by David Kim

In a Louisiana courtroom last September, attorney Scott Greene stood before those in attendance and issued a stark warning: The video they were about to see would unsettle them. Recorded in 1993 as part of a murder investigation, the grainy footage captured forensic dentist Dr. Michael West pressing a mold of a suspect’s teeth into the lifeless body of a toddler, Haley Oliveaux. Again and again, he dragged the mold across her face and arm, creating marks that prosecutors would later present to a jury as damning evidence of a crime. That evidence helped send Jimmie Chris Duncan to death row, where he has languished for 27 years, convicted of killing his girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter.

Greene, arguing at an appeals hearing, called the act a fraud—a manufactured link between Duncan and the child’s death. Nine other prisoners convicted with testimony from West, or his frequent collaborator, forensic pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, have since walked free, their cases unraveled by doubts about the duo’s methods. Yet Duncan remains ensnared, the last man facing execution based on their work, as Louisiana prosecutors push to uphold his sentence despite mounting questions about the reliability of bite mark analysis, a forensic practice now widely discredited.

A Case Built on Teeth and Doubt

Duncan’s ordeal begins on Dec. 18, 1993, in West Monroe, a small city in northern Louisiana. Haley Oliveaux was found unresponsive in a bathtub, under the care of Duncan, her mother’s boyfriend. He told police he had stepped away briefly to wash dishes, only to return and find her submerged. Frantic, he attempted CPR, then rushed her to a neighbor’s home for help. Paramedics could not revive her, and she was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Initial examinations by child welfare workers and a coroner noted scratches and a faint bruise on Haley’s face, but no bite marks. Detective Chris Sasser, who arrested Duncan that evening for negligent homicide—a charge carrying a maximum five-year sentence—saw bruising and injuries to her anus but found no blood or semen in the couple’s home. The case might have ended there, a tragic accident or a lesser crime. But the investigation took a sharp turn when Haley’s body was sent 120 miles east to Jackson, Miss., for an autopsy by Hayne and West, a pair then dominating forensic work in the region.

Hayne, who claimed to perform up to 90 percent of Mississippi’s autopsies, reported bite marks on Haley’s face—marks unseen by earlier examiners. West, a self-styled expert in bite mark analysis, took a mold of Duncan’s teeth and, as the 1993 video later revealed, pressed it repeatedly into her skin. At trial in 1998, prosecutors used this so-called evidence to argue that Duncan had raped and murdered the child, an aggravating factor that swayed jurors to recommend death. He was convicted, though formal rape charges were never filed.

The Rise and Fall of Forensic Stars

For more than two decades, Hayne and West built a lucrative empire in the South, their findings often aligning neatly with law enforcement’s theories. Hayne, who boasted of completing 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies annually—far exceeding the national standard of 250—flunked a forensic certification exam yet still thrived in Mississippi and Louisiana. West, meanwhile, rose to prominence as a bite mark specialist, a field that promised to match dental impressions to suspects with scientific precision.

Their influence peaked in the 1990s, when West was hailed as a forensic “rock star” by some peers. But cracks emerged. By 2008, Hayne was ousted as Mississippi’s state pathologist amid scrutiny of his workload and credentials. West faced his own reckoning: a one-year suspension from the American Board of Forensic Odontology for overstating conclusions kept him off the stand in Duncan’s trial. Nevertheless, their bite mark evidence stood as the key evidence in his conviction.

Since then, the forensic science they championed has crumbled. Bite mark analysis, once a courtroom staple, is now derided as “junk science” by critics like Chris Fabricant, an Innocence Project attorney on Duncan’s legal team. Studies have found it lacks empirical grounding, unable to reliably distinguish one person’s teeth from another’s.

Across the country, more than two dozen prisoners convicted with the help of bite mark testimony have been released, seven of them tied to Hayne and West. Duncan is the only person still awaiting execution based on evidence produced by the pair.

The Pair’s Broad Pattern of Misconduct

A decade into Duncan’s imprisonment, two men from Noxubee County, Mississippi, walked free after glaring issues emerged with the testimonies of Hayne and West, whose work had been instrumental in their convictions. Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer had been sentenced to life in prison and death, respectively, for the rapes and murders of two 3-year-old girls. Their exonerations in 2008 exposed a pattern of flawed forensic practices that have since rocked the criminal justice system.

In both cases, Hayne conducted autopsies and claimed to have found human bite marks on the victims’ bodies. He then enlisted West, who used dental molds of the suspects’ teeth to “match” the marks to Brooks and Brewer. Despite the men’s consistent claims of innocence and alibis, their convictions stood for years. It was only after DNA evidence revealed that both girls had been killed by the same man, Justin Albert Johnson, that the truth came to light. Forensic experts later determined that the marks Hayne and West identified as human bite marks in Brewer’s case were, in fact, caused by insects and crawfish feeding on the decomposing body. In Brooks’ case, the so-called bite marks were simply scrapes, misidentified by the two experts.

The exonerations of Brooks and Brewer marked the beginning of a reckoning with the unreliable methods employed by Hayne and West. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences issued a scathing report on bite mark analysis, concluding that there is “no evidence of an existing scientific basis for identifying an individual to the exclusion of all others.” Subsequent studies have further undermined the practice, noting that human skin cannot reliably retain the shape of teeth, that teeth do not provide unique markers, and that analysts frequently struggle to distinguish bite marks from other injuries—or even determine if a mark is human in origin.

