Judge grants bail to death row prisoner 

 Judge grants bail to death row prisoner Jimmie Duncan 

After more than 25 years on death row, Jimmie Duncan inched one step closer to freedom Friday (Nov. 21) when Judge Alvin Sharp of the 4th Judicial District in Ouachita Parish granted him bail, setting it at $150,000. The decision comes nearly seven months after Sharp vacated Duncan’s 1998 first-degree murder conviction for killing his former girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter, Haley Oliveaux, finding that it was based in part on bite mark evidence now considered by experts to be junk science. 

The Ouachita Parish District Attorney’s Office has opposed Duncan’s release, arguing that Duncan is guilty of the murder. But in his bail ruling, Sharp pointed to evidence that the girl, who drowned, was at risk of seizure, meaning she could have died accidentally while in the tub. Sharp also noted the lack of blood or semen at the scene, contradicting the state’s position that Duncan raped Haley. And, he wrote in the ruling, there was a video, not presented at the trial, that Duncan’s legal team has alleged is evidence that — along with being based on debunked science — the bite-mark analysis in the case may have been fabricated.