Louisiana Death Row Prisoner Jimmie Duncan Released on Bail After Evidence Shows He is “Factually Innocent”
/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.”
“[T]his court finds that a proper assessment [under relevant law] reveals there are not legally sufficient grounds upon which to prosecute [Mr. Duncan] and, thus, [Mr. Duncan] is entitled to bail as though he had not been convicted of the offense in question.”
BAIL ORDER SIGNED BY LOUISIANA DISTRICT JUDGE ALVIN SHARP, NOVEMBER 21, 2025
Last April, Judge Sharp set aside Mr. Duncan’s first-degree murder conviction and death sentence. Mr. Duncan was sentenced to death in 1998 for the 1993 death of his girlfriend’s toddler based largely on questionable “bite-mark” evidence. His conviction relied on forensic evidence and testimony provided by dentist Dr. Michael West and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose work has been discredited. Judge Sharp held that expert testimony demonstrated the bite mark analysis used against Mr. Duncan is “no longer valid” and “not scientifically defensible.” According to an investigation by ProPublica, Mr. Duncan stands to be the tenth individual freed from prison after it was proven that their convictions were based at least in part on inaccurate evidence stemming from the work of these two doctors using questionable forensic techniques now characterized by many experts as “junk science.” [MORE]
