Former Louisiana dying row inmate Jimmie “Chris” Duncan is formally a free man following a unanimous ruling Monday by the Louisiana Supreme Court docket. Within the opinion, justices upheld a decrease courtroom’s determination to toss out Duncan’s 1998 conviction for killing his former girlfriend’s toddler, Haley Oliveaux, citing flawed forensics practices used to convict him.
Justice Cade R. Cole wrote on behalf of the seven-member courtroom that new proof introduced by Duncan’s authorized staff left little question that his conviction must be overturned.
“The post-conviction proof undermined the core factual premises on which the state depended,” Cole wrote within the official opinion.
Two different justices, together with Chief Justice John Weimer, issued opinions concurring with Cole.
“I’m flooded with reduction,” stated Chris Fabricant, a member of Duncan’s authorized staff and director of strategic litigation with the Innocence Challenge in New York, in an interview. “It might have been an ethical outrage for the conviction to be reinstated.”
The courtroom’s ruling got here after a 2025 Verite Information and ProPublica investigation examined the reliability of the important thing forensic proof used to convict Duncan, now 57. On the time, he confronted the potential for being put to dying as Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch dying penalty advocate, made strikes to expedite executions after a 15-year pause.
Duncan’s conviction was based mostly largely on now-discredited chew mark proof introduced by forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne. Their evaluation, which was crucial to Ouachita Parish prosecutors securing Duncan’s conviction, claimed to match marks on Haley’s physique to Duncan’s enamel.
However specialists have since deemed such proof, pretty widespread on the time of Duncan’s 1998 trial, to be junk science. In the meantime, the longtime partnership between West and Hayne has come underneath scrutiny from civil rights attorneys, forensic specialists and the courts over considerations concerning the validity of their methods.
Within the 28 years since Duncan’s trial, 9 different prisoners have been let out after being convicted partially on inaccurate proof given by West and Hayne. Three of these males have been on dying row. Duncan was the final individual awaiting an execution based mostly on the pair’s work.
In his opinion, Cole reexamined the usage of supposed chew marks, which have been the one bodily proof tying Duncan to the alleged crime. Cole pointed to a video of West’s 1993 examination of Haley, which was not proven to jurors at trial. In that recording, West will be seen taking a mildew of Duncan’s enamel and grinding it into and throughout the woman’s physique, seemingly creating chew marks the place none beforehand existed. Referencing earlier testimony from a protection skilled, Cole wrote that “it was ‘scientifically indefensible’ to determine these marks as having been made by Duncan, and that the angles proven within the West Video have been bodily inconceivable for a human chew.”
West has beforehand stated he was merely utilizing what he known as a “direct comparability” approach — through which he presses a mildew of an individual’s enamel immediately onto the placement of suspected chew marks.
Weimer wrote in a concurrence that the chew mark proof used to prosecute Duncan was much like “trial by water” exams utilized by witch-hunters within the seventeenth century, through which suspected witches have been certain with rope and lowered right into a physique of water. In the event that they floated, they have been thought of responsible of witchcraft, whereas those that “handed” the check by sinking typically drowned.
“We now look again at these practices as asinine and absurd, since those that fell sufferer to these practices typically didn’t survive, no matter whether or not they have been discovered responsible or harmless,” Weimer wrote. “The chew mark proof and the sexual abuse proof used within the trial in opposition to the accused has confirmed to be equally specious.”
Duncan’s prosecution “demonstrates we can’t be too cautious in figuring out whether or not the dying penalty must be applied in circumstances similar to this case due to the finality of the sentence and the impossibility of rectification,” Weimer wrote.“Such an irreversible and tragic consequence is inimical and deleterious to our system of justice if carried out based mostly on proof that’s devoid of legitimacy.”
“This Ought to Be the Finish of This Case”
Police arrested Duncan on Dec. 18, 1993. He was babysitting Haley that day within the residence he shared with the woman’s mom in West Monroe. Duncan informed regulation enforcement he had put the kid within the tub, then went downstairs to scrub dishes. When he heard a noise coming from the lavatory, he rushed upstairs to test on her and located Haley floating face down within the water. She was pronounced lifeless a couple of hours later.
Duncan was initially booked for negligent murder, however prosecutors upped the cost to first-degree homicide after Hayne and West performed Haley’s medical examination and claimed they found proof, together with the purported chew marks, that she had been sexually assaulted and deliberately drowned. Following two weeks of testimony throughout the trial in 1998, the jury discovered Duncan responsible and sentenced him to dying.
Whereas Duncan awaited an execution date, his new staff of postconviction attorneys uncovered proof that pointed to his innocence, together with an skilled witness who stated that the kid’s dying was not a murder however the results of an unintended drowning. As well as, investigators working for Duncan’s authorized staff interviewed a jailhouse informant who recanted his earlier trial testimony that Duncan had confessed to the crime.
Duncan’s conviction was overturned in April of final 12 months by former Ouachita Parish Choose Alvin Sharp. He was set free of jail on bail in December, however he continued to await a closing determination on his case after prosecutors appealed Sharp’s ruling.
Steve Tew, district legal professional for Ouachita and Morehouse parishes, has by no means wavered in his insistence that Duncan was responsible of homicide and that he must be put to dying. His workplace appealed Sharp’s determination to the state Supreme Court docket.
Throughout oral arguments in April, Tew stated that since Duncan was the one individual with Haley on the time of her dying, his guilt couldn’t be debated. “We don’t want the chew mark proof to place Mr. Duncan within the condo alone with this youngster,” Tew stated.
Haley’s mom, Allison Layton Statham, has publicly supported Duncan’s launch from jail and the overturning of his conviction; so have relations of Haley’s father, Lloyd Donald Oliveaux, who died in 1996. They’ve excoriated the state’s ways, claiming they repeatedly requested for a gathering with prosecutors to specific their considerations, however by no means obtained a response.
Tew, who didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Monday, stated on the April listening to that ought to the Supreme Court docket refuse to reinstate Duncan’s conviction, he would retry him, although he didn’t say what cost he would possibly pursue.
When requested concerning the prospect of Duncan being retried for homicide, Fabricant, the Innocence Challenge legal professional, stated, “If there’s any sense of equity and justice left, this must be the top of this case.”
Along with the Innocence Challenge, Duncan’s authorized staff contains the Mwalimu Middle for Justice in New Orleans and the Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner regulation agency in Atlanta.
