Louisiana

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

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.

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!