Speaker 1: I'm Jason Flammett Wrongful Conviction. We're proud to be a
Speaker 1: part of the ever growing landscape of true crime shows
Speaker 1: that revealed just how our criminal legal system works and
Speaker 1: often where it fails. This week, I've invited a colleague
Speaker 1: from another podcast to bring their unique style to our
Speaker 1: coverage of yet another wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: Back in the late seventies and early eighties, there was
Speaker 2: a string of violent crimes in Florida. Young women were
Speaker 2: being raped and murdered seemingly at random. One of the
Speaker 2: perpetrators was the infamous Ted Bundy. He was convicted for
Speaker 2: one of these murders, and among the mountain of evidence
Speaker 2: that was presented against him was a bike mark. A
Speaker 2: dentist named doctor Suveran was called to testify against Bundy,
Speaker 2: making famous the use of bike mark evidence known as
Speaker 2: forensic odontology. Four years after Bundy was sent to death
Speaker 2: row a young woman's body he was found with obvious
Speaker 2: signs of sexual assault near Tampa. There was also an
Speaker 2: injury on her cheek that the medical examiner determined to
Speaker 2: be a bite mark. Given that it followed the highly
Speaker 2: televised Bundy trial, police honed in on that bitemark to
Speaker 2: the exclusion of all other evidence. They began taking bite
Speaker 2: impressions or denticians from dozens of men in the neighborhood
Speaker 2: and brought them to doctor Suveran. One of those men
Speaker 2: was eighteen year old Robert Dubois. Doctor Suveran alleged that
Speaker 2: Robert's dentician matched the bite mark on the victim, and
Speaker 2: Robert was arrested. No other physical evidence tied him to
Speaker 2: the case, but with the use of a jailhouse informant,
Speaker 2: Robert was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die
Speaker 2: by electrocution for a crime he did not commit. This
Speaker 2: is wrongful conviction. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Gilbert King.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm the Pulitzer Prise winning author of Devil in
Speaker 2: the Grove, about Thurgood Marshall's representation of the young men
Speaker 2: known as the Groveland Four who were just exonerated by
Speaker 2: the State of Florida last year. I'm also the writer
Speaker 2: and host of a new nine part narrative podcast called
Speaker 2: Bone Valley by Lava for Good Podcasts, and I'm honored
Speaker 2: to be guest hosting this episode of Wrongful Conviction. Today,
Speaker 2: we have two very special guests, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask them both to introduce themselves before we get into
Speaker 2: the interview. So let's start out with Robert Dubois.
Speaker 3: Well, my name is Robert Dubois. So I was just
Speaker 3: exonerated in twenty twenty and right now I'm sitting in
Speaker 3: my apartment in Tampa, Florida to you guys, and we also.
Speaker 2: Have Susan Friedman. Susan, you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks Gilbert for having me. My name is Susan Friedman.
Speaker 4: I'm a senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project based
Speaker 4: in New York City, and I represented Robert through his
Speaker 4: wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is amazing. We have so much to talk
Speaker 2: about then, because this is really going to be really fascinating.
Speaker 2: I studied the case very familiar with Tampa. Robert, the
Speaker 2: event that would change your life occurred back in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three in Tampa. You were just eighteen years old.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about who you were and what your
Speaker 2: life was before that arrest.
Speaker 3: Well, at that time, I was working in town and
Speaker 3: country at an auto a postry shop for Noel's Autawa Postry.
Speaker 3: So I used to ride my bike. It's like, I
Speaker 3: guess about five miles. So I wrote it to town and
Speaker 3: country every day for the job. So suddenly my whole
Speaker 3: world was upside down because I'm doing my everyday thing,
Speaker 3: going back and forth to work, and then next thing
Speaker 3: you know, I'm in a cell wondering why now.
Speaker 2: I mean, this has just came out of the blue
Speaker 2: for you. I mean, do you didn't have any prior
Speaker 2: runnings with the law or do you have you had
Speaker 2: any understanding of what was happening.
Speaker 3: I did have a prior running with the law when
Speaker 3: I was a teenager, so it was about an empty
Speaker 3: house or car parts, just some dumb stuff. And I
Speaker 3: had moved past that and had two years probation community
Speaker 3: work hours for the Police Athletic League, which I completed,
Speaker 3: and next thing you know, I'm in jail being accused
Speaker 3: of murder.
Speaker 2: And let's go back to that in a minute. But Susan,
Speaker 2: I just want to ask you your experience you're coming in.
Speaker 2: What does you like really understand about Tampa, Florida and
Speaker 2: this time the early eighties. You know a lot of
Speaker 2: people think of like Miami Vice, this is that era,
Speaker 2: but this is not like South Florida. This is Central Florida, Tampa.
Speaker 2: It's a little sleepier, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, the one thing to know is that around
Speaker 4: the time when this crime occurred that Robert was wrongfully
Speaker 4: convicted of, there actually were a string of women who
Speaker 4: were sexually assaulted and murdered. There wasn't a clear m
Speaker 4: but there were a number of women that turned up dead,
Speaker 4: one of them obviously being the victim and Roberts case.
Speaker 4: The other thing that turns out to be really important
Speaker 4: is that Florida is the home of the Ted Bundy case.
Speaker 4: And in the nineteen seventies, Ted Bundy eventually comes to
Speaker 4: confess to around thirty cases, and one of the really
Speaker 4: important pieces of evidence is bitemark testimony, and that's what
Speaker 4: actually puts doctor Richard suver On on the map. And
Speaker 4: doctor sub On testified in the Ted Bundy trials and
Speaker 4: he also lived in Florida. So this was just a
Speaker 4: very high profile time for bitemark evidence generally in the
Speaker 4: criminal legal system.
