30-Year Death Row Killer Walks Free – Sentence VACATED

Weathered Death Row sign on aged concrete wall

A man once condemned as a child killer walked off Louisiana’s death row on bail because a judge decided the “science” that helped put him there was never really science at all.

Story Snapshot

Louisiana death row inmate Jimmie “Chris” Duncan is free on bail after nearly 30 years, with his conviction and death sentence vacated.
The judge ruled the bite‑mark and autopsy evidence used to condemn him were “not scientifically defensible” and consistent with accidental drowning.
Prosecutors are fighting to reinstate his conviction and execute him, even as the child’s mother now says she believes he is innocent.
The case exposes how junk forensics, aggressive capital punishment, and fragile civil liberties intersect in Louisiana’s justice system.

How A Bathtub Death Became A Capital Murder Case

Haley Oliveaux was 23 months old when she died after an incident in a bathtub in Monroe, Louisiana, back in 1994. Prosecutors claimed her mother’s boyfriend, Jimmie “Chris” Duncan, raped and drowned her, turning a domestic tragedy into a capital murder narrative that fit the crime‑crackdown mood of the era. A grand jury indicted Duncan for first‑degree murder, and from that moment, every institutional incentive pushed toward one outcome: a conviction that could be sold as tough justice.

Authorities leaned hard on what sounded impressive to a lay jury: “bite‑mark” analysis and dramatic autopsy findings. Forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne told jurors Haley’s body bore bite marks that matched Duncan’s teeth, painting him as a sadistic predator. Years later, a video would surface showing West forcing a dental mold of Duncan’s teeth into the child’s body, apparently creating the very marks jurors were told proved a brutal assault. That visual evidence changes how you see every word of that original testimony.

Three Decades On Death Row Built On Discredited Forensics

By 1998, the jury had heard all it needed. Duncan was convicted of first‑degree murder and sentenced to death at Angola, Louisiana’s infamous penitentiary. Bite‑mark analysis carried the day even as serious scientists were already sounding alarms about its reliability. Across the Deep South, West and Hayne were the go‑to experts for prosecutors, repeatedly offering conclusions that just happened to align with the state’s theory. Over time, at least nine prisoners, including three from death row, would walk free after convictions linked to their work collapsed under modern scrutiny.

Duncan sat on death row for roughly 27 years while the scientific ground shifted under the very methods that helped condemn him. DNA exonerations in other West/Hayne cases, like Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer in Mississippi, showed how disastrously wrong their testimony could be. Even West has acknowledged that DNA rendered bite‑mark analysis essentially obsolete, though he defends much of his record. Meanwhile, Louisiana built a national reputation for wrongful capital convictions, with more than a dozen death row exonerations since the 1970s and a disturbingly high ratio of exonerations to executions.

The Judge, The Mother, And The Medical Record

Duncan’s break came when his lawyers and innocence advocates forced the courts to look again, this time with modern forensic experts and Haley’s full medical history on the table. At a 2023 evidentiary hearing, specialists testified that the supposed bite marks were not scientifically valid evidence of sexual assault and that Haley’s death was consistent with accidental drowning. Hospital records documented seizures and serious injuries in the weeks before she died, including a fall so severe it required a week‑long stay. Warm baths, doctors explained, can raise seizure risk in a vulnerable toddler.

Then came a voice almost no one expects in a case like this: Haley’s mother. Allison Layton Statham testified that she no longer believes prosecutors’ story and now thinks Duncan is innocent, saying her daughter was not murdered but died because she was sick. She described both her family’s life and Duncan’s as “destroyed by the lie.” That shift undercuts the emotional core of the state’s narrative and aligns more closely with the medical evidence than with the theatrical forensics that originally carried the day.

Freedom On Bail In A State Eager To Speed Up Executions

In April 2024, Fourth Judicial District Judge Alvin Sharp vacated Duncan’s conviction and death sentence, calling the key forensic evidence “not scientifically defensible” and finding clear and convincing indications of factual innocence. He later granted $150,000 bail, pointing out that the presumption of guilt was not great and proof was not evident. Duncan walked out of the Ouachita Parish Correctional Center the day before Thanksgiving into his parents’ arms, one of Louisiana’s longest‑serving death row prisoners ever to taste freedom on bond.

The state’s response shows how deeply invested its leadership remains in capital punishment. District Attorney Robert Tew is appealing, insisting the original evidence is sound and pressing to reinstate the conviction and death sentence so Duncan can be executed. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill opposed bail and argued Duncan should stay locked up while the Louisiana Supreme Court reviews the case. Their posture aligns with a broader push by Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration to restart executions after a long pause and to adopt nitrogen gas as a new execution method.

What This Case Says About Justice, Science, And Common Sense

For Americans who value limited government and personal liberty, Duncan’s story raises hard questions that cut beyond partisan talking points. A state that can hold a man on death row for nearly three decades on “evidence” now deemed scientifically indefensible is a state that needs tighter accountability, not looser reins. Conservative principles demand that when the government seeks the ultimate penalty, its proof must be rock solid, not built on junk science and courtroom showmanship.

None of this denies the horror of a child’s death or the community’s demand for safety. It does demand that the system distinguish carefully between tragedy, accident, and intentional evil. Here, the evolving science, the video of manufactured bite marks, the child’s seizure history, and the mother’s change of heart all point away from the original theory. As the Louisiana Supreme Court weighs whether to give the state back its death sentence, older Americans watching this saga might ask a simple question: if this can happen to him, what protects the rest of us?