Jimmie Christian Duncan discovered in April 2025 {that a} Louisiana pass judgement on had brushed aside his capital homicide conviction and he would now not face the chance of execution. In 1998, a jury convicted Duncan of murdering his female friend’s 23-month-old daughter, and he have been on loss of life row ever since.
Louisiana has an extended and afflicted loss of life penalty historical past. From 1976 to 2015, 80% of the state’s capital sentences had been reversed on enchantment, and 12 other folks were exonerated from its loss of life row.
However the Bayou State isn’t the one loss of life penalty state with a wrongful conviction downside. Dying row exonerations – when any individual is launched after being sentenced – have change into extra not unusual in the USA. Greater than 200 other folks were freed up to now half-century.
DNA proof has been thinking about just a handful of the ones instances, however no longer Duncan’s. Lots of the others have took place when protection attorneys found out new proof of inaccurate eyewitness identity, or when prosecutorial misconduct solid doubt at the legality of the conviction.
Duncan’s case sticks out as it used to be the primary a hit use of Louisiana’s 2021 factual innocence statute. Underneath that regulation, reconsideration of convictions may also be according to new information moderately than simply constitutional or criminal violations of a defendant’s rights.
As Louisiana District Pass judgement on Alvin Sharp defined in his April 2025 opinion in Duncan’s case, “To possibly be successful on a ‘factual innocence’ claim, a Petitioner shall present new, reliable, and non-cumulative evidence that would be legally admissible at trial and that was not known or discoverable at or prior to trial…”
In overturning Duncan’s conviction, Sharp highlighted new understandings in regards to the unreliability of so-called chew mark research that performed a key position in Duncan’s case. He additionally cited the testimony of “a very compelling witness” who testified that the kid’s loss of life used to be “accidental drowning,” no longer murder.
It could appear peculiar that it took the factual innocence statute in 2021 to make what Sharp did imaginable. However as a loss of life penalty student, I consider it’s the most recent reminder that, even in capital instances, the hunt for justice has no longer at all times been the USA’ perfect worth.
The shadow of Herrera v. Collins
States akin to Louisiana have enacted factual innocence statutes as a result of there’s no national, constitutional bar to executing people who find themselves factually blameless. Greater than 3 a long time in the past, the U.S. Ultimate Courtroom grew to become again a problem to the constitutionality of executing individuals who may no longer have dedicated the crime for which they had been sentenced to loss of life.
In February 1992, 10 years after his conviction, Leonel Herrera filed a writ of habeas corpus – a criminal motion used to problem the legality of an individual’s imprisonment. Herrera mentioned he had new proof appearing he had no longer dedicated the homicide for which he have been sentenced to loss of life.
Herrera’s attorneys argued that executing a factually blameless particular person would violate the 8th Modification, prohibiting merciless and odd punishment. He additionally mentioned it will violate the Fourteenth Modification’s ensure of due strategy of regulation.
Herrera sought after the courts to believe affidavits given lengthy after Herrera’s conviction. The ones affidavits claimed that Raul Herrera, Leonel Herrera’s brother, had mentioned earlier than he died that he, no longer Leonel, used to be to blame of the killing for which Leonel have been convicted.
However the Ultimate Courtroom refused to believe that proof.
A 6–3 majority concluded that proof of exact innocence used to be “not relevant … absent some other constitutional violation.” This ruling implies that as long as acceptable criminal procedures are adopted, it doesn’t topic whether or not the end result is right kind.
In 1992, the Ultimate Courtroom rejected a problem to the constitutionality of executing individuals who may no longer have dedicated the crime for which they had been sentenced to loss of life.
AP Photograph/Alex Brandon
Making a spot for precise innocence
Now not strangely, loss of life penalty abolitionists had been appalled through the end result in Herrera’s case. They noticed it as condoning the execution of the blameless.
And in 2013, the Ultimate Courtroom opened the door for litigating precise innocence claims underneath the Antiterrorism and Efficient Dying Penalty Act, which restricts prisoners’ habeas corpus rights.
The court docket allowed prisoners who can display evidence of innocence to record a habeas petition even after the standard point in time for submitting one. But it surely didn’t say that executing the blameless would violate the Charter.
States have answered to this through enacting regulations that let other folks convicted of crimes to deliver precise innocence claims, according to newly found out DNA proof.
In 2012, Massachusetts handed a regulation permitting prisoners to hunt “forensic or scientific analysis” of proof in improve of a declare of “factual innocence of the crime for which the person has been convicted.”
5 different states – Louisiana, Maryland, Texas, Virginia and Utah – have handed regulations permitting post-conviction precise innocence claims, even with out DNA proof.
Underneath the Louisiana statute that Duncan invoked, “A petitioner who has been convicted of an offense may seek post-conviction relief on the grounds that he is factually innocent of the offense for which he was convicted.”
In Louisiana, new proof may also be “scientific, forensic, physical, or nontestimonial documentary evidence.” Underneath some stipulations, testimonial proof may be admissible to end up innocence in post-conviction instances.
Anyone in quest of such aid will have to end up “by clear and convincing evidence that, had the new evidence been presented at trial, no rational juror would have found the petitioner guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
A jail warden discusses the gurney used for deadly injections on the Louisiana State Jail in Angola in September 2009.
AP Photograph/Judi Bottoni
Opposition to precise innocence
Many of us oppose permitting convicted criminals to reopen their instances, even though they’re, like Duncan, on loss of life row.
Within the Herrera case, for instance, Leader Justice William Rehnquist mentioned that doing so would have a “very disruptive effect … on the need for finality in capital cases.”
It looks as if Louisiana will once more be weighing the price of finality and justice in capital instances.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry desires to peer its precise innocence regulation repealed, calling it a “woke, hug-a-thug policy” and arguing that “once a verdict has been finalized, there are no more ‘get out of jail free’ cards.”
A invoice within the Louisiana Legislature to modify the regulation has been presented within the 2025 legislative consultation.
The stakes may no longer be upper.
As former Ultimate Courtroom Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in his Herrera dissent, “Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can prove that he is innocent. The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.”
Louisiana will quickly must make a decision how shut it’s prepared to return to generating that tragic outcome.