Speaker 2: And can you just talk briefly about how that science
Speaker 2: has come to be viewed today as opposed to back
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, you know, we today know that fitemark evidence
Speaker 4: has been wholly discredited. Not only has the National Academy
Speaker 4: of Sciences, who did a review of this type of
Speaker 4: evidence back in two thousand and nine, even the ABFO,
Speaker 4: the group that regulates forensic odeontologists, have made significant revisions
Speaker 4: to the conclusions that they can make in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: and so in twenty sixteen, after a number of research
Speaker 4: studies that they concluded that they no longer can do
Speaker 4: what's known as source attribution. I mean that's say a
Speaker 4: certain individual was the bier in a case. And so
Speaker 4: that came after years of research in this to finally
Speaker 4: debunk this type of evidence that for so long has
Speaker 4: been held up as an important piece of evidence, but
Speaker 4: that we know today has led to many, many wrongful convictions.
Speaker 4: We know of at least thirty four wrongful convictions in
Speaker 4: the United States, Robert being one of them.
Speaker 2: Susan, can we just talk about the case that brought
Speaker 2: Robert into trouble? Can you just talk about the facts
Speaker 2: of the crime.
Speaker 4: Yeah. On August nineteenth, nineteen eighty three, in the early
Speaker 4: morning hours, a dentist was showing up at work. He
Speaker 4: was opening up his shop and in the back he
Speaker 4: found the victim in this case, she had been she
Speaker 4: was severely beaten, and she was there was certainly evidence
Speaker 4: that she had been either actually sexually assaulted or there
Speaker 4: was an attempted sexual assault. She was completely nude except
Speaker 4: for a tube top that was pushed up above her
Speaker 4: chest that exposed her breasts. So police immediately started investigating
Speaker 4: and they canvass the neighborhood. Unfortunately, there were no eyewitnesses,
Speaker 4: and so what we know about the victim is that
Speaker 4: she worked at a local restaurant, a local fast food chain,
Speaker 4: and she had left somewhere around nine to nine fifteen
Speaker 4: in the evening after closing up. We know that someone
Speaker 4: saw her about nine thirty PM a couple blocks away
Speaker 4: from her home. But then she's found eight blocks south
Speaker 4: of that, and so police started canvassing. They couldn't find
Speaker 4: anyone who had any information, and so very quickly this
Speaker 4: case focused in on the physical evidence, and that evidence
Speaker 4: came from the medical examiner's office. During the autopsy, the
Speaker 4: medical examiner concluded three things. First, that the victim was
Speaker 4: killed as a result of blunt force trauma. As I said,
Speaker 4: she had been severely beaten, and at the crime scene
Speaker 4: they found a total of four to two by four
Speaker 4: wooden boards by her, and they all had and a
Speaker 4: few of them had blood and hair on them, which
Speaker 4: suggested that they were the murder weapon. The emmy also
Speaker 4: concluded that she likely was sexually assaulted. And then the
Speaker 4: third when he washed her face, he saw that there
Speaker 4: was a pattern injury on her left cheek, which he
Speaker 4: concluded even though he is not an odontologist or a
Speaker 4: bitemark expert, he actually concluded must have been a bitemark.
Speaker 2: How did police begin to narrow this down to certain suspects?
Speaker 4: So, because law enforcement didn't have any eyewitnesses, they really
Speaker 4: focused in on the bite mark, and in this case,
Speaker 4: the medical examiner identified what he believed to be a
Speaker 4: bitemark on the victim's left cheek. He excized it and
Speaker 4: put it in formal to hide, which caused it to shrink.
Speaker 4: But then the photographs of the bitemark were shared with
Speaker 4: doctor Suban, and doctor Subarron concluded that this was a
Speaker 4: human bitemark and that he would be able to make
Speaker 4: a comparison. So doctor Subron then advised law enforcement to
Speaker 4: start collecting denticians from individuals who they believed were suspects,
Speaker 4: and to do that using bees wax and if folks
Speaker 4: are thinking about why beeswax. It doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 4: You're right, because beeswax is not a good method for
Speaker 4: capturing someone's dentition, but that's what they were using. And
Speaker 4: so Detective Saladino started going around and collecting dozens and
Speaker 4: dozens of denticians from basically any individual that they came
Speaker 4: into contact with, and they turned their attention to Robert
Speaker 4: because they interviewed a woman who had worked at at
Speaker 4: a store about a block away from where the victim
Speaker 4: was discovered. And what's interesting about this individual is that
Speaker 4: she worked at the store back in February, which is
Speaker 4: six months before this crime. But she alleged that she
Speaker 4: knew a couple of boys who, as she said quote,
Speaker 4: caused trouble. That's what led police to focus in on
Speaker 4: Robert and to ask him for his beeswax tentition.
Speaker 2: So, Robert, can you just talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: your first contact with police and what you were thinking
Speaker 2: when you got approached. What was that like that moment?
Speaker 3: Well, I wasn't very fond of cops in general. I
Speaker 3: was a teenager. But when I was approached, he's like,
Speaker 3: would you mind doing a beeswax impression? And I'm like,
Speaker 3: for what he says, Well, we're just doing you know,
Speaker 3: everybody in the neighborhood or whatever, even though I'm not
Speaker 3: even from that neighborhood. So I went with him downtown
Speaker 3: with the only two in the police detective division, and
Speaker 3: he asked me to bite into a soft piece of beeswax,
Speaker 3: so I did, and he drove me back home and
Speaker 3: he made a crazy statement on the way home. He says,
Speaker 3: there was two girls walking down the street. I thought
Speaker 3: it pretty weird. He says, which do you prefer? Blonde
Speaker 3: or brunette? I said, what does it matter? You know?
Speaker 3: So he didn't say anymore, and he dropped me off
Speaker 3: at home. So then I didn't hear anymore until October
Speaker 3: twenty first, nineteen eighty three, when they came to my
Speaker 3: door at two thirty in the morning and asked me
Speaker 3: to go downtown and said that my mom needed to
Speaker 3: see me. So, taking the consideration, my father's in a wheelchair,
Speaker 3: he's completely paralyzed, so I'm thinking, if my mom needs
Speaker 3: to see me, something's really going on here. So I
Speaker 3: go downtown. Of course my mom isn't there, and then
Speaker 3: they tell me Detective Saladino will come shortly and explain
Speaker 3: what's going on. So in the interim, I'm sitting there
Speaker 3: and the detective looks at me and he's talking about fishing,
Speaker 3: the weather, all this normal stuff, and then he says,
Speaker 3: why'd you do it? I said, why did I do?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: He said, why did you kill her? I said kill who?
