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Unraveling (IN)Justice – Part III

William Kissinger · May 9, 2025 · Leave a Comment

Willing Ears – Eager Lips…..And A Widening Divide

Jimmie Duncan with his girlfriend, Zoe, on a Visit at Angola’s Death Row

This is Part 3 of my series of articles on the 32-year journey of Jimmie Christian Duncan to prove his innocence from the confines of a Death Row cell in Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary. What got him there is a sordid tale – one of dirty Louisiana (in)justice, two now-discredited doctors, a jailhouse informant (read as “snitch”), and an attorney who decidedly did not provide effective assistance of counsel at trial. Oh, yeah…and throw in there a little bit of good ole’ Louisiana backwoods politics and a courtroom full of people who just would not listen….


I’ve talked about Jimmie a lot lately, and told you of how I know him well. I even told you that I used to sell him tacos, burritos, and cheeseburgers from the inmate club I was the founding president of, the Camp F VETS. I used to stop and talk to him if he was awake in the mornings when I picked up deli orders, or in the evenings when I delivered food, or on Tuesdays when I delivered fruit for indigent prisoners.

Jimmie was one of the guys I enjoyed stopping and chatting with a bit. He was one I just knew was in there bad, knew he was truly innocent of the horrible crime he was charged with – murder and sexual abuse of an infant. But the leap to that charge was fraught with corruption and lies from 2 doctors with extremely shaky backgrounds and a well-documented history of wrongful convictions – basically “hired guns” up for purchase by willing ears – and between cops and judges, there were plenty of those.

Jimmie was initially arrested and charged with negligent homicide. Under police interrogation, Duncan was inconsolable. Sobbing, he told the police, “I jerked her out of the bathtub and tried to get her to breathe, and I couldn’t. I tried to blow her air. I tried pushing on her little tummy.” When the officers concluded their interview with Duncan and asked if he wanted to add anything to his statement, he cried out, “I just want to bring the baby back.”

The West Monroe Police Department charged Duncan with negligent homicide, alleging that his carelessness and inattention led to the toddler’s death. After doctors examined Haley’s rectum and suspected possible abuse, they sent her body to Jackson, Mississippi, to be examined by Dr. Steven Hayne, a pathologist, and his colleague Dr. Michael West, a dentist. Their findings changed everything.

West identified tooth marks on Haley’s body, and Hayne stated that he found overwhelming evidence that she was the victim of a violent sexual assault. Based on those determinations, prosecutors concluded that Duncan had bitten Haley repeatedly, anally raped her, and forcibly drowned her to cover up his crimes. Prosecutors upgraded the charges to first-degree murder.

Louisiana had its own medical examiners at the time who were closer to the scene of the crime. Nonetheless, Haley Oliveaux’s body was taken from Glenwood Regional Medical Center in West Monroe, Louisiana, 120 miles east to Jackson, Mississippi, so it could be autopsied by Hayne. At the time, Hayne, who has never been certified in forensic pathology, was performing the majority of autopsies in Mississippi, some 1,200-1,500 per year. That’s an output other forensic pathologists describe as impossible (he was also holding down two hospital jobs and testifying regularly in court).

Duncan maintained his innocence from the beginning, but in 1998 a Ouachita Parish jury convicted him of capital murder and sentenced him to death. He was sent to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he has remained ever since, spending three decades awaiting execution and fighting to prove his innocence.

So…in spite of the local medical examiners who were highly qualified to conduct legitimate autopsies wherein violence was suspected, why was Haley sent to Mississippi for an autopsy?

Among those who traveled the 120 miles to observe Hayne’s work were the West Monroe police chief, a police detective and captain, and two assistant district attorneys. Although it isn’t particularly uncommon for prosecutors or police to witness an autopsy, it is unusual for them to farm them out and travel two hours and cross state lines to do so.

“Every prosecutor in Mississippi knows that if you don’t like the results you got from an autopsy, you can always take the body to Dr. Hayne.”
Leroy Riddick, Alabama medical examiner.

Simple answer? Because Hayne was a hired gun, and he and his partner, Dr. West, were for sale. And that was precisely what the Ouachita Parish cops needed, a willing accomplice. They got two. And as talk swirled in West Monroe – as things tend to do when something horrible happens in small, rural Southern towns – a light bulb flickered above somebody’s head, and began to blink on and off until it glowed brightly. That person was Michael Cruse.

The other major piece of evidence against Duncan was testimony from a jailhouse informant who claimed that Duncan confessed to his crime while behind bars. Michael Cruse testified that he shared a jail cell with Duncan for one day in late December 1993. (Cruse also claimed another inmate in the same cell confessed a felony to him, according to the letter he wrote to prosecutors.)

Duncan’s current attorneys have since obtained an affidavit from Michael Lucas, another inmate in the cell that day, who says that not only did Duncan not confess, he repeatedly asserted his innocence, despite Cruse’s constant attempts to elicit a confession.

