In demise penalty instances, the hunt for justice will not be America’s highest worth

Jimmie Christian Duncan realized in April 2025 {that a} Louisiana decide had dismissed his capital homicide conviction and he would 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 a protracted and troubled demise penalty historical past. From 1976 to 2015, 80% of the state’s capital sentences have been reversed on enchantment, and 12 individuals have been exonerated from its demise row.

However the Bayou State will not be the one demise penalty state with a wrongful conviction drawback. Loss of life row exonerations – when somebody is launched after being sentenced – have grow to be extra widespread in america. Greater than 200 individuals have been freed up to now half-century.

DNA proof has been concerned in solely a handful of these instances, however not Duncan’s. Many of the others have occurred when protection legal professionals found new proof of defective eyewitness identification, or when prosecutorial misconduct forged 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 regulation, reconsideration of convictions could be based mostly on new details relatively than simply constitutional or authorized violations of a defendant’s rights.

As Louisiana District Choose Alvin Sharp defined in his April 2025 opinion in Duncan’s case, “To probably achieve success on a ‘factual innocence’ declare, a Petitioner shall current new, dependable, and non-cumulative proof that will be legally admissible at trial and that was not recognized or discoverable at or previous to trial…”

In overturning Duncan’s conviction, Sharp highlighted new understandings concerning the unreliability of so-called chunk mark evaluation that performed a key position in Duncan’s case. He additionally cited the testimony of “a really compelling witness” who testified that the kid’s demise was “unintentional drowning,” not murder.

It might sound odd that it took the factual innocence statute in 2021 to make what Sharp did attainable. However as a demise penalty scholar, I consider it’s the most recent reminder that, even in capital instances, the hunt for justice has not at all times been america’ highest worth.

The shadow of Herrera v. Collins

States comparable to Louisiana have enacted factual innocence statutes as a result of there isn’t a nationwide, constitutional bar to executing people who find themselves factually harmless. Greater than three a long time in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court docket 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 might violate the Fourteenth Modification’s assure of due means of regulation.

Herrera wished 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 Court docket refused to think about that proof.

A 6–3 majority concluded that proof of precise innocence was “not related … absent another constitutional violation.” This ruling implies that as long as relevant authorized procedures are adopted, it doesn’t matter whether or not the end result is appropriate.

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 Court docket opened the door for litigating precise innocence claims beneath the Antiterrorism and Efficient Loss of life Penalty Act, which restricts prisoners’ habeas corpus rights.

The court docket allowed prisoners who can present proof of innocence to file a habeas petition even after the traditional time restrict for submitting one. Nevertheless it didn’t say that executing the harmless would violate the Structure.

States have responded to this by enacting legal guidelines that enable individuals convicted of crimes to carry precise innocence claims, based mostly on newly found DNA proof.

In 2012, Massachusetts handed a regulation permitting prisoners to hunt “forensic or scientific evaluation” of proof in help of a declare of “factual innocence of the crime for which the particular 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 could search post-conviction reduction on the grounds that he’s factually harmless of the offense for which he was convicted.”

In Louisiana, new proof could be “scientific, forensic, bodily, or nontestimonial documentary proof.” Beneath some situations, testimonial proof can also be admissible to show innocence in post-conviction instances.

Somebody searching for such reduction should show “by clear and convincing proof that, had the brand new proof been offered at trial, no rational juror would have discovered the petitioner responsible past an affordable doubt.”

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 impact … on the necessity for finality in capital instances.”

It seems 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 regulation repealed, calling it a “woke, hug-a-thug coverage” and arguing that “as soon as a verdict has been finalized, there are not any extra ‘get out of jail free’ playing cards.”

A invoice within the Louisiana Legislature to vary the regulation has been launched within the 2025 legislative session.

The stakes couldn’t be increased.

As former Supreme Court docket Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in his Herrera dissent, “Simply as an execution with out satisfactory safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can show that he’s harmless. The execution of an individual who can present that he’s harmless comes perilously near easy homicide.”

Louisiana will quickly must resolve how shut it’s prepared to return to producing that tragic end result.