Speaker 3: I said, what? Are you crazy? So I'm thinking it's
Speaker 3: some kind of sick joke.
Speaker 2: So aside from this, there's no other physical evidence that
Speaker 2: is causing police to focus in on Robert. It's just
Speaker 2: they're doing this thing with the.
Speaker 4: Teeth, right, Yeah, that's right. Police approach Robert and he's
Speaker 4: completely cooperative because he has nothing to hide. He knows
Speaker 4: he didn't commit this crime. In fact, the other forensic
Speaker 4: evidence excludes Robert.
Speaker 2: And would you consider that an example of tunnel vision.
Speaker 2: You have all this other evidence that's possibly exculpatory, is excalpatory,
Speaker 2: and yet here they are focusing on this something that
Speaker 2: we now consider junk science. What happened there?
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. This is classic tunnel vision and cognitive
Speaker 4: bias setting in. This was a case with no eyewitnesses,
Speaker 4: and when police got their tip and they believe that
Speaker 4: Robert was the source of the bite mark. All the
Speaker 4: other evidence that was exculpatory, they found reasons to ignore,
Speaker 4: and they focused in on Robber and were able to
Speaker 4: explain away any facts that didn't line up with their
Speaker 4: theory of the case.
Speaker 2: Robert, this must have been, you know, the worst day
Speaker 2: of your life to get accused of something like this
Speaker 2: and arrested. Can you just walk through the arrest and
Speaker 2: what that was like for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was very angry and baffled. I
Speaker 3: mean I was very angry, angry with the police when
Speaker 3: they tried to handcuff me because I knew I had
Speaker 3: done nothing wrong, you know. And then because I'm angry
Speaker 3: when they took me to the jail, they had the
Speaker 3: nurse shoot me up with how doll, so that put
Speaker 3: me out, and when I woke up, I was strapped
Speaker 3: down to a steal bunk with leather straps. So then
Speaker 3: the following morning they take me for all these dental
Speaker 3: impressions and I'm still doped up off the how doll
Speaker 3: or whatever it was, and I was just baffled. I
Speaker 3: was just trying to get it over with because I
Speaker 3: knew I had done nothing wrong. So I was living
Speaker 3: kind of like in a bad dream, I couldn't wake
Speaker 3: up for him.
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Speaker 5: pro Bono Program provides free legal services, as well as
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Speaker 2: And any of the time, did you ever occur to
Speaker 2: you like I need a lawyer at this point.
Speaker 3: No, because I knew I had done nothing wrong, So
Speaker 3: it never even really crossed my mind. I didn't know
Speaker 3: enough about the legal system to even know I had
Speaker 3: that right.
Speaker 4: And I think one of the things that's really important
Speaker 4: about Robert just said is that a lot of times
Speaker 4: people's innocence puts them at risk, especially in interrogations and
Speaker 4: in these kinds of situations where they're interacting with law enforcement.
Speaker 4: They know that they're innocent, and they believe that the
Speaker 4: evidence will prove that. And so Robert went ahead and
Speaker 4: completely cooperated with law enforcement knowing that he didn't commit
Speaker 4: this crime, he didn't bite the victim, he was never
Speaker 4: there and so he had no reason to hide on anything,
Speaker 4: and so he didn't think he needed a lawyer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always amazed by the exgonneries that you talk to.
Speaker 2: They have so much faith in the justice system. They
Speaker 2: will just clear this up together. We'll talk this over
Speaker 2: because I didn't do it, and they are at the
Speaker 2: most risk of anybody because they're just talking the police
Speaker 2: right off the bat. So, Susan, can you just give
Speaker 2: us a brief summary of what Robert's trial was like?
Speaker 4: Sure? So you know, the focus of this case was
Speaker 4: the bitemark evidence, but police and prosecutors wanted to have
Speaker 4: more evidence to support this conviction. Police alleged that someone
Speaker 4: named Claude Butler, who was no stranger to the Tampa
Speaker 4: Police Department, they were very well acquainted with him, alleged
Speaker 4: that Robert actually confessed to him while they were both
Speaker 4: incarcerated at the local jail while Robert was awaiting trial.
Speaker 4: Claude Butler at the time had been arrested previously for
Speaker 4: various offenses, but at that time he also was facing
Speaker 4: charges for kidnapping, robbery with a firearm, grand theft, auto
Speaker 4: dealing in solo, and property battery on a law enforcement agent,
Speaker 4: so he was looking at multiple life sentences, and so
Speaker 4: Claude was the second piece of evidence that police used.
Speaker 4: Then the third piece of evidence was this witness named Jack.
Speaker 4: And Jack was really perplexing because there were no police
Speaker 4: reports that memorialized any interviews with Jack. He was not
Speaker 4: on the witness list. He didn't testify in the grand jury.
Speaker 4: He pops up two weeks before Robert goes to trial,
Speaker 4: and Jack alleges that he was staying at the Peter
Speaker 4: Pan Motel, which is where Robert was arrested, and that
Speaker 4: one day, he doesn't remember exactly what day it was,
Speaker 4: but there was a party going on. He walked in,
Speaker 4: he saw Robert sitting on the bed. He looked very glum,
Speaker 4: and when he asked Robert what was going on? Again,
Speaker 4: Robert does not know this person. Robert just says I
Speaker 4: wanted for murder. And so from there they want the
Speaker 4: jury to infer that Robert is confessing to committing this
Speaker 4: crime or in some way corroborating the allegation that he
Speaker 4: did commit this crime. And that's the entire case.
Speaker 2: Robert, what are you thinking when you're watching you know,
Speaker 2: people like Jack and Claude Butler, get up there on
Speaker 2: the stand and talk about you what's going through your
Speaker 2: mind when you're watching this testimony.
Speaker 3: I was sitting there in disbelief, you know. I'm just
Speaker 3: sitting there like, how can they even believe this stuff?
