A Netflix documentary calls into question the methods of forensic examiners in the case
“Definitely, the system in Louisiana is broken.”
That’s the frank assessment of Matilda Carbia with the Mwalimu Center for Justice, one of the organizations representing Jimmie “Chris” Duncan. He’s among more than 50 people incarcerated on death row for whom Gov. John Bel Edwards has used his clemency power to push for state parole board reviews in order to switch their execution sentences to life in prison.
Critics of the death penalty point out 11 people facing the electric chair or lethal injection have been exonerated or had their convictions reversed in Louisiana since it reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Over that same period, 28 people have been executed.
Attorney General Jeff Landry, who will become governor in January, opposes Edwards’ clemency efforts and filed a lawsuit to stop them ahead of his election. Since then, pardon board members have denied consideration to the handful of death row inmates who’ve appeared before them, and Landry is expected to block the rest once he becomes governor.
Edwards — the grandson, son and brother of former sheriffs — has said the fallibility of police investigators and prosecutors is reason enough to curtail the death penalty in Louisiana, a punishment that conflicts with his personal pro-life beliefs.
“The death penalty is so final,” Edwards told lawmakers in March. “When you make a mistake, you can’t get it back.”
Duncan’s attorneys believe the case against their client is the victim of such a mistake. They withdrew his clemency petition Dec. 5, resigning themselves to its futility.
It is very hard to look at the evidence we have put forward and come to any conclusion other than the prosecution's horrific story about rape and murder was based on falsified, fraudulent and unvalidated ‘scientific evidence.
– Tania Brief, Innocence Project attorney
Duncan was convicted in the December 1993 death of 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux of West Monroe. The young girl was the daughter of his girlfriend at the time. He told investigators he left the girl alone in the bathtub for a few minutes while he washed dishes and returned to find her face down and unconscious. Duncan said he tried reviving the girl with CPR, but she would later be pronounced dead at a hospital.
Police originally charged Duncan with negligent homicide for leaving the child unattended. Her body was sent to Jackson, Mississippi, for a pathologist’s examination, which led to Duncan’s charges being upgraded to first-degree murder.
Pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne and dentist Dr. Michael West conducted the investigation. Hayne determined she was the victim of sexual assault, and West reported tooth marks on the girl’s body. Prosecutors inferred Duncan had forcibly drowned Haley to cover up his crime. A Ouachita Parish jury convicted him in 1998 and sentenced him to death.
The Louisiana Legislature approved a law in 2021 that allows the incarcerated to petition the court if new evidence clears them of a crime. Duncan’s attorneys, with the backing of the Innocence Project and the Mwalimu Center, presented that evidence a year ago and have their first court date in front of a judge on Jan. 8 — the same day Landry will be sworn in as governor.
“It is very hard to look at the evidence we have put forward and come to any conclusion other than the prosecution’s horrific story about rape and murder was based on falsified, fraudulent and unvalidated ‘scientific evidence,’” Tania Brief, a senior staff attorney with the Innocence Project, told the Illuminator in an interview earlier this month.
At the heart of evidence that attorneys say vindicates Duncan is a video that shows West using a mold of Duncan’s teeth multiple times to make bite marks in the girl’s body. Prosecutors prevented the jury from seeing the video, with the judge ruling that it didn’t support the defense’s claims of Duncan’s innocence. West wasn’t called as a witness because he was serving a one-year suspension from the American Board of Forensic Odontology for repeatedly stretching the conclusion of his findings in cases that involved bite marks.
One such case was featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary series “The Innocence Files.” Levon Brooks was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for the 1990 rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl in Noxubee County, Mississippi. He would serve 16 years in prison before DNA evidence led to his exoneration.
West performed bite analysis in the case, and Hayne concluded Brooks was responsible for the marks.
“Usually you find in these aggressive, violent sexual attacks, that’s where you’ll find a lot of bite marks,” West said in an interview featured in “The Innocence Files.”
“(I) don’t really know if I am qualified to get into all of the sociology or psychology of it, but they turn animalistic,” he added.
In the strikingly similar rape and killing of another 3-year-old girl in Noxubee County from 1992, Kennedy Brewer was sentenced to death after Hayne and West again provided corresponding dental evidence.
Brewer was exonerated after 15 years on death row after Justin Jefferson confessed to killing both young girls. He told investigators he never bit either of them.
For a report The New Republic published in March, journalist Lara Bazelon interviewed West and asked him about the claims Duncan’s attorneys make in the petition seeking to clear him in the death of Haley Oliveaux.
“They called them injuries, honey,” West told Bazelon. “Until you match them up with someone’s dentition, they are just injuries.”
The dentist said he did not testify at Duncan’s trial because he “would have broke down and cried.” Haley “could have been my daughter’s twin,” he said.
Hayne was fired as Mississippi state pathologist in 2008, after having performed 80% of all forensic exams in the state for more than 20 years, according to WLBT-TV. He has declined to discuss the flood of questions that surround his and West’s work.
The New Republic report counts at least seven convictions vacated through exonerations for which evidence Hayne and West provided evidence. More than two dozen other people who were incarcerated in bite mark cases nationwide have since been released, with their attorneys successfully arguing against what they called “junk science.”
In addition to what they consider faulty forensic evidence, Duncan’s legal team also notes the prosecution excluded Haley Oliveaux’s medical history. It includes multiple seizures and resulting head injuries. Just three weeks before she died, the girl was in Duncan’s care when a small dresser fell and caused a head wound.
A state investigation after the accident found no evidence of child abuse. Haley’s mother and grandmother were told about her tendency for seizures and were advised not to leave her alone in the bathtub. Duncan’s attorneys contend the girl had a seizure and drowned.
Also, the petition for exoneration notes a jailhouse informant has recanted claims that Duncan told him “it must have been the devil” that forced him to assault the young girl. Prosecutors also failed to disclose they showed leniency toward the informant for the information, in violation of the law.
Ouachita Parish District Attorney Robert Tew must respond to the petition from Duncan’s team by Dec. 25, a deadline that his lawyers consider a small victory because prosecutors aren’t compelled to answer unless a judge requires it.
Tew was elected to the post 25 years after Duncan was sentenced to death.
Tew has not responded to a message left with his office.
“We have an innocent client on death row and are eager to press his case,” said Brief, the Innocence Project attorney.
This article originally appeared in Louisiana Illuminator on December 18th, 2023.
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