Since then, two other inmates have reported being asked by Ouachita Parish law enforcement officials to lie about hearing Duncan confess. One of them, Charles Parker, who had worked as an informant for the FBI, wrote a letter of complaint to the district attorney’s office about the incident. In a later interview with Duncan’s post-conviction attorneys, he described how an investigator named Jay Via approached him and fed him information about Duncan’s case.

“He gave me details of the crime, saying that the child was less than two years [old] and that she had been anally raped,” Parker said “He told me that when I came forward I was to say that Jimmie had confessed to biting the child while he was raping her.”

Parker said that in exchange for his testimony, Via promised “he would talk to the DA and would get my sentence reduced.” Parker said he refused, because he thought Duncan was being railroaded. Via then allegedly threatened him with repercussions.

The prosecution not only never followed up on Parker’s initial letter, they never turned it over to Duncan’s trial attorneys—yet another violation of their legal requirement to share exculpatory evidence. The letter wasn’t discovered until Duncan’s post-conviction attorneys found it in the district attorney’s case file.

Police notes taken during an interview with the informant Cruse say that he asked for “ammunity [sic] from prosecution.” Cruse’s own letter offering to testify also mentioned his desire for leniency with respect to a burglary charge he was facing. Neither of those documents were turned over to Duncan’s trial attorneys either. By the time of Duncan’s trial, Cruse was facing a new charge of theft. That charge was dropped a month after he testified.

Inspector Via has a history of eliciting false confessions. In 1983 a man named Barry Beach was arrested in Ouachita Parish for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. After three days of intense questioning, he confessed to Via that he had killed three women in Louisiana and one in Montana. Beach’s lawyers were later able to prove Beach couldn’t have committed the three murders in Louisiana, because he wasn’t even in the state at the time. Beach still stands convicted of the fourth murder, which took place in Montana, though there are mounting questions about that one too.

Incredibly, Via then managed to elicit two more false confessions to one of those same murders. Months after the Beach confession, Via got convicted felons Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole to confess to one of the murders Beach didn’t commit. Just last year, a fourth man named Anthony Wilson was arrested for that murder after DNA tests linked him to the crime scene.

The state’s most telling witness was Michael Cruse, an inmate who on December 28, 1993, briefly shared a cell with defendant.   That day, Cruse testified that he woke to find defendant “ranting and raving about [his] charge.”   Cruse told defendant “[I]f you are innocent then justice will prevail but if you are guilty then you need to talk to God․” Defendant then began sobbing and made rambling  statements to Cruse, telling him that “the baby was pointing at his penis and that he said something about a bottle or bobble.”

Further, defendant said “[t]hat it must of been the devil in him cause the next thing he knew he blacked out again and when he came to he was trying to have sex with the baby.”   Still further, defendant said that the baby was hysterical and that “all I wanted was the baby to stop.”

Now, do you remember the whispered conversations when you were in school and somebody “tattled?” Finger pointing…cat-calling, name-calling, ostracizing? The tattler was no longer one of the “cool kids,” not with the “in crowd,” not invited to eat lunch with you? Remember that? Well, that’s pretty much how it is in adult life as well. NOBODY likes a snitch. Especially a rewarded snitch. There’s a saying on the streets and in the penitentiary: “Snitches get stitches.”

Well, well, well… look who crawled out from the bottom of the prosecutor’s filing cabinet. Turns out the star witness wasn’t missing—just strategically misfiled under ‘C’ for ‘Can’t Believe This Guy.’ Who knew justice came with footnotes… and secret snitches? Louisiana did, that’s who.

In State v. Jimmie Christian Duncan, Duncan’s incredible team only discovered – long after trial – a confidential informant, Michael Cruse, whose true motivation was buried so deep in their files that archaeologists were nearly called in. Filed somewhere between a gumbo recipe and a ‘Misc: Definitely Not Brady’ folder, this witness—who has given a full recantation 32 years after trial—was, defense counsel noted, quietly doing laps in the prosecutor’s memory since the mid-’90s.

Not only did Cruse recant his statements, but Charles Parker (who was, as noted earlier) a trusted confidential informant for the FBI, had written a letter of complaint to the District Attorney about what Cruse was doing. This letter was also kept from trial attorneys.

So, perhaps the most damaging elements in Duncan’s trial were the snitch, Michael Cruse, and the crooked cop, Jay Via, and the willing ears of a hungry prosecutor’s compelling urge for a headline-grabbing conviction.


Next, in Part IV, we’ll take a look at how this all tied together, and how (IN)Justice works in Louisiana. Thank you for staying with me on this journey through the underbelly of the South. See ya’ soon!

Let’s Talk Trauma & The Death Penalty.