Speaker 3: You know? So I just watched it like I was watching,
Speaker 3: kind of like I was outside watching in you know.
Speaker 3: So I said there every day they took me to
Speaker 3: the courthouse at five am, and I didn't get back
Speaker 3: to the jail till like midnight because they keep you
Speaker 3: on the hold and sale for transport and all that.
Speaker 3: So I was just sitting there. I was tired, I
Speaker 3: was baffled. I just had no clue why we're sitting here,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: And Susan, what kind of defense did Robert have to
Speaker 2: start in this trial?
Speaker 4: One thing that's important here is that this was a
Speaker 4: capital trial, so Robert was facing the death penalty, and
Speaker 4: he had an attorney whose defense in this case was
Speaker 4: number one. He put on another dentist, doctor Norman Sperber,
Speaker 4: who said that, oh no, this is a bitemark, but
Speaker 4: it's not Robert's bite. There are too many inconsistencies here,
Speaker 4: and so it can't be Robert's fight. So Now, basically
Speaker 4: you had these two bitemark experts going at it and
Speaker 4: what we call in the legal field the battle of
Speaker 4: the experts, and it just came down to the jury
Speaker 4: obviously siding with the prosecution. And the second thing was
Speaker 4: that Robert's mother testified that Robert was home on the
Speaker 4: night of the crime. And then the third part of
Speaker 4: the case really was or trying to prove or trying
Speaker 4: to convince the jury that Claude Butler should not be
Speaker 4: trusted and that he was an incentivized witness. Right he's
Speaker 4: facing multiple life sentences instead only got five years, and
Speaker 4: to prove that that is why he cooperated with law enforcement.
Speaker 2: You know, just listening, it seems like a really hard
Speaker 2: thing for the defendant to overcome when this science is
Speaker 2: just deemed, as you know, infallible. And then you have
Speaker 2: a jailhouse snitch who we don't even know anything about
Speaker 2: jailhouse snitches. Back then, we didn't know how often they
Speaker 2: were being used. So these two things just must seem
Speaker 2: impossible to overcome a trial.
Speaker 4: That's right, you know. So you have this dentist who
Speaker 4: gets on he is a famous dentist. He's known for
Speaker 4: the Ted Bundy cases. He's got all of his fancy degrees,
Speaker 4: he's got lots of credentials that he's telling the jury about,
Speaker 4: and he testifies that to a reasonable degree of dental certainty,
Speaker 4: Robert is the source of the bite. How does anyone
Speaker 4: dispute that, who on the jury would then decide that,
Speaker 4: in fact, actually this dentist is wrong and I better
Speaker 4: and this isn't a bite. This is something that we've
Speaker 4: seen time and time again with a lot of cases
Speaker 4: that involved the misapplication of forensic science. You have these
Speaker 4: techniques that were born out of a need for law
Speaker 4: enforcement to use them, that never are validated, that don't
Speaker 4: go through the rigorous research that we do in other
Speaker 4: areas of science and medicine. Yet then they're used in
Speaker 4: courtrooms to convict people and to sentence them to death
Speaker 4: the way this happened in Robert's case, Right, And.
Speaker 2: I imagine just coming off knowing what a storm that
Speaker 2: hold Ted Bundy case was. I mean, he was a superstar,
Speaker 2: a superstar Dennist. He's the one that basically his credentials like,
Speaker 2: I'm the one who solved it and enabled us to
Speaker 2: catch Ted Bundy. So you know, you go on to
Speaker 2: the next case, and you have this guy testifying. That's
Speaker 2: a lot to overcome. Robert, can you talk about what
Speaker 2: it was like. You know, you mentioned just sort of
Speaker 2: being in a daze and being disbelieving that this was
Speaker 2: actually happening to you, which is a pretty common theme.
Speaker 2: But you know you obviously had to wait for that
Speaker 2: verdict to come back. Can you just walk us that
Speaker 2: moment in your life. What you can remember of that
Speaker 2: moment when the jury has a verdict.
Speaker 3: During the trial, I kind of detached myself, so to speak,
Speaker 3: so I wasn't worried about the verdict because I knew
Speaker 3: I had done nothing wrong, so I still had a
Speaker 3: little faith left in the system. So when they came
Speaker 3: back with the verdict, yeah, I was just amazed. But
Speaker 3: the senticing thing was the same way. You know, It's
Speaker 3: like the jury recommended life in prison. The judge overwrote
Speaker 3: it and said, you know, sentenced me to die by electrocution.
Speaker 3: I'm just upset and baffled about the whole thing. And
Speaker 3: now I know I'm really in a mess. I'm in
Speaker 3: a trap, you know, and I don't see a way out.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't even imagine what that's like. The
Speaker 2: jury comes back, says you're guilty, and then says they're
Speaker 2: sentencing you to life, and it gets worse the judge
Speaker 2: overrides the jury recommendation.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: Do you remember going back into your cell after that
Speaker 2: and thinking I just got sentenced to death for a
Speaker 2: crime I didn't commit.
Speaker 3: Yes, So once they sentenced me to death, it's like
Speaker 3: from that moment on, I had like thirty officers around me,
Speaker 3: you know, escorting me all the way back to the
Speaker 3: jail into my cell. If I had if they let
Speaker 3: me out to use the phone, I had thirty officers
Speaker 3: surrounding me. So I think it was only like until
Speaker 3: the next morning. They got a transport to take me
Speaker 3: to Death Row at two thirty in the morning.
Speaker 2: And what was that like? You were rivaling, you know,
Speaker 2: at this age, arriving at you know, Florida's most notorious
Speaker 2: death row. What was that like? I mean, could you
Speaker 2: just imagine yourself in this situation and how do you
Speaker 2: hang on to any optimism at this point?
Speaker 3: Well, I know, the ride to death Row, still in
Speaker 3: a daze, and I'm wondering, how could this be happening?
