Jimmie Christian Duncan realized in April 2025 {that a} Louisiana decide had dismissed his capital homicide conviction and he would now not 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 demise row ever since.
Louisiana has an extended and troubled demise penalty historical past. From 1976 to 2015, 80% of the state’s capital sentences have been reversed on attraction, and 12 folks have been exonerated from its demise row.
However the Bayou State isn’t the one demise penalty state with a wrongful conviction drawback. Dying row exonerations – when somebody is launched after being sentenced – have turn into extra widespread in the US. Greater than 200 folks have been freed up to now half-century.
DNA proof has been concerned in solely a handful of these instances, however not Duncan’s. A lot of the others have occurred when protection legal professionals found new proof of defective eyewitness identification, or when prosecutorial misconduct solid doubt on the legality of the conviction.
Duncan’s case stands out as a result of it was the primary profitable use of Louisiana’s 2021 factual innocence statute. Beneath that legislation, reconsideration of convictions could be primarily based on new info moderately than simply constitutional or authorized violations of a defendant’s rights.
As Louisiana District Decide 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 concerning the unreliability of so-called chew mark evaluation 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 demise was “accidental drowning,” not murder.
It may appear odd that it took the factual innocence statute in 2021 to make what Sharp did doable. However as a demise penalty scholar, I consider it’s the newest reminder that, even in capital instances, the search for justice has not at all times been the US’ highest worth.
The shadow of Herrera v. Collins
States similar to Louisiana have enacted factual innocence statutes as a result of there isn’t any nationwide, constitutional bar to executing people who find themselves factually harmless. Greater than three many years in the past, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom turned again a problem to the constitutionality of executing individuals who won’t have dedicated the crime for which they have been sentenced to demise.
In February 1992, 10 years after his conviction, Leonel Herrera filed a writ of habeas corpus – a authorized motion used to problem the legality of an individual’s imprisonment. Herrera mentioned he had new proof displaying he had not dedicated the homicide for which he had been sentenced to demise.
Herrera’s legal professionals argued that executing a factually harmless particular person would violate the Eighth Modification, prohibiting merciless and weird punishment. He additionally mentioned it will violate the Fourteenth Modification’s assure of due strategy of legislation.
Herrera needed the courts to think about affidavits given lengthy after Herrera’s conviction. These affidavits claimed that Raul Herrera, Leonel Herrera’s brother, had mentioned earlier than he died that he, not Leonel, was responsible of the killing for which Leonel had been convicted.
However the Supreme Courtroom refused to think about that proof.
A 6–3 majority concluded that proof of precise innocence was “not relevant … absent some other constitutional violation.” This ruling signifies that as long as relevant authorized procedures are adopted, it doesn’t matter whether or not the end result is appropriate.
In 1992, the Supreme Courtroom rejected a problem to the constitutionality of executing individuals who won’t have dedicated the crime for which they have been sentenced to demise.
AP Picture/Alex Brandon
Making a spot for precise innocence
Not surprisingly, demise penalty abolitionists have been appalled by the end result in Herrera’s case. They noticed it as condoning the execution of the harmless.
And in 2013, the Supreme Courtroom opened the door for litigating precise innocence claims underneath the Antiterrorism and Efficient Dying Penalty Act, which restricts prisoners’ habeas corpus rights.
The courtroom allowed prisoners who can present proof of innocence to file a habeas petition even after the conventional time restrict for submitting one. However it didn’t say that executing the harmless would violate the Structure.
States have responded to this by enacting legal guidelines that enable folks convicted of crimes to deliver precise innocence claims, primarily based on newly found DNA proof.
In 2012, Massachusetts handed a legislation permitting prisoners to hunt “forensic or scientific analysis” of proof in help 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 legal guidelines permitting post-conviction precise innocence claims, even with out DNA proof.
Beneath 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 could be “scientific, forensic, physical, or nontestimonial documentary evidence.” Beneath some situations, testimonial proof can be admissible to show innocence in post-conviction instances.
Somebody looking for such reduction should show “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 Penitentiary in Angola in September 2009.
AP Picture/Judi Bottoni
Opposition to precise innocence
Many individuals oppose permitting convicted criminals to reopen their instances, even when they’re, like Duncan, on demise row.
Within the Herrera case, for instance, Chief Justice William Rehnquist mentioned that doing so would have a “very disruptive effect … on the need for finality in capital cases.”
It appears like Louisiana will once more be weighing the worth of finality and justice in capital instances.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry desires to see its precise innocence legislation 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 vary the legislation has been launched within the 2025 legislative session.
The stakes couldn’t be larger.
As former Supreme 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 should determine how shut it’s prepared to come back to producing that tragic outcome.