William Kissinger · September 2, 2024 · Leave a Comment

Boy, is there a LOT going on! In the world of state AND federal politics, we have heated arguments and an attempted assassination and questions of whether it was staged or real….we have a former President assembling a group of followers and going to Arlington National Cemetery where he posed for a photo op after aides physically shoved a Park employee aside…do YOU have an opinion on that?

Also, in other areas, civil rights attorney Ben Crump speaks out on Democracy Now! after a judge dismisses counts against 2 officers in the Breonna Taylor case (a Black female EMT who was killed by police IN her home during a raid…a raid based upon a falsified police officer’s affidavit), saying that the victim’s boyfriend was responsible for her death because he produced a legally owned firearm and officers returned fire. Bear in mind that the warrant was falsified, it was in the wee hours of the morning, Breonna and her boyfriend were asleep, and the officers broke the doors down for entry. Hmmmmm….

FORMER President Trump has said that he would offer immunity to police officers if he is elected, when “Qualified Immunity” is one of the largest problems in policing, corrections and virtually every field where someone has power over another. This is another issue that divides us as a nation – those who oppose this are labelled as liberal and weak, and supporters of it are called radical and inhumane. Where does one draw the line? Where do YOU draw the line?


AND, the death penalty is back on the table and liberally in use around the country. The old arguments both for and against it are resurfacing, and the usual voices are raised in defense of their positions.


LAST NIGHT, August 29, 2024, at 6:15 pm, the State of Florida executed Loran Cole.

The Death Penalty in America: A System of Inequality

The Death Penalty is Looming.                                             Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash

The System’s Inequities

The execution of Loran Cole in Florida highlights the ongoing debate surrounding capital punishment in the United States. While proponents argue that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to crime and provides justice for victims, critics contend that it is a cruel and unusual punishment that disproportionately affects marginalized populations.

The death penalty system in America is often criticized for its systemic biases, particularly against individuals from underprivileged backgrounds. Here are some key factors that contribute to this inequality:

  • Racial Disparity: Studies consistently show that individuals from minority racial groups are more likely to be sentenced to death than their white counterparts, even when controlling for other factors. This racial bias can be attributed to systemic racism within the criminal justice system.
  • Economic Inequality: Individuals from low-income backgrounds often have limited access to quality legal representation, which can significantly impact the outcome of their cases. This can lead to harsher sentences, including the death penalty.
  • Mental Health Issues: Many individuals who are sentenced to death have underlying mental health conditions that may have contributed to their crimes. However, these conditions are often not adequately addressed, which can result in unfair trials and harsh sentences.

The Impact of Trauma and Neglect

The experiences of individuals from underprivileged backgrounds can often be marked by trauma and neglect, which can contribute to criminal behavior. If these individuals had access to mental health services, substance abuse treatment, and other support programs, it is possible that they could have been prevented from committing crimes.

For example, individuals who have experienced childhood abuse or neglect may be more likely to develop mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, or substance abuse. These conditions can increase the risk of criminal behavior. By providing early intervention and support, it may be possible to address these underlying issues and reduce the likelihood of criminal activity.

The Need for Reform

The death penalty system in America is in need of significant reform to ensure that it is applied fairly and justly. This includes:

  • Addressing systemic biases: The criminal justice system must take steps to address racial and economic disparities in death penalty cases.
  • Improving access to legal representation: Individuals facing the death penalty should have access to high-quality legal representation, regardless of their income level.
  • Addressing mental health issues: Individuals with mental health conditions should have access to adequate treatment and support.
  • Exploring alternatives to the death penalty: Some states are considering alternatives to the death penalty, such as life without parole. The life is saved!

By addressing these issues, it may be possible to create a more just and equitable death penalty system that better serves the needs of all Americans.


BUT, what about Loran Cole, a White male?

Photo provided by FL Department of Corrections

Loran Cole, 57, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. at Florida State Prison for the 1994 killing of an 18-year-old college student. Cole also was serving two life sentences for rape.

Cole did not have a last statement. “No sir,” he said when asked if he had some final words.

After the procedure began about 6 p.m. Cole briefly looked up at a witness in the front row. After three minutes, he began taking deep breaths, his cheeks puffing out. For a brief moment, his entire body trembled. Five minutes into the procedure, the warden shook him and shouted his name. Cole then appeared to stop breathing and then was declared dead.

Cole’s crime was horrific.

Cole and a friend, William Paul, befriended two college students in the Ocala National Forest, court records showed. After talking around a fire, the men offered to take the siblings to see a pond. While away from the campsite, Cole and Paul jumped the victims and robbed them, according to the records.

THUS, another life was taken…and, another life was surrendered.


Although it is widely known that I oppose the death penalty in ALL cases, this particular case is haunting. It is haunting in that the state of Florida was actually complicit in the heinous murder that landed Cole on death row. I say that because he was a surviving victim of the notorious Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida.