Speaker 3: You know, how did this just happen to me? Why
Speaker 3: am I going to death Row, you know. And then
Speaker 3: I arrive at Death Row, or Florida State Prison, and
Speaker 3: I see this big green building and it's like a
Speaker 3: filling of gloom when you see this building. And then
Speaker 3: I go up into the building. They escort me down
Speaker 3: this long hallway into a cell on death Row and
Speaker 3: they slammed the door, and that's my new home. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, are these guys like sitting here waiting
Speaker 3: to die? So it was very disturbing. And you know,
Speaker 3: some of the guys already had warrant signed, so they
Speaker 3: were really afraid because they knew if their name may
Speaker 3: come up, once it comes up again, they might get killed.
Speaker 3: You know. So these things, you know, went through all
Speaker 3: of our heads. You know, is it going to be
Speaker 3: my turn? When you hear that plane fly over the prison?
Speaker 3: You don't know?
Speaker 2: And is it true that old Sparky the Florida's Electric
Speaker 2: Chair it's right there on death Row, isn't it correct?
Speaker 2: I mean in the eighties it was pretty active, right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it was on Q wing. So yeah, well,
Speaker 3: just while I was there alone, they killed Marvin Francois,
Speaker 3: Jeff Dawtry, Willie Darden, Ted Bundy, another guy I only
Speaker 3: knew him as Frog another guy named Tiny, So they
Speaker 3: killed all total while I was there, like twelve.
Speaker 2: What is that like being on death row when that happens.
Speaker 2: What's the general mood among people on death row?
Speaker 3: It's very quiet and gloomy, you know. It's like, let
Speaker 3: me tell you the torture, the mental torture they used
Speaker 3: on death row, even though they may not even realize
Speaker 3: they were doing it. I thought they did though. Is
Speaker 3: a plane Whenever the governor signs a death war. The
Speaker 3: plane flies over Florida State Prison, lands on their runway,
Speaker 3: and walks the death war into the colonel of the prison.
Speaker 3: The colonel sends his officers to death row to get
Speaker 3: whoever it belongs to. Then they escort them up to
Speaker 3: the colonel's office, they go to death watch, and nine
Speaker 3: times out of ten you don't see them no more.
Speaker 2: That must be just the most terrifying sound when you're
Speaker 2: in death row to hear a plane landing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that. And then every Wednesday, at one o'clock
Speaker 3: in the afternoon they would test the electric chair, so
Speaker 3: all the lights on death row would them.
Speaker 2: Robert, three years after your conviction, your attorney managed to
Speaker 2: get your death sentence changed to life in prison with
Speaker 2: a mandatory quarter, meaning you'd get to go see the
Speaker 2: parole board after twenty five years served. You must have
Speaker 2: felt a bitter relief when that happened.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. So now I'm not on death row.
Speaker 3: I no longer have the right for legal representation anymore.
Speaker 3: Now I am literally on my own. You're entitled to
Speaker 3: legal representation as long as you have a death sentence.
Speaker 3: I was not happy when my death sentence got overturned
Speaker 3: to life because I had asked the attorney over and
Speaker 3: over again to please fight the conviction, and he kept
Speaker 3: fighting the sentencing. How do I hope to prove my
Speaker 3: innocence is all if all you're doing is fighting to
Speaker 3: get a death sentence turned to life. Now I went
Speaker 3: from death row to the worst population in the state
Speaker 3: of Florida. So FSP is the dumping ground for what
Speaker 3: they considered the worst of the worst. Okay, this is
Speaker 3: inmates that's been at other institutions, stabbed of the inmates,
Speaker 3: raped out the inmates, stabbed officers, and done just numerous
Speaker 3: awful things and they got sent here as a punishment.
Speaker 3: So it's like the wild Wild West. They won't accept
Speaker 3: me to no other prison because I came from death row.
Speaker 3: That's how I end up at FSP.
Speaker 2: FSP, by the way, is Florida State Prison. And while
Speaker 2: you were there, you were writing a lot of letters.
Speaker 2: How did you get to be such a prolific letter writer?
Speaker 3: I had never written a letter till I went to jail,
Speaker 3: not that I remember, you know, And now that's all
Speaker 3: I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Susan, can you just give us a brief synopsis of
Speaker 2: this post conviction history that Robert had, Like what he
Speaker 2: was trying to do, what kind of appeals he was
Speaker 2: trying to find, what areas he was looking to explore.
Speaker 4: Robert was his own best advocate. He wrote to everybody,
Speaker 4: and that included lawyers, the media, really anyone who would listen.
Speaker 4: And you know, after his death sentence was vacated, he
Speaker 4: continued to have hope that the truth would come to
Speaker 4: light and that he would be proven innocent. And one
Speaker 4: of the really important things that Robert did was in
Speaker 4: two thousand and six, he filed emotion for access to
Speaker 4: DNA testing because he believed if we use this modern
Speaker 4: DNA testing that's now available, it would prove that he
Speaker 4: was innocent. And what is truly remarkable here is that
Speaker 4: he was convicted in nineteen eighty five, and what we
Speaker 4: learned is that in October of nineteen ninety, just five
Speaker 4: years after he's convicted, the State of Florida destroys all
Speaker 4: of the evidence that was admitted at his trial, including
Speaker 4: the victim's rape kit. So they have an extensive hearing
Speaker 4: where the state puts on evidence that everything was destroyed
Speaker 4: and that the only evidence that's remaining are a few
Speaker 4: hairs and two cigarette butts and su as.
Speaker 2: I'm just really curious the laws about, you know, in
Speaker 2: a capital case, they're disposing evidence after five years, Like,
Speaker 2: what are the laws about that?
Speaker 4: So today we have preservation laws in I believe every
Speaker 4: single state, but here in nineteen ninety, Robert's death sentence
Speaker 4: had been vacated and so the court just entered an
Speaker 4: order disposing of all of the evidence. Luckily, as we
Speaker 4: learned in post conviction with the reinvestigation, that was actually
Speaker 4: not the case. But it was shocking to see that
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety, just five short years after a death sentence,
Speaker 4: that the state destroyed all of that biological evidence, especially
Speaker 4: because in nineteen ninety we did start to have DNA
Speaker 4: come online and it was started, it was being used,
Speaker 4: So that was really shocking to see in this case.
Speaker 2: Susan, how did you become involved in this case?
