Louisiana Death Row Prisoner Jimmie Duncan Released on Bail After Evidence Shows He is ​“Factually Innocent”

On November 26, 2025, Jimmie Duncan was released on bail from Louisiana’s Angola prison after spend­ing 27 years on death row for a crime that a court now says nev­er occurred. Ouachita Parish District Attorney Robert Tew opposed Mr. Duncan’s release on bail and main­tains that he is guilty of rape and mur­der. Mr. Duncan’s attor­neys dis­pute this and say Judge Alvin Sharp’s bail rul­ing ​“acknowl­edged the clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence show­ing Mr. Duncan is factually innocent.”

“[T]his court finds that a prop­er assess­ment [under rel­e­vant law] reveals there are not legal­ly suf­fi­cient grounds upon which to pros­e­cute [Mr. Duncan] and, thus, [Mr. Duncan] is enti­tled to bail as though he had not been con­vict­ed of the offense in question.” — Bail Order signed by Louisiana District Judge Alvin Sharp, November 21, 2025

Last April, Judge Sharp set aside Mr. Duncan’s first-degree mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Mr. Duncan was sen­tenced to death in 1998 for the 1993 death of his girlfriend’s tod­dler based large­ly on ques­tion­able ​“bite-mark” evi­dence. His con­vic­tion relied on foren­sic evi­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny pro­vid­ed by den­tist Dr. Michael West and pathol­o­gist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose work has been dis­cred­it­ed. 

Judge Sharp held that expert tes­ti­mo­ny demon­strat­ed the bite mark analy­sis used against Mr. Duncan is ​“no longer valid” and ​“not sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly defen­si­ble.” According to an inves­ti­ga­tion by ProPublica, Mr. Duncan stands to be the tenth indi­vid­ual freed from prison after it was proven that their con­vic­tions were based at least in part on inac­cu­rate evi­dence stem­ming from the work of these two doc­tors using ques­tion­able foren­sic tech­niques now char­ac­ter­ized by many experts as ​“junk science.”

Mr. Duncan was arrest­ed in 1993 for the mur­der of Haley Oliveaux, the 23-month-old daugh­ter of his girl­friend. He was found guilty based large­ly on now-dis­cred­it­ed bite mark evi­dence pre­sent­ed by Drs. West and Hayne. New expert tes­ti­mo­ny, pre­sent­ed over the past year and cit­ed by Judge Sharp in his bail order, sug­gests that the child’s death result­ed not from homi­cide but from acci­den­tal drown­ing. Judge Sharp also cit­ed evi­dence of pre­vi­ous head injuries Haley had suf­fered that could have explained her death.

Mr. Duncan has long main­tained his inno­cence, explain­ing that he left Haley in the bath­tub alone while he washed dish­es, and returned to find her float­ing face down. Haley’s moth­er, Allison Layton Statham, tes­ti­fied at Mr. Duncan’s first bail hear­ing in July 2025, that she believed him to be innocent.

“Mr. Duncan is one step clos­er to the life stripped away from him so many years ago, and we are com­mit­ted to reach­ing a moment when he walks as a ful­ly free, innocent man.” — Scott Green, Attorney for Mr. Duncan

In oppos­ing bail for Mr. Duncan, the Ouachita District Attorney’s Office called him ​“a safe­ty risk not only to the victim’s fam­i­ly, but also the gen­er­al pub­lic.” Mr. Duncan’s release was wel­comed by his fam­i­ly and the sur­viv­ing rel­a­tives of Haley’s fam­i­ly. 

While in Angola prison, Mr. Duncan act­ed as a GED tutor for oth­ers on death row and was active in the prison min­istry pro­gram. The state has appealed the rul­ing made ear­li­er this year that found Mr. Duncan fac­tu­al­ly inno­cent and vacat­ed his con­vic­tion. The case is sched­uled to be heard in early 2026.

Twelve indi­vid­u­als have been exon­er­at­ed and freed from Louisiana’s death row since 1973.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Pam Quanrud, December 2, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde