Man wrongfully imprisoned for 37 years reveals the biggest shocks after returning to society
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Innocence Project of Florida
A man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 37 years has revealed how challenging it's been to return to normal society.
After spending such a long time behind bars, it's naturally going to feel very strange being back in the real world.
It's going to be strange after just five years, but 37... I mean, a lot has happened in that time.
Robert DuBoise was just 18 at the time 19-year-old Barbara Grams was raped and beaten to death as she walked home from her Tampa restaurant job in 1983.
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With help from the Innocence Project organization that aids the wrongfully convicted, DuBoise was released from prison in 2020 after it was found he was completely innocent.
Nonetheless, he spent 37 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, which is of course going to have a detrimental effect on any individual.
Well, in collaboration with Tampa Bay Times journalists Christopher Spata and Dan Sullivan, DuBoise revealed some of the biggest shocks he experienced after returning to society.
In an AMA (ask me anything), one Reddit user asked the former prisoner what have been the 'hardest adjustments' to make now he's back in regular society.
He replied: "The phone. Before I went in, if you wanted to go somewhere you used paper maps. No google maps or a cell phone.
"Not to mention things you can look up on the internet now that you would have had to drive, who knows how many miles to find what you were looking for.
"A part, a piece of furniture, you can browse without going anywhere. ... I stayed up all night with the phone the first few nights.
"At first I couldn't answer it when my lawyer Susan called me. I was tapping it, because I didn't know how to slide it. It was overwhelming at first. I'd seen cell phones in prison, that people would get once in a while, but I would never use them."
America has changed a lot in 37 years, which left DuBoise feeling a bit out of place.
On the Reddit AMA, which has unfortunately now closed, the former inmate was asked about some of his 'craziest realizations' upon returning to society.
"Everything. Listen, I didn’t even recognize a store anymore," he began.
"Kmart, Zayres, Kash N Karry, were all gone. When I left there was only one mall that I knew of. It was only a few well-known stores back then. I walked into a mall when I first got out, I was like forget it — I’m in a small city.
"I got lost in a Target when I first got out."