Speaker 4: Robert wrote to the Innocence Project the way he wrote
Speaker 4: to many organizations. And when we reviewed this case, there
Speaker 4: were two things that set out to us that he
Speaker 4: was convicted based on faulty forensics and a jail house informant,
Speaker 4: which are two leading contributing factors to wrongful conviction. And
Speaker 4: we believe that even though they said that a significant
Speaker 4: amount of the DNA evidence was destroyed, it's possible that
Speaker 4: we could still get access to some of that other
Speaker 4: evidence and do some additional retesting. And so we accepted
Speaker 4: Robert's case and we started investigating immediately.
Speaker 2: And Robert, what was that like for you? I mean,
Speaker 2: just being in this situation and just thinking about all
Speaker 2: these years that are passing for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, I was hoping to have
Speaker 3: a wife and kids and a house and all this stuff.
Speaker 3: So that was taken for me. That didn't happen still
Speaker 3: has to happen. So I started focusing on not the
Speaker 3: things I didn't have, but be grateful for the things
Speaker 3: I do have and did have. So I just moved forward.
Speaker 3: And as the years went by, I had three parole hearings,
Speaker 3: all three were negative. It didn't happen. Now, in my mind,
Speaker 3: this is like the last straw, you know, this is
Speaker 3: pretty much blocks off everything I had going for me.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, you know, I just felt total hopelessness,
Speaker 3: and I just put my hands together and I said, God,
Speaker 3: send your hands. That night, they have what they call
Speaker 3: a legal call out sheet letting you know you have
Speaker 3: legal mail. So the next day I went to get
Speaker 3: the letter and it was from Susan saying that hey,
Speaker 3: we read your case. We're taking your case, you know,
Speaker 3: And then like I think a week later, she was
Speaker 3: sitting across the table from me talking to me.
Speaker 4: When we accepted the case, I started digging into Robert's file.
Speaker 4: This was a capital case. There were a lot of materials.
Speaker 4: While I had hope that we'd be able to do
Speaker 4: some additional DNA testing on the items that we believed
Speaker 4: still existed, I also knew that this was going to
Speaker 4: be an informant case. We had to get to the
Speaker 4: bottom of what was going on with Claude Butler because
Speaker 4: just from a cold read of the record, it is
Speaker 4: clear that he is incentivized and that he was testifying
Speaker 4: falsely at Robert's trial. So we started digging into him immediately,
Speaker 4: and very quickly, a lot of things surfaced about him
Speaker 4: that confirmed all of our original suspicions. The trial prosecutor
Speaker 4: in Robert's case, who elicited all kinds of testimony about
Speaker 4: the fact that Claude Butler was not receiving any benefits,
Speaker 4: he was testifying out of the goodness of his heart.
Speaker 4: He believed this was the right thing to do, to
Speaker 4: tell everybody what Robert confessed to him. We found out
Speaker 4: that the trial prosecutor in Robert's case filed e motion
Speaker 4: to mitigate in the informants case, urging that judge to
Speaker 4: let Claude Butler walk free because Claude Butler was a
Speaker 4: key witness in Robert's case and that he was part
Speaker 4: of him securing a death sentence against Robert. The other
Speaker 4: thing that we did is we started digging into Jack
Speaker 4: because we were so surprised by Jack. We didn't understand
Speaker 4: where he came from. Just like the trial defense counselor
Speaker 4: was shocked by him, so were we. And what do
Speaker 4: we do we found a criminal case where he was
Speaker 4: the star witness. And in that case, Jack alleged that
Speaker 4: someoneknocked on his door, he was covered in blood, This
Speaker 4: person entered his hotel room that he helped him dispose
Speaker 4: of the clothes that were covered in blood. And then,
Speaker 4: as it turned out, this person was charged with capital murder.
Speaker 4: And so Jack, who at minimum could have been an
Speaker 4: accessory after the fact in this case, is not charged
Speaker 4: at all. He becomes a star witness in this other case,
Speaker 4: and he pops up in Robert's case, and Robert has
Speaker 4: no idea who this is. There are no police reports
Speaker 4: connecting Jack to this case, and all of a sudden
Speaker 4: it becomes very clear that Jack is a plant. Right,
Speaker 4: Jack is inserted into this case on the eve of
Speaker 4: Robert's trial.
Speaker 2: Susan, what did you learn about that bitemark after all
Speaker 2: these years.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that we did during the
Speaker 4: reinvestigation was we submitted all of the materials, we had photographs,
Speaker 4: testimony about the bitemark evidence to doctor Adam Freeman, who
Speaker 4: is a board certified forensic coodeontologist and dentist, and he
Speaker 4: examined all those materials and he made a number of
Speaker 4: conclusions about both the evidence collection and the pattern injury itself.
Speaker 4: So first, he concluded that the way that people's denticians
Speaker 4: were collected using that beeswax was an improper way to
Speaker 4: collect to obtain denticians. He evaluated the pattern injury on
Speaker 4: the victim's cheek and specifically he was looking at measurements
Speaker 4: and concluded that this was way too big to be
Speaker 4: a human bitemark. So ultimately we found out that this
Speaker 4: was not a bite mark at all. And one of
Speaker 4: the things that I think is really important here is
Speaker 4: that the victim was beaten so severely in the face
Speaker 4: that this may have actually been from the boards. The
Speaker 4: severe damage that she suffered, maybe one of the boards
Speaker 4: left an injury that appeared to be the pattern injury
Speaker 4: that the dentist obviously assumed was the bitemark, but this
Speaker 4: in fact was not a bitemark on the victim at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really want to get into this part of it.
Speaker 2: So you're dealing with the thirteenth circuit in Florida, Can
Speaker 2: you just talk about these conviction integatory view units and
Speaker 2: how important they were to this particular case.
Speaker 4: Conviction integrity units, sometimes also called conviction review units, are
Speaker 4: specialized units within prosecutors' offices that are supposed to look
Speaker 4: at cases where an individual is factually innocent and reinvestigate.
