Death Penalty News

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.”

Jimmie Christian Duncan learned in April 2025 that a Louisiana judge had dismissed his capital murder conviction and he would no longer face the prospect of execution. In 1998, a jury convicted Duncan of murdering his girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter, and he had been on death row ever since. Louisiana has a long and troubled death penalty history. From 1976 to 2015, 80% of the state’s capital sentences were reversed on appeal, and 12 people have been exonerated from its death row. But the Bayou State is not the only death penalty state with a wrongful conviction problem. Death row exonerations – when someone is released after being sentenced – have become more common in the United States . More than 200 people have been freed in the past half-century.