Cole was an inmate at a state-run reform school where he and other boys were beaten and raped. The state has since apologized for the abuse and this year passed a law authorizing reparations for inmates at the now-shuttered reform school. The lawyers also argued Cole shouldn’t be executed because he was mentally ill and had brain damage and Parkinson’s disease.


Not that long ago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), signed legislation setting aside $20-million in compensation for surviving victims of Dozier.

“It’s been too long,” said state Sen. Darryl Rouson, the Democrat who sponsored the bill. “This is but a small token for a vast ocean of hurt, but it’s what we can do now.”

As he spoke, a group of about 20 victims stood in the Senate public gallery, one wiping tears from his eyes.

“Thank you for never giving up. Thank you for continuing to fight. Thank you telling the story and the stories of those who are not here and can’t speak. We salute your presence today,” Rouson continued.


What is striking about this is the fact that Cole survived the Dozier School, and the trauma he was exposed to, later led him to commit the crime for which he was put to death by Florida, the same state that allowed the Dozier facility to operate. Bodies are still being dug up there.

The mass grave that was discovered in 2017 on the grounds of the campus has been thoroughly excavated, and the remains of many of the missing boys have been identified. At least 75 separate remains were mingled in the mass grave. However, it is possible that there may be additional remains to be found. Given the history of the school and the number of boys who disappeared (hundreds), it’s unlikely that all of the missing have been accounted for.

If new evidence emerges or additional remains are discovered, authorities may need to reopen the investigation. But for now, the primary focus of the investigation has shifted to identifying the victims and bringing those responsible for the abuses to justice.

One might say that all of the survivors of Dozier were compensated. Some received a monetary reward. Some were killed by Florida.

Just 2 weeks ago, I did a long post on trauma and where it leads if not treated. It often leads to prison, and sometimes to death. For Loran Cole it led to his death, and the death of a promising young man in a college student. For now, Florida has failed.

Unraveling (IN)Justice – Part II

William Kissinger · May 5, 2025 · Leave a Comment

Willing Ears – And A Wide Divide

Jimmie Duncan On The Row At A Visit

Recall the two “experts,” Michael West and Steven Hayne. As I explained before, Jimmie’s case has become a hot gathering spot for wrongful conviction advocates primarily because of its connection to two of the most well-known names in forensic misconduct.

These discredited forensic figures have been linked to many wrongful convictions, many of which have been overturned, and of the overturned, 4 are death row veterans. Yet, in spite of mounting evidence that Duncan was convicted based on junk science, Louisiana continued to push onward with the tortuous path towards his execution.

Michael West first: the evidence analysis provided by Dr. Michael West, a so-called “bite mark expert,” has led to the wrongful conviction of almost a dozen people.

I chose one particular case of Dr. West’s to highlight out of the myriad of cases where he sold his soul and honed his craft. He operated his own little cottage industry where he delivered on demand the testimony most desired by prosecutors: something to tie the case together and point the finger directly at the defendant However, his aim was often way off target.

Dr. West’s bite mark testimony directly contributed to the murder convictions of Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer. Brooks and Brewer were accused of killing two young girls in the early 1990’s, and while there wasn’t much evidence tying either man to the crime, West concluded that the bite marks seen on the two girls came from Brooks and Brewer, respectively.

As Oxygen reports, West even went so far as to say that the marks seen on one of the victims were “indeed and without a doubt inflected [sic] by Kennedy Brewer.”

….

He had even been discredited before Brewer’s trial, the first member ever to be suspended from the American Board of Forensic Odontology.


Levon Brooks: Levon Brooks spent 16 years in prison for the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl that he did not commit. Forensic dentist Dr. Michael West claimed that the marks on the victim’s body were human bite marks and he testified at Brooks’ trial that, of 13 suspects whose dentitions he had compared to the wounds on the victim’s body, Brooks’ teeth “matched” the marks on the victim. As he explained, “it could be no one but Levon Brooks that bit this girl’s arm.“

Based on this testimony, Brooks was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 2001, DNA testing and a subsequent confession revealed that Justin Albert Johnson committed the murder. Johnson had been one of the 12 other suspects whose dental impressions Dr. West had determined did not match the bite marks on the victim’s body. Following Johnson’s confession, Brooks was freed on February 15, 2008.

Their exonerations in 2008 marked the first high-profile cases in which the testimonies of Hayne and West were found by the courts to be riddled with errors and, in some instances, completely fabricated.


Remember that In Jimmie’s case, he has ALWAYS proclaimed his innocence – from arrest to arraignment to trial to conviction and on through appeals to post-conviction relief applications – he has never wavered, and his story has never wavered. In the face of death, he has remained steadfast in declaring his innocence. It seems that the only way that the prosecutors could come up with a theory of the case that they could then sell to a jury, was to do a little buying of their own. So they bought three separate things that jurors would eat up: the physical “evidence” testimony of Dr. West, pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose longtime partnership as state experts fell under legal scrutiny after questions emerged about the validity of their techniques.and the testimony of Michael Cluse (whom we’ll see in greater detail in Part 3), a rewarded jailhouse informant (snitch).