Speaker 4: They're really important units that allow for prosecutors not only
Speaker 4: to correct wrongful convictions, but also prevent them by implementing
Speaker 4: policies that they realize are important in order to prevent
Speaker 4: wrongful convictions in the future and have implement those policies
Speaker 4: in their offices. And so after I did as much
Speaker 4: investigating as I possibly could on Claude, Butler and Jack
Speaker 4: and obtained all of the records that I could from
Speaker 4: the police department, I put together a memo to Teresa Hall,
Speaker 4: who was the chief at the time, the chief of
Speaker 4: the Conviction Review Unit, and I put forward all the
Speaker 4: evidence I had that made me suspicious about the conviction,
Speaker 4: the reasons why I thought that Butler and Jack didn't
Speaker 4: have any credibility, and then I put forward an investigation
Speaker 4: plan and asked her to join me in read investigating
Speaker 4: this case. And so that was my pitch to her,
Speaker 4: and then very quickly she came back to me and
Speaker 4: we started our joint reinvestigation. But the timing was tough
Speaker 4: because it was March of twenty twenty, and we all
Speaker 4: remember what happened in March of twenty twenty, the world
Speaker 4: shut down as a result of the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 4: But to her credit, we pushed through and we continued
Speaker 4: to investigate, and we got a lot done despite the
Speaker 4: fact that we were all working remotely right.
Speaker 2: And do you recall a moment where, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: Teresa Hall sent you an email or called you on
Speaker 2: the phone and said, we're going forward with this, this
Speaker 2: is we're going to move on. This was there at
Speaker 2: one of those moments.
Speaker 4: Well, I think there were two moments that stand out
Speaker 4: to me. One was Teresa emailing me and accepting the case.
Speaker 4: The second was when she called me and said, I
Speaker 4: think we may have vaginal swabs from the victim's rape kit,
Speaker 4: which blew my mind because there was an entire hearing
Speaker 4: about the fact that all of the evidence was destroyed,
Speaker 4: but she got a tip that there may still be
Speaker 4: swabs from the victim's rape kit at the medical examiner's office.
Speaker 4: I knew that the DNA was going to be a
Speaker 4: game changer, so when she called me and told me
Speaker 4: she thought there was even a slight possibility that this
Speaker 4: vaginal swab was still available. That was huge for us.
Speaker 2: And Robert, what was it like for you getting all
Speaker 2: this news all of a sudden?
Speaker 3: She told me, you know, they did the DNA test
Speaker 3: and not only did they exclude you, but they also
Speaker 3: put it into codis and found a match. So I
Speaker 3: was like floored by all this. And she says you
Speaker 3: would be free by Thursday morning.
Speaker 2: And what was the reaction on the phone, Robert, what
Speaker 2: did that feel like?
Speaker 3: No, it was very special. I was very thankful for
Speaker 3: all of them. I've always told everybody I didn't do it,
Speaker 3: you know, and you know, you would get some responses
Speaker 3: such as, yeah, everybody says that, But I say, yeah,
Speaker 3: but everybody ain't telling you the truth. I said, I
Speaker 3: really am innocent. So I've had a lot of staff
Speaker 3: members from the prison contact me when I got out
Speaker 3: and they said, you know, you always said you were
Speaker 3: in this and we always knew there was something different
Speaker 3: about you, you know. So they still stay in touch.
Speaker 2: And so you were given your date of freedom. Was
Speaker 2: it the next day or it was Thursday? Was on Thursday?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Her birthday. Oh that's a great birthday.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's really nice present. All right, What was it
Speaker 2: like being free, finally walking out of there.
Speaker 3: Oh? Man, it's undescribable, you know, to actually walk out
Speaker 3: of that prison and know that that was it. The
Speaker 3: nightmare is finally over.
Speaker 2: Robert. What has it been like since your release?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's been very challenging. Remember nineteen eighty three, I
Speaker 3: went into a world I didn't know, and then in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, I come back into another world that I
Speaker 3: don't know anymore. You know, modern technology, cell phone, never
Speaker 3: seen one home depot, Walmart, all the different restaurants. Now
Speaker 3: there's just self checkout, as Susan and I became accustomed
Speaker 3: with together. It was pretty exciting. It's it's been it's
Speaker 3: been an adventure.
Speaker 2: Just coming out of prison during a pandemic. Not only
Speaker 2: are you having to adjust to, you know, decades that
Speaker 2: have passed by while you were in prison, but now
Speaker 2: you're coming out during a pandemic. What was that like
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It was that was challenging as well, because you know,
Speaker 3: everywhere you went required a face mask, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's like when I was walking by an armored car
Speaker 3: wearing a face mask, I'm like, if I would have
Speaker 3: done this in nineteen eighty three, they would have shot me.
Speaker 3: So then I found out, you know, there are obstacles,
Speaker 3: of course. So my goal when I got out was
Speaker 3: to get my voter registration car, to get my passport
Speaker 3: which I've never had one, which I thank god, to
Speaker 3: get my license. So I went over there with a
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three expired license to get it renewed. It
Speaker 3: was pretty exciting to see in their face trying to
Speaker 3: figure out how I'm bringing nineteen eighty three license to
Speaker 3: have a renewed right, You've been.
Speaker 2: Driving this whole time?
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Actually, Susan, let me ask what has been the challenge here.
Speaker 2: Robert was not eligible for compensation from the state after
Speaker 2: this exoneration. Can you talk about that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So, you know, I think that people see an exoneration
Speaker 4: and it's so beautiful and it's so joyful, and they
Speaker 4: believe that this is the end of the journey. But
Speaker 4: this is just the beginning of the next part of
Speaker 4: an individual's journey, where they have to heal from the
Speaker 4: trauma that they have suffered from their wrongful conviction. And
Speaker 4: although no amount of money will ever make anyone whole,
Speaker 4: certainly compensation goes a long way at helping someone get
Speaker 4: on their feet, get a job right, feel some sense
Speaker 4: of security. And in Florida currently there is a there
Speaker 4: is a bill pending to fix Florida's compensation statute. So
Speaker 4: right now, the statute in Florida prevents anyone who had
Speaker 4: any prior convictions compensation. And so Robert, when he was
Speaker 4: a teenager, he had two minor nonviolent felony convictions and
Speaker 4: now because of that, he is completely barred from seeking
Speaker 4: compensation through the Florida compensation scheme, even though he spent
Speaker 4: thirty seven years wrongfully incarcerated, including three years on death row.
