Jimmie “Chris” Duncan is Released After 27 Years on Louisiana’s Death Row 

(Monroe, LA – November 26, 2025) Jimmie “Chris” Duncan was released on bail today after 27 years on death row at Louisiana’s Angola prison following a wrongful conviction for a crime that never occurred. 

In May 2025, Judge Alvin Sharp of the 4th Judicial District in Ouachita Parish ruled that clear and convincing evidence proves Mr. Duncan is factually innocent in the alleged murder of Haley Oliveaux, a charge that was based entirely on junk science proffered by discredited forensic analysts Michael West and Steven Hayne, who are responsible for at least nine other wrongful convictions. Judge Sharp also found that Mr. Duncan’s trial attorneys failed to provide effective assistance of counsel. Following a three-day hearing in July, Judge Sharp granted Mr. Duncan bail, allowing him to be released while the State appeals the order overturning his conviction.

“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, Mr. Duncan’s Innocence Project attorney. “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.”

“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 of Mr. Duncan’s long-time pro bono team at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, which includes attorneys Scott Greene, Ann Ferebee, Christian Bromley, and Jackson Bailey.  

The Court’s order to grant Mr. Duncan bail was welcomed by his family and many of Haley’s surviving relatives — including her mother — all of whom have declared their public support of Mr. Duncan’s innocence and release. Mr. Duncan had no criminal history — much less of the heinous acts for which he was wrongfully convicted. Adding to his lack of a past criminal record, his role as a GED tutor for others on death row, and his longtime devotion to the prison ministry program highlight the positive influence Mr. Duncan has had during his three decades of incarceration. 

Today’s events follow a six-day evidentiary hearing in September 2024 where Mr. Duncan proved his innocence and made clear the utter failure of his original trial attorneys to provide an adequate defense. Mr. Duncan’s jury never saw the stark evidence of forensic fraud, including a videotape of Dr. West using a mold of Mr. Duncan’s teeth to create the “bite marks” on Haley’s body that were “matched” to Mr. Duncan at trial.  In its order overturning Mr. Duncan’s conviction, the Court noted the “wide divide” between the evidence presented at Mr. Duncan’s 1998 trial and the significant new scientific, forensic, and testimonial evidence that has emerged since his conviction showing that Haley’s death was a tragic accident. In its recent bail order, the Court found that the proof against Mr. Duncan is not evident, the presumption is not great that he is guilty, and that there are no legally sufficient grounds upon which to prosecute Mr. Duncan. The State has appealed the decision finding Mr. Duncan factually innocent and vacating his conviction to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which will hear Mr. Duncan’s case in early 2026.  

A Tragic Accident

On December 18, 1993, while his live-in girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter, Haley, was in the bathtub, Mr. Duncan briefly stepped away and returned to find her unconscious. He tried to perform CPR and rushed to neighbors for help who called paramedics. Doctors were unable to revive Haley and she was pronounced dead at the hospital within the hour. Shocked and grief-stricken, Mr. Duncan, who has always maintained his innocence, gave two statements to authorities, both of which aligned with the investigation conducted by the police and are consistent with current scientific understanding of the evidence, as demonstrated at the 2024 hearing. 

In the weeks prior to her death, Haley suffered from a series of seizures and head injuries, the final injury stemming from a fall that resulted in multiple skull fractures and a hospital stay for nearly a week. Returning home just two weeks before her drowning, these injuries increased her risk of subsequent seizures, which could be triggered by, among other things, warm baths. However, none of this information demonstrating the accidental nature of her drowning was presented at Mr. Duncan’s trial. 

The Role of False Forensic Evidence

On the day of the accident, Haley’s body was transported to Jackson, Mississippi to be autopsied by Dr. Hayne, who enlisted his business partner, Dr. West — a forensic “odontologist” — to help identify what he claimed were potential bite marks on Haley’s body. Following a cursory visual examination, Dr. Hayne concluded that Haley had been bitten and sexually assaulted “at or about the time of death” and immediately reported his theory to law enforcement. 

In a shocking video-taped experiment the following day, Dr. West pressed molds of Mr. Duncan’s teeth into Haley’s body — creating the “bite marks” later “matched” to Mr. Duncan’s teeth at trial. Neither the State’s testifying expert, who unsurprisingly agreed that the bite marks matched Mr. Duncan’s dentition, nor the jury, ever saw this damning video evidence of Dr. West creating the evidence used to convict Mr. Duncan. 

Similarly, Dr. Hayne, who failed to pass the forensic pathologist credentialing test, erroneously concluded that Mr. Duncan had sexually assaulted and forcibly drowned Haley. Two board-certified forensic pathologists testified at the 2024 hearing that Dr. Hayne’s autopsy was careless, superficial, and contrary to accepted practice, and that his conclusions were false and scientifically unsupported. At the 2024 hearing, new evidence was introduced showing that Dr. Hayne was performing 1200-1300 autopsies a year at the time of Haley’s death. This outrageous volume was more than five times the maximum allowed by the National Association of Medical Examiners to maintain board certification. It also explained why the supposed autopsy of Haley’s body was so perfunctory and led to Mr. Duncan’s wrongful conviction and death sentence. 

One in four people exonerated since 1989 were wrongfully convicted based on false or misleading forensic evidence, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Mr. Duncan’s case is a stark example of how unreliable forensic evidence can lead to a wrongful conviction. Until today, Mr. Duncan was the only known person still on death row as a result of the flawed testimony of Drs. Hayne and West. Together, the nine men and women wrongfully convicted by these “experts” have spent more than a century wrongfully imprisoned. Indeed, there are at least 39 documented wrongful convictions and indictments in the U.S. attributable to the discredited technique of bite mark matching. Even non-fraudulent bite mark evidence has been exposed as junk science since the time of Mr. Duncan’s trial. 

An Incentivized Jailhouse Informant

Jailhouse informant testimony — another leading contributing factor to wrongful convictions — also played a role in Mr. Duncan’s case. At trial, the jury heard from a man who had been briefly incarcerated with Mr. Duncan who claimed that Mr. Duncan confessed to the alleged crime while in jail together. The post-conviction investigation by Mr. Duncan’s pro bono team revealed that this informant had sought leniency from the State for his own criminal charges in return for his testimony at trial, a fact not disclosed to Mr. Duncan’s trial counsel or the jury. Another witness present at the time of the supposed confession has since confirmed that Mr. Duncan never confessed.  

The promise or expectation of receiving leniency or other benefits in exchange for testimony creates a strong incentive for witnesses to lie and has played a role in 19% of the Innocence Project’s exonerations and releases to date. In many cases like this one, these benefits are never disclosed to the court. 

The Court’s determination of Mr. Duncan’s innocence earlier this year, coupled with the decision to grant bail to Mr. Duncan and his release today, represent a significant step toward Mr. Duncan’s complete exoneration.

Mr. Duncan is represented by Naila Campbell of Mwalimu Center for Justice; Chris Fabricant and Peter Neufeld of the Innocence Project; Scott Greene, Christian Bromley, Ann Ferebee, and Jackson Bailey of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP.