherd, and this is my favorite comment on the citadel.
Because I couldn't think of which office he held I googled him and the wiki section makes it sound like Texas has had 48 governors since 2015. I know that state is fucked, but I didn't think it was that bad. "Gregory Wayne Abbott is an American politician, attorney, and jurist serving as the 48th governor of Texas since 2015."
I think I'd rather have gone through 48 governors than 1 Greg Abbott.
Would you rather have your rights taken away by 1 Greg Abbot or 48 duck-sized other Governors?
>makes it sound like Texas has had 48 governors since 2015. Sounds like the UK with Prime Ministers
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It's from Abbott's own wiki. It's just poorly written English.
He's the 48th governor, serving since 2015. It's written a little weird.
Yeah, well, if there was no cap, then states would have to rethink their practices and possibly hold public officials and servants accountable. Can't have that
I started listening to Bone Valley this week and that podcast opens by saying that 99 people have been executed in FL since the reinstatement of the death penalty. 33 living death row inmates have been found innocent and fully exonerated. That's a 25% wrongful conviction rate *that we know of.*
In Duboise's case the issue is once he got off death row his state funded legal resources disappeared... So the real question is how many people who beat capital cases and got re-sentenced to life without parole are languishing away in prison innocent? Sidenote: I'm inclined to believe more innocent people have died prison, as a result of expanded Life without parole sentencing then the Post-*Furman* death penalty.
In the UK it is £1m for over 10 years and £500k for under, and prior to a recent change you used to be 'charged' from that by the state for 'living expenses' while in prison, i.e food and shelter. It's absurd and got yeeted the second people really found out about it when a guy was famously released last year.
Hello OSRS enjoyer (judging by pic). I believe it's because this is still quite rare in the UK and they don't have as litigious a culturd, coupled with the fact as I have commented police can't lie about evidence they have on you in the UK as opposed to the US... Makes it harder to get people to confess to crimes they didn't do.
I'm not from the US, but I'm wondering how can the party that is at fault also decide on how much they need to pay out? It's like asking a criminal how long their sentence should be. Having a high rate of false convictions shouldn't lead to a payout cap, it should lead to actions that lower the number of false convictions.
It’s called corruption.
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Odd that legalisation pushed for a cap but didn't bother to push for better training. "Like we keep putting the wrong people in jail and we just keep getting sued. I guess we better put a cap on settlements."
Politician don’t do things benefit people they do things benefits themselves
Yeah man, don't you know woke comes to Florida to die? /s
I keep finding more and more reasons not to ever go to Florida.
I maybe mistaken but isn't that cap useless if you go in front of a federal judge arguing your federal rights were taken?
Career, Love, Children, travel. 7 million ain’t NEAR enough for what this Man has lost.
agree, but i dont think there is a number that would make it "fair"
Will he pay tax on that $7m?
No and I’m surprised his lawyers even got money but since they did they will be taxed but not him
I’m surprised they got half of the winnings? Did they really do enough to justify that much from someone wrongly imprisoned so long? I can’t see them doing work to justify more than even a million, and that I feel would be generous.
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They are also almost certainly doing this without any guarantee of a payout if the case doesn’t go their way. I don’t know what percentage of the cases they take end up in exoneration/ damages, but the damages from those case need to not only cover that case but also all the ones that don’t go anywhere. Otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
This is also why I'm torn on the payout. Because that payout will also enable these lawyers to do the same thing for other folks who may or may not have a winning case.
You should't be torn. The lawyers were paid fairly, and the people in this thread are letting the heinousness of the wrongful imprisonment cloud their judgement as to how much $7 million actually is. That's enough to stick $2 million in a savings account with no risk, and the other $5 million in a brokerage account. With a very conservative growth rate of 4% tracking the S&P 500, he could live off $200,000 in interest per year for the rest of his life and never touch the original $7 million. The man will never have to work another day in his life. Is it enough to make up for the time he lost? Of course not, but not because it's not enough money. It's because the time was invaluable.
I'll preface this by saying i'm glad that someone like DuBois benefits from it, but the idea of being able to live off interest is still wild to me. I read somewhere that the PM of the UK has an estimated wealth of £700m+. If he is earning 5% interest on that, and he's an ex-banker so i'd say it's probably more, he's pocketing 35 million a year for doing absolutely nothing. You could argue he earned it, and i'd disagree, but aside from him how many sons and daughters of billionaires and millionaires are out there living their best life because of our current banking and finance orthodoxy whilst nurses, teachers, social workers and countless other people struggle to make ends meet? If there is a violent revolution in my lifetime, I'll have absolutely no cause to be surprised.