Speaker 2: Right, and these charges had nothing to do with the
Speaker 2: crime that he was accused of. It was something from
Speaker 2: his teenage years, correct, So look at you. The call
Speaker 2: to action, Susan, I'll start with you. Is there anything
Speaker 2: that you know our audience who's listening to this, who's
Speaker 2: just outraged by these kinds of stories, anything that you
Speaker 2: know they any specific issues that you feel need changing
Speaker 2: and that we can help as audience members listening to this.
Speaker 4: Thanks for asking about that, Gilbert. So I am going
Speaker 4: to urge the audience if they want to learn more
Speaker 4: about how they can help us fix Florida's compensation statute.
Speaker 4: They should go to the Innocence Project web PAGs to
Speaker 4: learn how they can join us in calling on the
Speaker 4: Florida State legislature to finally fix the broken compensation statute
Speaker 4: in Florida. There right now is a bill that is
Speaker 4: pending that would make two critical changes, One that would
Speaker 4: allow individuals with prior convictions to see compensation, and two
Speaker 4: that would extend the very tight deadline that they had
Speaker 4: that Florida currently has of ninety days for a person
Speaker 4: who's been exonerated to file their request for compensation. So
Speaker 4: again I urge everyone to head over to the Innocence
Speaker 4: Project website and learn how they can support xoneries in
Speaker 4: Florida finally receive the compensation that they are entitled to.
Speaker 2: And Robert, is there anything from your point of view
Speaker 2: that could make life easier for recent exoneries.
Speaker 3: The most challenging thing is like for me, when I
Speaker 3: went to a bank to open a bank account, or
Speaker 3: when I try to get an apartment or even try
Speaker 3: to get a job. I have no history, so they're
Speaker 3: looking at me like I'm an alien. Where did I
Speaker 3: come from? You know, what was your past employment? Prison?
Speaker 3: What was your past resident prison, you know, so you
Speaker 3: don't want to tell this to your new employers or
Speaker 3: to a bank or whoever. So you know, you just
Speaker 3: have to kind of explain the story. And this is
Speaker 3: why I don't have a history.
Speaker 2: I'm going to enter the closing argument phase of this
Speaker 2: conversation today, and I think I'm going to start with Susan. Susan,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to give you the floor here. What
Speaker 2: do you want to say about your work with Robert
Speaker 2: and how the importance of what the Innocence Project does
Speaker 2: the importance of what the public can do in order
Speaker 2: to not only bring justice to these gross injustices, but
Speaker 2: also to prevent them from happening again.
Speaker 4: The Innocence Project just had its thirtieth anniversary in August,
Speaker 4: and over these last thirty years, we have learned so much,
Speaker 4: such about the criminal legal system and the significant flaws
Speaker 4: that we have that lead to wrongful convictions and also
Speaker 4: that just lead to unfair trials that bio late people's
Speaker 4: constitutional rights. There is a role for every single person
Speaker 4: in correcting and preventing wrongful convictions and preventing just injustice
Speaker 4: in the criminal legal system. I would urge people to
Speaker 4: see what issues are impacting your communities, and get out
Speaker 4: there and vote. We don't endorse anybody, but certainly get
Speaker 4: out there, educate yourself and understand the issues, because every
Speaker 4: single citizen has a role to play in correcting our very,
Speaker 4: very flawed criminal legal system.
Speaker 2: Well, I really want to thank you because I learned
Speaker 2: so much just listening to you today about the Florida
Speaker 2: justice system, and so I really am grateful for that.
Speaker 2: So thank you. And Robert will give you the closing argument,
Speaker 2: the real closing argument here. Anything you want to talk about,
Speaker 2: it's all yours.
Speaker 3: I'm just happy to be with my family. And my
Speaker 3: goal really is to tell people that, you know, if
Speaker 3: they support the Innocence Project in this I'm not the
Speaker 3: only one. There's still others in there, you know, and
Speaker 3: they need help. They're in the same predicament I was
Speaker 3: when I was begging for help. You know. They just
Speaker 3: don't see an out, you know, and without the Innocence
Speaker 3: Project and people like Susan, you know, they have no hope.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host,
Speaker 2: Gilbert King. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason
Speaker 2: Flamm and Kevin Wurdis. The senior producer for this episode
Speaker 2: is Jackie Pauley, and our producers are Lyla Robinson and
Speaker 2: Jeff Cliburn. Our editor is Roxandra Guidy. The music in
Speaker 2: this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 2: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 2: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good on
Speaker 2: all three platforms. If you're interested in more wrongful conviction
Speaker 2: stories in Florida, check out my new nine parts series
Speaker 2: Bone Valley. The podcast investigates the case of Leo Schofield,
Speaker 2: a young man accused of murdering his wife in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven and who has been in prison ever since,
Speaker 2: despite his unwavering claims of innocence. Subscribe to Bone Valley
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. You can find more information
Speaker 2: at Lava for Good dot com. Wrongful Conviction is a
Speaker 2: production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 2: Company Number one.
Speaker 1: Next week, on the guest hosted episodes of Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: investigative reporter Beth Shelburne, We'll talk with Jeffrey Hollman about
Speaker 1: the Alabama criminal justice system and Jeffery's experience of being
Speaker 1: incarcerated for ten years for a crime he did not commit.
Speaker 1: They'll talk about the crime, Jeffrey's time in prison, and
Speaker 1: the extremely rare pro se motions Jeffrey filed that eventually
Speaker 1: led to his release. Beth Shelburne is an Alabama native
Speaker 1: and a veteran journalist who has spent her career focused
Speaker 1: on the criminal justice system and the issue of mass incarceration,
Speaker 1: and this conversation will touch on many of the issues
Speaker 1: she's covered in her work. Listen next Monday in the
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction podcast Feed