USA - Jimmie Duncan released (LA)

USA - Louisiana. Jimmie Duncan released on bail after 27 years on death row

November 26, 2025:

November 26, 2025 - Louisiana. Jimmie Duncan released on bail after 27 years on death row

A Louisiana man who spent nearly 3 decades on death row has been released on bail Wednesday after his conviction was overturned earlier this year.

Jimmie Duncan had originally been convicted of 1st-degree murder in 1998 after prosecutors accused him of raping and drowning 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux, the daughter of his then-girlfriend Allison Layton Statham.

Fourth Judicial District Court Judge Alvin Sharp threw out that conviction in April after hearing expert testimony that the forensic evidence which put Duncan behind bars was “not scientifically defensible” and that Oliveaux’s death appeared to be the result of an “accidental drowning.” Similar faulty forensic bite mark analysis has led to dozens of other wrongful convictions or charges.

“The presumption is not great that he is guilty,” Sharp wrote in his order Friday granting Duncan bail, citing the new evidence presented at an evidentiary hearing last year and Duncan’s lack of prior criminal history.

Duncan’s attorneys said in a statement that Sharp’s ruling earlier this year provided “clear and convincing evidence showing that Mr. Duncan is factually innocent.” They added that Duncan’s release on bail “marks a significant step forward for Mr. Duncan’s complete exoneration.”

Since 1973, more than 200 people on death row have been exonerated, including 12 people in Louisiana, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In Louisiana, which has one of the highest wrongful conviction rates in the nation, the last death row exoneration came in 2016. Earlier this month, a man who served decades in prison before being exonerated won election to serve as the chief recordkeeper of New Orleans’ criminal court.

Duncan, whose vacated conviction is still being reviewed by the Louisiana Supreme Court, was released after posting a $150,000 bond. He plans to live with a relative in central Louisiana.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who is pushing to hasten executions of death row inmates, said that Duncan should not be released on bail while the Louisiana Supreme Court reviews his case.

But the high court agreed to let a district judge rule on Duncan’s bail request.

During Duncan’s bail hearing in Ouachita Parish, the mother of the girl he was accused of killing told the judge that she had become convinced of Duncan’s innocence. Instead, Statham believed her daughter, who she said had a history of seizures, had accidentally drowned in a bathtub.

Her daughter “wasn’t killed,” Statham said according to court records. “Haley died because she was sick.”

Statham told the court that the lives of her family and Duncan “have been destroyed by the lie” she believed prosecutors and forensic experts had concocted.

Prosecutors had relied on bite mark analysis and an autopsy conducted by 2 experts later linked to at least 10 wrongful convictions, according to Duncan’s legal team, which described the pair as discredited “charlatans.”

Mississippi-based forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne examined Oliveaux’s body.

A video recording of the examination shows West “forcibly pushing a mold of Mr. Duncan’s teeth into the child’s body — creating the bite marks” later used to convict him, a court-filing from Duncan’s legal team stated. A state-appointed expert, unaware of this method, testified during trial that the bite marks on the body matched Duncan’s.

“The horror story that they put out and desecrated my baby’s memory makes me infuriated,” Statham said.

“I was not informed of anything that would have exonerated Mr. Duncan at all,” she added. “Had I been then, things would have turned out a lot different for Mr. Duncan and all of our families.”

An Associated Press review from 2013 found at least 2 dozen wrongful convictions or charges based on bite mark evidence since 2000.

“Bite mark evidence is junk science, and there is no more prejudicial type of junk science that exists than bite mark evidence,” M. Chris Fabricant, an Innocence Project lawyer representing Duncan, told the court during the bail hearing.

Hayne, the pathologist, is deceased. West has previously said that DNA testing has made bite mark analysis obsolete, yet he has defended his work in other cases that led to overturned convictions. The pair’s testimony led 2 Mississippi men, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, to serve a combined 3 decades in prison in 2 separate cases for the rape and murder of young girls until DNA evidence cleared them of the crimes.

Prosecutors are seeking to reinstate Duncan’s conviction and pointed to the 1994 grand jury indictment in his case as grounds for keeping him locked up, court records show. The office of Ouachita Parish District Attorney Robert Tew declined to comment, citing the Louisiana Supreme Court’s pending review.

Duncan was 1 of 55 people on death row in Louisiana, held at the state prison in Angola. After a 15-year hiatus, Louisiana carried out its 1st execution in March.

Duncan’s legal team described him as a “model prisoner” who helped other death row inmates obtain their GEDs and has “strong community support for his release.”

On Duncan’s case see also HoC 24/04/2025 and 21/11/2025.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/louisiana-death-row-inmate-released-bail-after-decades-127914437
https://innocenceproject.org/news/jimmie-chris-duncan-is-released-after-27-years-on-louisianas-death-row/#:~:text=(Monroe%2C%20LA%20%E2%80%93%20November%2026,a%20crime%20that%20never%20occurred.