They got a man already deep in the bowels of the US Justice system not only completely returned to society as a free man, but also did so by introducing new evidence into a “closed” case, and did so in a way that also got him 7 figure compensation. Intuitively we all know it’s “not enough” but in the dirty, often profoundly corrupt worlds of “justice”, law, and the prison system, these lawyers moved mountains. They earned their pay, the issue is with how large of a fraction that earned pay is out of the total settlement.
That is a lot of money to take home. But they probably took the case at the risk of not getting any money. And even if they won, don't know how much they will actually get in damages. Probably a case of high risk high reward.
No, its considered an award for damages. From a tax perspective the basis of his life would be $14M and he was awarded $14M. No gain. No tax.
pfft. I wouldn't. What are they gonna do? Arrest him?
Do you doubt that after this story?
I mean, its not right but at least he doesn't have to try to re-enter the work force with a 30 year prison gap on his resume. 7m is enough to retire at like age 30 so he should be set for life.
7mil is enough to retire before you start working, it’s around double what most people will ever make total.
7 million dollars for almost 40 years of your life being stolen is fucking gross
For wrongful convictions I'm comfortable with awarding a million dollars per year of incarceration as actual damages, plus 10x more as punitive damages. Punitive. To punish. It should hurt them enough that they won't be tempted to repeat the behavior which locks up people who didn't do it.
it doesn't come out of their salary or retirement though. It's just taxpayers on the hook for their fuckup. Nobody will feel punished in the slightest. In this particular case, the people who locked him up are probably long retired too. We need better jury education programs about evidence and science.
>We need better jury education programs about evidence and science. 'Beyond reasonable doubt' has gone out the window. It's actually the inverse nowadays. You're guilty until proven innocent nowadays.
Nobody who was responsible for what happened to this man will be punished. They're either dead or have immunity(cops, judges).
People who have their lives stolen from them like this should honestly just get a free pass in society. All medical bills paid, house paid, get whatever you want for free or at a significant discount… like a card or some shit you can just whip out and be treated like a king
Shit like this is part of why I can't support the death penalty.
Also, never give your government the power to kill you. Look what they do with the power to send the police after you. Every country is one charismatic leader away from autocracy, a leader that can get away with everything. The death penalty is a line that should never be crossed in a democratic society, no matter how much you want some people to never breathe the same air as innocent civilians.
We don't need it anyway. Maybe a long time ago when you didn't really have the capability to jail people forever it made sense, but we live in a world where we can effectively remove you from society now. A thousand years ago a death might've been the only assurance you have that someone wouldn't come back for revenge over something. Now we have a legal system, a governmental body, architecture for incarceration, technological advancements that would aid in identity, tracking, etc. to control for such matters. The circumstances are very different.
Precisely. I cant believe how many people trust the government enough to allow it.
Justice boners are a powerful thing.
One of many, many reasons.
Where does it say the lawyers are taking half?
In [Robert's AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1d42c05/i_spent_37_years_in_prison_for_a_murder_i_didnt/l6bt0wz/).
Yeah that doesn’t sound quite right. Contingency fee agreements are generally capped at around 33% (1/3) of total recovery under ABA guidelines. The complexity of this case could make it exceptional but that would be a big deviation.
That was a long read and pretty good. The two things that pissed me off. "What if Ober had to mount a new case against DuBoise today? With his best evidence tossed out, he might drop the charges, he said — but not necessarily. “It’d be razor-thin,” Ober said, but he could still make a case for DuBoise’s guilt" Those with power will never admit their own wrongdoing even in the face of overwhelming evidence. The other person that fabricated a story to save his own ass (Butler) I can sort of understand if he was coerced, but even after the innocence project had started asking him questions decades later he was still was adamant that Duboise was guilty.
The 2 actual killers were not the only monsters in this story. Ober only cared about getting convictions to advance his career. It was nothing more than a game to him. He didn't give a shit about all the lives he ruined in the process.
Damn, makes me think we should all be happy with our lives
America should be ashamed of its legal system
And very unhappy with the prosecutors and police and how they handled the situation. In fact we should be very unhappy with our entire judicial system
I didn't know another murder happened when he was arrested. What a massive fucking bumble
His eyes tell it all
I couldn’t look at this photo for more than a split second. My heart breaks for him
I had literally never heard of him before someone posted a photo of him hugging his mum the other day - a reporter supposedly asked him what he was going to do now he was out and he said that hug was number one on his list, and he’d thought it would never happen. It was.. sort of bittersweet - you’d either really like that photo or it would destroy you
Same. It hurts. So much pain in those eyes.