Now, Michael Hayne: At the time of Haley’s death, Hayne and West dominated the autopsy business in Mississippi and were making inroads into Louisiana’s “industry of courtroom experts.” Hayne could flip an autopsy around quickly, and unsurprisingly his findings nearly always supported whatever the working theory of law enforcement was, implicating their primary suspect in whatever crime they were investigating.

Hayne had found an ideal and perfectly willing partner in West, one of the leading “experts” in forensic bite mark analysis, a relatively newcomer science whose main claim to fame was to be able to match bite marks on a victim with the teeth of the suspected biter.

On multiple occasions, Hayne claimed to be performing up to 90% of all autopsies completed in Mississippi and bragged that he completed around 1,500 procedures in a single year. If true, that would far exceed what the annual maximum of 250 set by the National Association of Medical Examiners would equal. When pathologists surpass that number, they risk engaging in shortcuts and making mistakes, according to the organization.

Evidently, he also performed the impossible: in one case, he testified that he removed a victim’s spleen when it had, in fact, already been removed long before the man’s death. In another, he testified that he found in a female child a fully formed prostate gland, an organ that does not even exist in young girls.

Hayne, who died in 2020, had a long and well-documented history of errors and straight-out lies. There have been numerous news reports, court records and even books written about this partnership in the years after Duncan’s conviction.

So, as I said above, they had formed the perfect little cottage industry – reliable and seemingly credible testimony that would favor the state and deliver the desired result – a conviction and sentence.

Years after Haley’s death, Duncan’s post-conviction attorneys uncovered evidence that was not presented at trial that tends to prove his innocence. This includes:

  • a jailhouse informant who wrote to prosecutors offering to share Duncan’s confession to the crime in what the defense claims was an exchange for leniency (the informant later recanted his trial testimony); (covered in detail in the next part of this series)
  • past head injuries Haley (who had experienced seizures) suffered that might explain her death;
  • and a video in which West can be seen grinding a cast of Duncan’s teeth into Haley’s body.

“Cottage industry.” The term make you envision a cozy little gleaming kitchen with red-and-white plaid tablecloths, shiny ovens and the smell of artisan bread baking? No, this is a cold, not-quite sterile room with slide-out drawers, stainless steel tables and windowless walls – and the potential for raking in tens of thousands from willing and eager cops, top cops and frantic prosecutors searching for willing partners in stirring up a pot of criminal (in)justice stew.

They (West and Hayne) were essentially “hired guns,” willing and quite capable of putting on a very convincing show routine in any courtroom and sell any jury.

The amazing thing is that Haley’s autopsy occurred years after there were significant questions raised about West’s and Hayne’s methods and qualifications., as well as results. The wide divide here is the gap between West and Hayne growing and crumbling.

Hayne’s reputation had also been unraveling over the years. A Louisiana judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described Hayne as the “now discredited Mississippi coroner” who “lied about his qualifications as an expert and thus gave unreliable testimony about the cause of death” in a 2014 opinion about a different murder case.

“West has routinely collaborated with Steven Hayne, a medical examiner for hire who conducts nearly every autopsy for prosecutors in Mississippi – even though he flunked his board certification. He nets nearly $1 million a year from conducting autopsies across the state, and West helped set up the system that allows Hayne to handle so many autopsies (each year, Haynes conducts six times more autopsies than the recommended standard). Hayne conducted the autopsies on the victims in the Brewer and Brooks cases – and called West in for both autopsies. At Brewer’s trial, full video footage of the victim’s autopsy was deemed inadmissible in court because it was so offensive and inappropriate; throughout the autopsy of the raped and murdered three-year-old girl, Haynes listened to loud music, so the trial judge ruled that the sound from the video could not be played in court. West held the video camera during that autopsy.” The Innocence Project

Just a booming business, right? And a business that Louisiana is heavily invested in. It is NOT the business of truth – rather, the business of fabrication, corruption and eager ears…


Follow along for the next part of this series, and we’ll take a look at how a jailhouse informant helped place Jimmie Duncan in a 6’x9’ death row cell for over three decades.

How An (IN)Justice Comes Unraveled

William Kissinger · May 5, 2025 · Leave a Comment

This is the first in a series of articles revolving around the case of Louisiana vs. Jimmie Christian Duncan. I say it’s a series because as of right now the case is still ongoing and there is no clear end in sight. For him, it may never end. As things develop and the situation progresses, I will provide updates.

