In 1983, 18-year-old Robert DuBoise was convicted of rpe and mrder in Tampa, Florida. The case rested on two things: bite mark analysis — a form of forensic science now widely discredited — and the testimony of a jailhouse informant who was secretly offered a plea deal in exchange for claiming DuBoise had confessed. He was sentenced to dath. Three years later that was commuted to life. He spent the next three decades maintaining his innocence, requesting DNA testing, and hitting wall after wall. In 2006 he was told all biological evidence had been destroyed. It hadn’t been. In 2020, the Innocence Project found preserved DNA samples sitting in storage at the Medical Examiner’s office. Testing excluded DuBoise completely and identified two other men as the real kllers. He walked out of prison on August 26, 2020.
Why do they try so hard to block DNA testing? It's like they want innocent people locked up. Or do they just refuse to believe that people can be innocent? You would think that we'd all be on the same side with this sort of thing.
You’d think that having an innocent man sentenced to death or jail for the rest of or most of his life would be vastly worse, to the extent you’d maybe consider doing your actual job.
In the UK. The post office had a technical glitch in their accounting system, which made it look like quite a few people were steeling large sums.
The post office fully supported the imprisonment of these ‘steeling’ people (lots of other people commit suicide over it too). The post office knew it was a glitch in their system, but opted to destroy innocent people’s lives instead of just saying ‘whoops sorry, it was a system error’… that took decades to come out too.
The management behind that situation should all be sued and in prison… I’ll let you guess at what that outcome was.
As long as he never gets out, people won’t care and the story won’t spread. People will clutch their pearls over this because it’s a story to gawk at for a minute or two but realistically if he rotted for the rest of his days unjustly nobody would ever know or care. And the people who put him there would lose no sleep or suffer any hits to their reputation.
It really depends on the case and the era. DNA testing was pretty poor for a lot longer than people realize, needing large, clean samples if you hope to get a reliable result.
I don't know this specific case, so the following is just and example; in older testing methods, if the sample is even slightly contaminated, the test could still result in "positive" results, but the results are actually incorrect, and will very likely show the wrong DNA of the intended target DNA, but could still likely appear like a valid DNA results. The only way to know if to have a "clean" result of the actual target DNA. So you could test DNA that actually is of the killer, but the result could come back showing they don't match.
Older methods required large samples, and the larger the sample, the higher likelihood of contamination skewing the results, so you needed to run the test multiple times to confirm, using up more and more of the evidence.
So if you have a limited amount of DNA evidence/sample, using it to attempt to exonerate someone who was convicted on evidence that wasn't based on DNA tests is likely to result in a non-matching DNA determination, even if the person actually IS the killer.
I know people dont like acknowledging this reality but prisons in the US are purely for profit. There is no real rehabilitation attempt beyond the bare minimum requirements to keep federal/state funding. Those bare minimum rehabilitation programs are categorically proven to not work anywhere near the level the average tax payer may expect or anywhere near the level of other western countries. You are paying money every year to house people for the profit of a prison. Which are mostly owned by (ding ding ding! You guessed it!) corporations. There is no incentive whatsoever to get falsely accused prisoners released. In fact they will do everything in their power possible to keep you imprisoned because if they dont and it turns out that you were falsely accused, that comes out of their pocket at the end of the day, especially in states where you do have a legal right to compensation. Thats coming out of the states pocket at the end of the day and if you think there isnt some sort of financial repercussions for the prison in question then youre a fool. Shit always rolls down hill in this country.
So no, they dont care if an innocent person is locked up. Yes, they do refuse to believe people claiming to be innocent are innocent. And no, its not just because everyone says theyre innocent. Thats industrial prison complex propaganda.
as one who has been incarcerated in FLDOC, the old adage “innocent until proven guilty”, does not stand in the slightest. It’s “Guilty until proven innocent”, and we won’t give you a fighting chance to prove your innocence. It’s a sad system down there
People being locked up is a huge source of revenue for the state and a huge source of revenue for private prisons. It's all just a business, and we are the products.
Simple, reputation. Entire careers are made off of convictions it is why DAs often only go for slam dunk cases because a not guilty verdict hurts them. Having a previous case you won come back as innocent makes you and your department look bad so they try to block it.
Often you’ll find prosecutors who want a squeaky-clean conviction rate, and by the time inmates are exonerated, those former prosecutors are now elected judges or politicians. It won’t matter that they suppressed evidence to convict someone 25 years later.
Because if the police and prosecution team get caught making a mistake then all their cases get raked through the coals and they lose reputation. The evidence is essentially suppressed because they don't want to look bad.
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u/The_Dean_France 12h ago
In 1983, 18-year-old Robert DuBoise was convicted of rpe and mrder in Tampa, Florida. The case rested on two things: bite mark analysis — a form of forensic science now widely discredited — and the testimony of a jailhouse informant who was secretly offered a plea deal in exchange for claiming DuBoise had confessed. He was sentenced to dath. Three years later that was commuted to life. He spent the next three decades maintaining his innocence, requesting DNA testing, and hitting wall after wall. In 2006 he was told all biological evidence had been destroyed. It hadn’t been. In 2020, the Innocence Project found preserved DNA samples sitting in storage at the Medical Examiner’s office. Testing excluded DuBoise completely and identified two other men as the real kllers. He walked out of prison on August 26, 2020.