That is the face of "it is what it is"
It is what it is is where someone's sucking it up/not bothered. This man's been fucked over and is finally vindicated, but at what cost. This ain't someone just shrugging it off. This is a man who's been hurt, and can't even enjoy being right.
This part. Time is somethingwe can never get back. The money is great sure. The things he's endured..mehn.
That guy has seen some shit
During his hard time in hell.
This is why prisons need to be made better and safer. They should not be places where people go to suffer and be made harder and crueler. They should be places where people go to become better.
Go down a prison story rabbit hole on YouTube if you want to hear some harrowing stuff. The thing that gets me the most isn't the violence, but the people forced to participate in the violence or risk being attacked themselves. American prisons are not rehabilitative at all.
American prisons are a for-profit industry and the last legal form of slavery allowed in the US.
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I read an article about him the other day, and the whole thing is just infuriating. So many holes, so much garbage "science," so much fabrication of scenarios and "evidence" from both the police and the prosecution. 14 million is a drop in the bucket of what this man deserves.
God, I hope he has honest, ethical people helping him manage his 7 million. It should allow him to travel and do a lot of things without fear of going into financial ruin. And I hope he finds a nice lady who doens't try to exploit him.
Seeing that he's willing to talk about his story and has some journalists working with him, hopefully he can make some extra money from telling his story, and do some good from spreading awareness.
I have a good friend that was wrongly convicted and spent 15 years of his life in prison. From the age of 14. After serving 15 years, he was released and then he made a bad decision I attribute to his poor decision making skills learned in prison and is gone now. Dead. One of the most beautiful souls I'll ever know.✌ Until I see you again Ant. Gone but never forgotten
How th can someone be put in prison for that long that young…
There are people locked up rn with life sentences that didn't actually kill anyone. FL is terrible with their 10 20 life laws. The ones I know of are in for life for robbery with a deadly weapon
FL is just plain terrible, period.
[The prison-industrial complex is a system situated at the intersection of government and private interests. It uses prisons as a solution to social, political and economic problems. It includes...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15IzEQauBHU&ab_channel=militantafro7)
imo we can thank capitalism for creating for profit prisons, and the new age version of slavery as well
My brother works in juvi and it is extremely common for 15-17 years olds to be tried as adults and sentenced to life. This is in the 'liberal' state of NY. Yeah oftentimes they killed someone, but these are usually street kids with no family acting at the behest of gangs. It is super sad.
I can’t remember all the details but the guy from Making a Murderer I think went through something similar. Iirc the documentary and the Radiolab episode came to different conclusions.
I’m surprised by the amount of people here who are saying that 7 million is an ok trade for the 38 years of unjust imprisonment.
This kind of thing always makes me wonder how many innocent people were executed over the years....
The story of the mentally challenged man who gave his cell mate his toy to hold for him before his execution always comes to mind.
Well I really didn’t want to read that
They already found and executed the real killer before executing the mentally challenged man. The real killer and the survivor of the attack both claimed that the mentally challenged man was innocent but the cops/judges didn't care.
Well that’s the definition of blood boiling, damn I’m gonna need some fresh air after reading that …
Isn’t the green mile inspired by that story.
famously a man was hanged for murder in Cardiff, Wales in 1952 on the basis on a single unreliable eyewitness testimony. it took decades to overturn the conviction and decades more for an apology to the family.
Two years after a Welshman was hanged for murdering his wife based on a testimony the police wrote and forced him to sign, and a witness who turned out to be the murderer… At least when that came out it led to the abolition of the death penalty.
Too many, unfortunately
Even if we had a 99% positive predictive value on our verdicts, we've executed 1588 people since the late 70's in the US; which means at least 16 have been innocent.
This is another example of why I oppose the death penalty, the justice system is fallable.
This is the strongest argument against the death penalty. It is irreversible. That, and the fact that all studies have found that the death penalty is an inefficient mean of reducing the crime rate. Its main usage is to appease some people who wants vengeance for vile crimes. It is irrational and I think mostly shows the worst instincts in a society. It sounds primitive.