Jimmie Duncan is on death row in Louisiana for a crime that many experts – and also quite ordinary people as well – say may never have even happened. He has been there for almost 32 years. I know him well. In fact, I used to sell him tacos, burritos, and cheeseburgers from the inmate club I was the founding president of, the Camp F VETS. I used to stop and talk to him if he was awake in the mornings when I picked up deli orders, or in the evenings when I delivered food, or on Tuesdays when I delivered fruit for indigent prisoners.

His case has become a gathering spot for wrongful conviction advocates primarily because of its connection to two of the most well-known names in forensic misconduct: Michael West and Steven Hayne. These discredited forensic figures have been linked to many wrongful convictions, many of which have been overturned, and of the overturned, 4 are death row veterans. Yet, in spite of mounting evidence that Duncan was convicted based on junk science, Louisiana continued to push onward with the tortuous path towards his execution.

Maybe it was because Louisiana wanted to conceal something – the falsehoods and junk science they were perpetuating, and the jailhouse informant they relied on – even after they knew he was lying to them. So, yes….this case is about 3 primary things: manufactured “evidence,” lying witnesses, and jailhouse snitches. This is actually a pretty common tactic in Louisiana – hiding evidence and coaching lying informants. And once caught, prosecutors and judges – and informants – have no choice: they have to keep lying and hiding.

Jimmie has ALWAYS proclaimed his innocence – from arrest to arraignment to trial to conviction and on through appeals to post-conviction relief applications – he has never wavered, and his story has never wavered. In the face of death, he has remained steadfast in declaring his innocence.

However, with the election of Jeff Landry to the governorship of Louisiana (he was attorney general under Jon Bel Edwards) and the ascendancy to attorney general of Liz Murrill, his situation became much more tenuous. In the waning months of his final term, in a move that shook Louisiana politics, John Bel Edwards, the former Governor of Louisiana, expressed his opposition to the death penalty, stating it was “so final” and “we know mistakes have been made”. He based his opposition on his religious faith and the “finality” of the punishment. Edwards also directed the Board of Pardons to consider clemency applications for all death row inmates in Louisiana, advocating for a “pro-life” approach.

Full of hope, capital appellate attorneys filed mass requests for clemency for the 56 men on death row in hopes that Edwards could commute their sentences before leaving office. Guess who stymied that effort? You’re right – Jeff Landry. Landry promptly filed legal pleadings to stop this effort, and the battle played out in court.

Although Duncan was included in the initial filing for clemency, The Innocence Project withdrew its clemency petition in the case of Jimmie Duncan. “The State has shown it is not taking the process of reviewing death row clemency petitions seriously, and Mr. Duncan has new, compelling evidence of innocence that must be considered.”

Ultimately, the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole only heard five cases, and denied them all.

In spite of the “we know mistakes have been made” part of John Bel’s position, (since 1975, 12 individuals have been exonerated while residing on Louisiana’s death row), upon assuming office, Landry immediately announced a resumption of executions and Murrill jumped on and started rowing the boat. The legislature had hurriedly passed a series of bills which completely unraveled all of the positive changes to Louisiana’’s criminal justice system which had been brought about in a bi-partisan effort during Edward’s final term.

“Louisiana has a long record of convicting and sentencing to death people later found to be innocent. In the past three decades, the state has exonerated 11 people facing execution, among the highest such numbers in the country, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.”

On April 24, 2025, Jimmie’s death sentence and conviction were vacated by a Louisiana Judge and the evidence presented during evidentiary hearings in reaching that decision is appalling.

One footnote, in particular, I’m calling the “Wide Divide Note.” On page 7, of the court’s ruling vacating the conviction, there is a very apt descriptor of this entire case.

The “wide divide” throughout Jimmie Duncan’s entire 3 decades of death row has been widening since the day of his arrest. Until NOW. Now that the courts have not just rubber-stamped each and every denial, now that they have actually unfolded, pulled out, and examined the claims he presented, has this evidence been brought to light. And…there is more to come out.

Thanks to The Innocence Project, Jimmie’s extremely dedicated and talented legal team, and to various media highlighting the case, Jimmie now gets a chance to live – whether Landry wants him to or not. This rush to judgment is typical of what we see in high-profile capital cases, particularly in Louisiana. Once mistakes are made, it becomes even more critical to hide them. And Louisiana is very good at concealment.

Special shout out to Catherine Legge, multi-talented documentarian and producer extraordinaire, for her podcast and upcoming documentary, The Murder That Never Happened, in which the entire saga of Jimmie Duncan and his family and their battle to prove his innocence, is shown.

Next part of this story is coming soon!

Today’s The Day … For Jessie

William Kissinger · March 29, 2025 · Leave a Comment

Execution Day Protocol…

FILE – Vehicles enter at the main security gate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary — the Angola Prison, the largest high-security prison in the country in Angola, La., Aug. 5, 2008. (AP Photo/Judi Bottoni, File)

In about 8 hours, 4 big men, strong and barrel-chested – chosen for this task and having trained on it for hours and hours for several weeks – will enter through a barred gate, open a small cell door, and shackle and manacle a man. They will walk, or carry, him out the cell and through that gate, turn to their left and pass through two locked steel doors, pass through a lobby where hangs a large oil painting of a chariot aiming for the heavens, and through another steel door. They will pass a number of gathered officials, enter into a small windowless room where there is a gurney.

