After nearly three decades on death row, Louisiana inmate Jimmie Duncan is free on $150,000 bail after his conviction for murdering a child was overturned.
Duncan was sentenced to die in 1998 for the death of 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux, the daughter of his then-girlfriend, whom he was accused of raping and drowning on December 18, 1993. The Louisiana Supreme Court is still reviewing his vacated conviction.
Freed After ’Junk Science’
Duncan was released from Louisiana’s notorious Angola State Prison on Wednesday, November 26, after 27 years behind bars.
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In a bombshell May 2025 ruling, Judge Alvin Sharp of Ouachita Parish declared there was “clear and convincing” proof that Mr. Duncan was actually innocent in the alleged murder of Oliveaux, a case built on junk science from disgraced forensic “experts” Michael West and Steven Hayne, who’ve helped send at least nine other innocent people to prison. The judge also blasted Duncan’s original defense team for botching his trial.
During Duncan’s bail hearing, Oliveaux’s mother, Allison Layton Statham, said her child had a history of seizures and believed she had accidentally drowned in a bathtub.
Jimmie Duncan Was Model Prisoner
“Mr. Duncan’s release marks a significant step forward in his decades-long fight for justice — but the fight is not over,” said Chris Fabricant, Duncan’s Innocence Project attorney declared in a press statement.
"Mr. Duncan was wrongly convicted based on the fraudulent forensics of Drs. Steven Hayne and Michael West, woefully ineffective defense counsel, and the State’s patent misconduct. Mr. Duncan’s incarceration was a gross miscarriage of justice – his execution would have been a moral outrage," Fabricant continued.
Duncan had no prior criminal record, nowhere near the monstrous crime he was falsely accused of. Even behind bars, he became a model inmate, tutoring fellow death-row prisoners for their GEDs and devoting himself to the prison’s ministry program. For nearly 30 years, Duncan had been a steady, positive force, not the villain prosecutors once painted him to be.
"Mr. Duncan is one step closer to the life stripped away from him so many years ago, and we are committed to reaching the moment when he walks as a fully free, innocent man,” said Scott Greene, Duncan’s long-time pro bono attorney.
Bogus Evidence
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During a March hearing, Greene introduced a shocking 1993 video that showed a dentist violently grinding a dental mold of the suspect’s teeth into the face and arm of a dead toddler during a post-mortem exam. The disturbing display was what prosecutors once claimed proved their case.
Those so-called “bite marks,” which jurors were told matched the suspect, became the centerpiece of Duncan’s conviction. Greene blasted the evidence as pure fraud, telling the appeals panel the marks were manufactured, not discovered.
A stunning nine prisoners have already walked free after being convicted with the help of bogus “expert” evidence from dentist West and his sidekick, pathologist Hayne, who were once hailed as Mississippi’s forensic dream team.
Seven of those wrongful convictions hinged on the now-debunked bite-mark analysis, a controversial practice that critics say should never have been allowed in a courtroom. Even more chilling, three of the men they helped put away had been sentenced to death.
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