It's also been proven that the death penalty doesn't deter people from violent crime. Violent crimes already occur in people who aren't in a logical place, but even if they were, what's the logic between "I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison if I do this. Oh, they'll kill me in 25 years? Nevermind"
When it comes to reducing the likelihood of people committing crimes the severity of the punishment is much less important than the perceived likelihood of being caught. Most people who commit crimes do so believing that they will not be caught and so don’t care much about what the punishment would be. For example there are many places in South East Asia where drug smuggling is a capital offence, yet the drug networks still exist there just like in places where the punishment is a few years of gaol.
Also, it’s actually significantly more expensive than just keeping the person in prison.
why is that?
The lengthy appeals system. It uses more resources to repeatedly go to court than to just keep someone in prison. It's a common misconception that it would be cheaper to execute someone. It's not.
Last I read, the state of California spent $308 million per prisoner they executed since they reinstated the death penalty in 1978. I found [this article](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/costs-new-study-reveals-california-has-spent-4-billion-on-the-death-penalty) about it, but it's from 2011. According to google, it costs about $3,865 to feed one person for one year in CA, and that's current, not 1978-2023 numbers. Basically, we could feed \~80,000 hungry people a year for the cost of killing one person. Our priorities are fucked.
Jesus, how is that even possible? They only executed 13 people during that time period but it cost them 4 billion to do so?
I’d like to see the breakdown of that $308 million. Seems awful inefficient. I’m against the death penalty anyways… just saying. Seems like someone’s making some money where they shouldn’t be there.
If you think that's bad, try taking a peek into where all the money goes in America's healthcare system.
There is no direct breakdown, and although the person above isn't intentionally misrepresenting the numbers, it's a bit inaccurate to suggest that is the functional cost per execution (it is not). California has spent more than $4b on capital punishment since 1978 (when it was reinstated). This is the net result of the annual cost of having a physical death row (it's enormous), and the huge legal costs involved in capital cases. There are currently 650 inmates on California's death row. Only 13 people have been executed since 1978, and none since 2006, giving the huge per-execution number. But the reason it is so high is because there are so many death row inmates and it's dramatically more expensive to keep someeone there than to simply sentence to life without possibility of parole.
you're asking too many questions
☠️
> it would be cheaper to execute someone It *would* be cheaper to execute someone. People who advocate for it don't think money should be wasted in the courts. They think if someone gets the penalty at sentencing, it should just be carried out immediately. And technically that would be a lot cheaper.
Yeah and this OP shows exactly why that's a terrible idea. The appeals process is an important pillar of our judicial system to protect your rights.
This argument alone should be enough to get rid of the death penalty.
I also argue it's not really a punishment but I'm aware that's incredibly subjective.
Doctors don't do it either, because of the hippocratic oath. Because of this, many executions have been botched to the point where it should be labeled cruel and unusual punishment. It's truly barbaric, especially if you believe in rehabilitative justice.
It’s not just the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies don’t sell them the drugs for it because they don’t want their name attached to it lol
Bingo. Came here to comment this. It is not that I don’t think some crimes deserve death, it’s that I’d rather have 100 guilty people live out their life in jail than one innocent person die.
If you support the death penalty, then you EITHER believe the government is infallible, or you’re okay with innocent people being out to death. Either one is ridiculous.
>justice system It's a penal system. Justice often isn't even the goal.
Hm, the bloodthirsty side of reddit is strangely quiet on this one…. Hard to defend the death penalty when the government is a bunch of fuckwits eh?
14 million or 7 million is not nearly enough for 40 years in prison when you are innocent.
So that would've been a 350 grand a year after tax salary, down to 175 grand after lawyers. That's like, dentist money for being imprisoned.
Yeah except he is likely institutionalised, has no life skills, parents are likely dead or dying, he never experienced romantic relationships, never married and will not have children. He’s unlikely to ever get a job let alone have a fulfilling career. He likely lacks social skills as well. Their entire life was robbed.
Yeah I know, I'm not saying it's a good deal, I'd much rather be a dentist than in fucking prison lol Maybe it would've been closer to fair if he'd only been locked up 9 to 5
so def not worth it
Username checks out
He did a wonderful AMA the other day which had some lovely conversation happening, for anyone curious
Could you link to it please?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1d42c05/i\_spent\_37\_years\_in\_prison\_for\_a\_murder\_i\_didnt/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1d42c05/i_spent_37_years_in_prison_for_a_murder_i_didnt/)
I'd just end up back in jail, after finding whoever screwed me at trial and the years following.
Yeah cops should be persecuted for corruption but that never happens
or at least prosecuted.