There is a pair of phones hanging on the wall, and a microphone. He will be placed on the gurney, given a moment to speak a few words. They will then fit a clear mask over his face, tightening the straps on his chin. There will be a silent, solemn nod, and the man on the gurney will be suffocated with nitrogen gas.

It is a torturous process, lasting about 5-6 minutes while he struggles to breathe, wrists and feet straining against the thick leather straps restraining his limbs to the gurney. When sufficient time has elapsed and there is no more movement from the man, a medical person will enter the room, place a stethoscope to his chest, listen closely, and pronounce him dead.

An ambulance will already be parked outside the back steel door, and he will be rolled out and placed in the vehicle. They will drive to the REBTC Treatment Center and his body will be placed into a steel refrigerated drawer marked “MORGUE”. HIS suffering will at last be over. The only suffering left will be of his friends, his loved ones, and the attorneys who have fought valiantly to save his life.

And, the “right-to-life” state where it is mandated that the Ten Commandments be placed in every school classroom – the Sixth Commandment, specifically – will have purposely murdered a man by taking the same gift of breath given to him by the very God that they so loudly proclaim to be their guide.

And those people who did this will go home and go to eat supper, have a couple drinks, and get a night’s rest.

Forgive us, because we should not be capable of doing this.

NOTE

NOTE: This post was originally posted on March 18, 2025, prior to Jessie’s execution by nitrogen gas. I just never had the opportunity to update all of the places my writing is available. You can find my writing on my Substack or on my other website at FREEDOM-CHANNEL.

If you like my work, and appreciate it, please note that donations are greatly appreciated.

A New Era for Executions in Louisiana

William Kissinger · March 28, 2025 · Leave a Comment

The Advent of Nitrogen Gas Hypoxia

The execution gurney and a mask used for the nitrogen gas

Gerald Bordelon expe­dit­ed his own exe­cu­tion by choos­ing to waive his appeals, includ­ing his direct appeal, which was pre­vi­ous­ly thought to be a manda­to­ry part of the state’s death penal­ty process. Bordelon vol­un­teered for exe­cu­tion after he was found guilty of rap­ing and mur­der­ing his 12-year-old step­daugh­ter. The choice to waive his appeals was met with strong dis­agree­ment from his team of inmate coun­sels (pris­on­ers who serve as attor­ney sub­sti­tutes), who jointly decid­ed that they would not assist him in his decision. Bordelon was rep­re­sent­ed in his desire to be exe­cut­ed by a fairly well-renowned con­sti­tu­tion­al law attor­ney from Baton Rouge, Jill Craft. She suc­ceed­ed in hav­ing the court allow Bordelon to waive his appeals, but lat­er said she “would nev­er do it again. “

Bordelon told media sources why he vol­un­teered for his exe­cu­tion: ​“I’m doing this for [the vic­tim] Courtney. I’m doing it for her fam­i­ly. I’m doing it for me. I’m doing it for my fam­i­ly so they don’t have to wor­ry and deal with it for the next 20 or 30 years. I’m doing it for a lot of reasons.”

On January 7, 2010, Gerald Bordelon was executed via lethal injection at Angola. He was one of three people executed in the United States on that same day. The others were Vernon Lamont Smith in Ohio and Kenneth Mosley in Texas. They were the first three people to be executed in the United States in 2010. The executions of three or more people within a single day is something that has not occurred in the United States since.

In Bordelon’s last statement, he apologized to LeBlanc’s family as well as his own. His last meal was fried sac-a-lait fish, topped with crawfish étouffée, a peanut butter and apple jelly sandwich, and chocolate chip cookies. He was pronounced dead at 6:32 pm.

As of this writing, Bordelon remains the last person executed in Louisiana, which has gone over fourteen years without an execution. He is also the only person to have been executed in Louisiana since 2002, when Leslie Dale Martin was executed for murder.

Due to a 2012 lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s lethal injection protocol and drug companies not wanting their products associated with capital punishment, Louisiana has been unable to carry out executions, despite capital punishment still being a legal penalty.

Despite remaining a legal penalty, there have been no executions in Louisiana since 2010, and no involuntary executions since 2002. Execution protocols are tied up in litigation due to a 2012 lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s lethal injection procedures. In addition, certain pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers do not want their products associated with capital punishment, meaning the state has been unable to obtain lethal injection drugs. Despite this, a 2018 survey by the Louisiana State University found that the majority of Louisiana citizens still support capital punishment.

