{"id":50450,"date":"2025-11-27T01:38:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T07:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=50450"},"modified":"2025-11-27T05:51:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T11:51:21","slug":"louisiana-death-row-inmate-released-on-bail-after-decades-behind-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=50450","title":{"rendered":"Louisiana death row inmate released on bail after decades behind bars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana man who spent nearly three decades on death row<\/a> has been released on bail Wednesday after his conviction was overturned earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jimmie Duncan had originally been convicted of first-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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cnot scientifically defensible\u201d and that Oliveaux\u2019s death appeared to be the result of an \u201caccidental drowning.\u201d Similar faulty forensic bite mark analysis has led to dozens of other wrongful convictions or charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe presumption is not great that he is guilty,\u201d Sharp wrote in his order Friday granting Duncan bail, citing the new evidence presented at an evidentiary hearing<\/a> last year and Duncan\u2019s lack of prior criminal history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duncan\u2019s attorneys said in a statement that Sharp\u2019s ruling earlier this year provided \u201cclear and convincing evidence showing that Mr. Duncan is factually innocent.\u201d They added that Duncan’s release on bail \u201cmarks a significant step forward for Mr. Duncan\u2019s complete exoneration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> came in 2016. Earlier this month, a man who served decades in prison<\/a> before being exonerated won election to serve as the chief recordkeeper of New Orleans\u2019 criminal court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

But the high court agreed to let a district judge rule on Duncan\u2019s bail request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Duncan\u2019s 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\u2019s innocence. Instead, Statham believed her daughter, who she said had a history of seizures, had accidentally drowned in a bathtub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her daughter \u201cwasn\u2019t killed,\u201d Statham said according to court records. “Haley died because she was sick.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statham told the court that the lives of her family and Duncan \u201chave been destroyed by the lie\u201d she believed prosecutors and forensic experts had concocted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prosecutors had relied on bite mark analysis and an autopsy conducted by two experts later linked to at least 10 wrongful convictions<\/a>, according to Duncan\u2019s legal team, which described the pair as discredited \u201ccharlatans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mississippi-based forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne examined Oliveaux\u2019s body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A video recording of the examination shows West \u201cforcibly pushing a mold of Mr. Duncan\u2019s teeth into the child\u2019s body \u2014 creating the bite marks\u201d later used to convict him, a court-filing from Duncan\u2019s legal team stated. A state-appointed expert, unaware of this method, testified during trial that the bite marks on the body matched Duncan\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe horror story that they put out and desecrated my baby\u2019s memory makes me infuriated,” Statham said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was not informed of anything that would have exonerated Mr. Duncan at all,\u201d she added. \u201cHad I been then, things would have turned out a lot different for Mr. Duncan and all of our families.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Associated Press review from 2013<\/a> found at least two dozen wrongful convictions or charges based on bite mark evidence since 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBite mark evidence is junk science, and there is no more prejudicial type of junk science that exists than bite mark evidence,\u201d M. Chris Fabricant, an Innocence Project lawyer representing Duncan, told the court during the bail hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Prosecutors are seeking to reinstate Duncan\u2019s 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\u2019s pending review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duncan was one of 55 people on death row in Louisiana, held at the state prison in Angola. After a 15-year hiatus, Louisiana carried out its first execution<\/a> in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duncan\u2019s legal team described him as a \u201cmodel prisoner\u201d who helped other death row inmates obtain their GEDs and has \u201cstrong community support for his release.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

abcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana man who spent nearly three 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 first-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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":50451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[20924,1247,2400],"class_list":["post-50450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-after","tag-death","tag-louisiana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50452,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50450\/revisions\/50452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}