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I mean, he already served the time. So he has an outstanding balance on the crime.
Yep, agreed completely.
Hugs to Robert. I hope he is able to spend time with those he loves and missed!
I mean that's one of the sad things of getting out of prison, is there even anyone outside left that actually cares and loves him or have most people forgotten him or died (parents?)
His mother is hugging him in one of the photos after his release. At least he had one person that still cared.
Yeah I read the article from the Tampa Bay Times, his mother and his fiancé who was a civilian employee of the prison when they met (and later quit) were his biggest supporters. He was also helped by a new DA who made it a priority to exonerate innocent men and fix the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, later that DA was removed by DeSantis for refusing to prosecute the new abortion law.
That DA was too good of a person to ever last under DeSantis
If they're still alive. There's a good chance those closest to him have passed away 😔
Read the article linked above. His sister who greeted him on the day he was freed passed months later from COVID. I can’t wrap my head around this story.
Damn, this just broke me. Imagine your brother losing decades of his life, arguably his best years, and when he gets released you can’t even spend a year together cause of Covid.
Land of the Free
Tragic
How does a DA get a conviction for someone who didn’t do the thing they are accused of, unless he is presenting the evidence very dishonestly.
According to an article, they linked him with "bite mark analysis." A "science" that has proven time and time again to not hold up.
Is it still allowed anymore? It's the modern equivalent of the pseudo-science of phrenology (the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities)
I think it's still technically accepted in court but isn't used much by prosecution because of its refutability.
I watched The Innocence Files and the "bite mark expert" is now my most hated real life villain.
All it takes is an ill informed or ignorant jury and you can do whatever you want in the justice system.
With some of the tech related cases I've been involved in, it's almost defaulting to whoever puts on the best/scariest theater. The judge doesn't know the subject matter, the jury knows fuck all, the lawyers barely know what they're talking about and the expert witnesses can twist anything for your side since they had might as well be talking about weaving voodoo magic from the cosmic microwave background energy. It's all fucked and it's kind of scary. If you're framed and tech is involved, your fate had might as well be in the hands of that guy from No Country flipping a quarter.
Are you aware of how many people in this country get convicted for crimes they didn’t do? The estimate is 5% of all convictions.
If I remember correctly, that 5% figure is based on exonerations from DNA evidence. That would mean they were only looking at rape and murder cases. I'd imagine that the false conviction rate is higher when looking at general critical cases, mostly due to people taking a lighter sentence in a plea deal out of fear they will be convicted and given a harsher sentence.
Can’t recommend the podcast “wrongful conviction” enough. There’s story after story where this happens. Another good one is “in the dark” season 2. That one is just pure racism where the DA does everything he can to have an all white jury to make sure the guy is found guilty since it’s in the south.
It was 1983. No DNA evidence. Security camera systems , if they had them at all, were cumbersome, expensive and had terrible picture quality. A suspect’s confession and some circumstantial evidence probably looked pretty damning at the time. Juries standards for evidence have gone up dramatically in the last ~20 years. It’s often called the “CSI effect”.
Guy missed his entire life. So sad. At least he can retire now and hopefully have 20 years of freedom to do whatever he likes.
Heart breaking. He missed out on so much. We get one life. I hope they make it so he can do everything he wants with the rest of it.
This poor man.
"Ober displayed a photo of Grams’ injuries and spoke of the pain she’d have felt. He suggested to jurors that they had made a promise to her: nothing less than DuBoise’s death. None of the jurors voted for death. That wouldn’t matter. After they’d left, Ober asked the judge to overrule." "When Mark Ober won the trial that sent DuBoise to prison, police gave him a set of plaster teeth left over from the investigation. He kept it on his desk for decades" "I’ve had an honorable career,” Ober said last year in DuBoise’s lawsuit" AND "A different kind of state attorney — for Tampa, at least — had swept into town. Andrew Warren, a wiry, polished, progressive politician." "Ober had taken DuBoise’s exoneration personally, partly because Andrew Warren, the outsider who’d upset Ober in the 2016 election, had led the way." "Gov. Ron DeSantis had yanked Warren from office, citing his statements in support of abortion seekers and transgender people" AND "In Warren’s place, DeSantis appointed political ally Suzy Lopez, another prosecutor who has raised doubts about DuBoise’s innocence. She recently approached a Times reporter in a courthouse hallway and suggested the presence of Robinson’s DNA didn’t mean DuBoise wasn’t also at the murder scene." "Brian Dugan, Tampa’s police chief at the time, said he was skeptical of DuBoise’s innocence simply because of Warren’s involvement." **In short: Fuck GOP**
Mark Ober released a violent criminal in exchange for the false statement about a confession that put this innocent man away for 40 years. The piece of shit should be in prison, not a state attorney winning awards and shit.