On March 5, 2024, Governor Jeff Landry signed a law allowing executions to be carried out via nitrogen gas and electrocution. The law has opened the door for Louisiana to resume capital punishment after a fourteen-year hiatus.

No more is there a “liberal” decision on what is appropriate punishment or humane. So a new era is beginning in Louisiana, one of anger and hatred and – for lack of a better term – revenge, and simple political expediency. Landry campaigned on a promise to “get tough on crime,” even though crime had been on a steadily declining path for several years. The problem is that New Orleans has a fairly high profile and when anything happens there, it gets highly magnified. People ignored what was actually happening, a lot of people did not vote, and Landry won. Like Trump, Landry claims that a “mandate from the people” propelled him into office, when nothing could be further from the truth.

In the 2023 Louisiana gubernatorial election held on October 14, 2023, Jeff Landry secured the governorship by winning 51.56% of the vote, totaling 547,827 votes. His closest competitor, Democrat Shawn Wilson, received 25.93% of the vote, amounting to 275,525 votes.

Voter turnout for this election was notably low, with only about 36% of registered voters casting ballots—the lowest for a Louisiana gubernatorial primary since 2011. Given the state’s 2,970,167 registered voters, this means that approximately 18% of the total electorate voted for Landry.

While Landry achieved a majority in the primary, allowing him to avoid a runoff, the low voter turnout indicates that a significant portion of the electorate did not participate in the election. Therefore, his victory margin reflects both his support among active voters and the broader context of limited electoral engagement.

So, his election was hardly a “mandate,” but Louisiana’s largely conservative “Bible Belt” reputation strongly supports him. That fact is reflected in him holding a super-majority in both houses of government. He used this to great effect when, within days of taking office, he instituted a complete reversal of all criminal justice reform gains made during the terms of his predecessor, John Bel Edwards.

New methods of execution, legislation authorizing treatment of 17-year-olds as adults, elimination of parole for prisoners, and a vast reshaping of the entire criminal justice system were accomplished within weeks in “Special Sessions” of the legislature. He very publicly announced that he was creating a new State Police Troop to be based in New Orleans that would assist the notoriously corrupt NOPD in fighting crime in the city.

Within weeks, the new Troop was responsible for three separate car chases that resulted in four crashes. These incidents led to multiple arrests and the confiscation of various drugs and firearms. In at least one of those chases, an innocent bystander was injured.“

As far as the promised results, violent crime in New Orleans actually increased in the months ahead. Homicides increased, armed robberies increased, and a horrible homegrown terrorist attack occurred in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter, about a month shy of the city hosting the Super Bowl. Landry created a bit of a stir with his court-challenged uprooting of the city’s homeless population and placing them in an “emergency shelter,” and in the process destroying most of their personal property while promising to implement programs designed to get people off the streets and into residential housing.

So the Super Bowl came and went – and my Chiefs LOST! – and things pretty much returned to normal. Louisiana went right back to figuring out the quickest and best way to efficiently kill someone.

We are now less than a week from Jessie Hoffman’s execution date of March 18th, 2025. Although court challenges are in the works, it remains to be seen whether the date will be met, and what sense of pride Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill will exhibit following the intentional killing of a man. Both Landry and Murrill have said that they are “honoring promises made to the victims and their families.” I think they are only creating more victims.

The federal district court in Baton Rouge, Middle District of Louisiana Judge Shelly Dick, has granted an injunction halting (or at the very least, slowing) the execution, and in the ruling, said,

CONCLUSION

Considering the foregoing, Plaintiff’s Motion to Reconsider the Court’s Denial of his RLUIPA Claim (Count VI) shall be DENIED. Plaintiff’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction shall be GRANTED on the Eighth Amendment claim, and Defendants are enjoined from executing Jessie Hoffman on March 18, 2025, using nitrogen hypoxia. Plaintiff’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction is DENIED as to Counts III and IV.

March

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, this 11th ___ day of _______________, 2025.

S

________________________________

SHELLY D. DICK

CHIEF DISTRICT JUDGE

MIDDLE DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA

I pray for Jessie Hoffman, as I hope you do as well. He has asked that he be executed via firing squad, due to the lack of prolonged suffering. He will simply be wiped out of existence, like some terrible substance on the bottom of Jeff Landry’s shoes and Liz Murrill’s heels, and not drowned with fluids filling his lungs and prolonged suffering. After all, isn’t this what you wanted, Louisiana? Oh, I see. You didn’t vote. Well, then you couldn’t care.

Sleep safe tonight, Jessie Hoffman.

NOTE: This post was originally posted on March 14, 2025, prior to Jessie’s execution by nitrogen gas. I just never had the opportunity to update all of the places my writing is available. You can find my writing on my Substack or on my other website at MyLifeAfterPrison.

If you like my work, and appreciate it, please note that donations are greatly appreciated.

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