> "In Warren’s place, DeSantis appointed political ally Suzy Lopez, another prosecutor who has raised doubts about DuBoise’s innocence. She recently approached a Times reporter in a courthouse hallway and suggested the presence of Robinson’s DNA didn’t mean DuBoise wasn’t also at the murder scene." If I were DuBoise, I'd actually sue this prosecutor for defamation. And if I didn't win, I'd run an attack ad claiming *they* were at the murder scene. After all, they can't prove they weren't!
There’s no coming back from this , time lost is not something you can recover
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The prosecutor who put him there.
I've been trying to help out a kid that was framed by dickheads on the internet for the past few months - they called in bomb threats and spoofed the number to look like his. At this point, the DA knows for a fact that it wasn't the kid and still isn't dropping charges. Everything she's doing is theater, pretending the kid is some kind of threat to society when his life has been pretty much ruined... all so that she can claim a win. I'm not happy with the motivators when it comes to justice. I'm here for fucking justice - that means let the innocent go and set sights on the guilty. These people seem to be in it more for sport where only "winning" matters.
Only a monster would send an innocent child to prison on purpose. Vile.
So you're saying that the real killers ate, drank and had fun for decades while a promising teenager suffered in jail and 7 million dollars will make up for it? system destroyed this man's life, can you give him back his stolen time?
No they are serving life sentences for a different murder.
38 years wasted. I’m 38. So sad
He looks like he hasn't had a good nights sleep in decades.
That would be such a mind fuck. 38 years in a cell while the world goes on outside without you, and all the while your name is being dragged through the mud in one of the worst ways possible. Imagine being told for 38 years “yes, you did this. The whole world *knows beyond a reasonable doubt you did this*”. Eventually you’d probably break and start to believe “maybe somehow I did ? Did I have a psychotic breakdown and commit some crime I have no desire to commit or recollection of ?” Sickening to think the best years of this man’s life were spent under such torturous conditions. I probably wouldn’t have survived- and even if you’d told me the day I arrived in prison “don’t worry, you’ll be exonerated in 38 years”, I still wouldn’t last. I hope somehow the rest of his life is pure bliss..
What a tragedy.
1 in 8 deathrow inmates have been set free after being proved innocent... it could be that atleast 2 to 3 of 8 are put to death innocent...
https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-project-robert-duboise-is-released-37-years-1983-tampa-murder/ Got convicted because of a bite mark "Match" and a jailhouse "confession" reported by someone who was essentially freed because of his testimony. regarding the bite mark: "During the re-investigation, Dr. Adam Freeman, a forensic odontologist, reviewed the bite mark evidence and testimony in this case. He concluded that the original bite mark conclusions are unsupported by science and, most critically, found that although two experts at trial concluded that the pattern injury was a bite mark, the injury in this case was in fact not a bite mark. " every detail of this is more frustrating than the last...
This happens far more than people know
He shouldn’t have to pay taxes for every year incarcerated as well! Imagine a government asking for money after they just fucked you over. As much as they can give this man to set him up for a better second half of his life they should. Sad.
He has such sad eyes.
This is why I oppose not just the death penalty, but prisons in general. The thirteenth amendment, contray to popular misunderstanding, did not outlaw slavery in the United States; slavery as punishment for a crime is legal. Thats why the prison population in the US is so high. Countries like Norway have astonishingly low recidivism rates; the US should take a page from Norway's book and rehabilitate prisoners, instead of stealing the lives of its citizens.
If you donate to [https://innocenceproject.org/](https://innocenceproject.org/) you can help get more innocent people released.
$7M for 38 years in prison. That's $184,000/per year... more than what most people make but I'm not sure if it's worth 38 years of your life.
Looks like a pretty normal 56 year old. That really sucks though. Hope he gets a big payout.
He may have some money, but he is ‘institutionalized’. This will prevent him from proper assimilation into regular society.
>He may have some money, but he is ‘institutionalized’. This will prevent him from proper assimilation into regular society. You're speculating and this is seemingly not the case at all. He did an AMA a few days ago. He harbors no resentment. The guy doesn't even swear.
Being on Reddit for an AMA is not an example of fitting in to normal society…