Since 1982, at least 32 individuals in the U.S. have been convicted based on bite mark evidence, only to be exonerated later, according to the Innocence Project. Brooks and Brewer’s cases were among the first to expose the systemic flaws in Hayne and West’s work, prompting civil rights attorneys to challenge other convictions linked to their testimonies.

West himself has since disavowed bite mark analysis. In a 2011 deposition, he admitted, “When I testified in this case, I believed in the uniqueness of human bite marks. I no longer believe that.” He acknowledged making errors in previous cases, including that of Leigh Stubbs, who was exonerated in 2013 after serving more than a decade in prison for assault. West had testified that bite marks on the victim matched Stubbs’ teeth, but video evidence showed him pressing a dental mold into the victim’s flesh—a method he defended as part of his “verification process.”

Hayne’s credibility has also been called into question. In 2014, a Louisiana judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit described him as the “now discredited Mississippi coroner” who “lied about his qualifications as an expert and thus gave unreliable testimony about the cause of death.” His involvement in the case of Eddie Lee Howard, whose murder conviction was overturned in 2021, further highlighted the unreliability of his methods. Despite West’s 1994 testimony linking bite marks to Howard, autopsy photos showed no such marks, and DNA evidence pointed to another suspect.

The legacy of Hayne and West’s work is one of profound injustice. Their flawed methodologies have not only led to wrongful convictions but have also eroded public trust in forensic science. As Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James Kitchens noted in a 2021 opinion, the courts “should not uphold a conviction and death sentence on the testimony of a proven unreliable witness.”

Suppressed Evidence

Duncan’s current attorneys, assisted by the Innocence Project, have fought to overturn his conviction, pointing to more than just flawed forensics. His defense team uncovered what they described as significant prosecutorial misconduct, raising serious questions about the integrity of his trial. Central to the prosecution’s case was the testimony of Michael Cruse, a jailhouse informant who shared a cell with Duncan at the Ouachita Correctional Center while awaiting trial. Cruse claimed that Duncan had confessed to raping and killing Haley, alleging that Duncan said he “blacked out” during the attack and that “the devil took over.” This testimony was crucial in winning Duncan’s conviction.

However, what prosecutors failed to disclose at the time was a letter Cruse had written to them from his jail cell, in which he appeared to offer his cooperation in exchange for leniency. Cruse, who was facing up to 12 years in prison for burglary, wrote that if the district attorney could “work this out,” he could “help in other areas as well.” After testifying against Duncan, Cruse received a three-year suspended sentence—a deal prosecutors later characterized as routine, though they never shared Cruse’s letter with Duncan’s defense team. This omission, Duncan’s lawyers argued, violated federal law requiring prosecutors to turn over all evidence that could aid the defense, as the letter could have been used to challenge Cruse’s credibility.

In a January filing defending Duncan’s conviction, prosecutors pointed to a Louisiana Supreme Court ruling from 1999, which stated that even if the letter had been disclosed, it would not have altered the trial’s outcome. Yet, Duncan’s legal team continued to challenge Cruse’s account. In November 2022, more than two decades after Duncan’s conviction, defense investigators located Cruse and questioned him about his testimony. Cruse admitted that Duncan had “never said he was guilty” and described him as spending most of their time together in jail with his “head down … mumbling and crying to himself,” according to court filings. Another former cellmate, Michael Lucas, corroborated this account, stating that Cruse had repeatedly harassed Duncan about the case and that Duncan had consistently denied any involvement, repeatedly crying, “I didn’t do it.”

Prosecutors dismissed these new statements, with lead prosecutor Ruddick arguing during a 2023 appeals hearing that Cruse’s sworn testimony from the trial remained credible and that any recantation decades later amounted to unreliable hearsay. Cruse, who could not be located to testify in 2024, did not respond to requests for comment from Verite News and ProPublica.

The defense also challenged the prosecution’s claim that Duncan had sexually assaulted Haley. Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist and defense expert, testified in September 2023 that Haley’s anal injuries were likely caused by medical conditions such as constipation, hard stools, or infection, rather than sexual assault. “There’s absolutely no evidence of sexual assault,” Melinek stated after reviewing Haley’s autopsy records.

Additionally, Duncan’s legal team uncovered previously undisclosed evidence suggesting an alternative explanation for Haley’s death. In the weeks before her drowning, Haley had sustained multiple head injuries, including three skull fractures, when a chest of drawers fell on her as she tried to climb it. She was hospitalized for six days, and upon her discharge, doctors warned her family not to leave her unattended in a bathtub due to the risk of seizures. Haley spent much of the following two weeks with her maternal grandparents before returning home to her mother and Duncan the night before her death. None of this evidence was presented at trial, as Duncan’s then-attorney, Louis Scott, had agreed with prosecutors not to raise the issue. Scott, who is now facing health challenges, including memory loss, has not responded to requests for comment.

These revelations have cast further doubt on the fairness of Duncan’s trial, with his defense team arguing that the withheld evidence and questionable testimony warrant a reexamination of his conviction.

A System Under Scrutiny

Duncan’s fate now rests with a judge, who is expected to rule in the coming months on whether he deserves a new trial or if his conviction stands. His attorneys see a broader indictment of Louisiana’s justice system, where prosecutorial misconduct and dubious forensic science are a fixture. The state has exonerated 11 death row prisoners since reinstating capital punishment in 1976, among the highest tallies in the U.S., according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Misconduct, like withholding evidence, is a factor in about 60 percent of its wrongful convictions—nearly double the national average.

Fabricant, author of Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System, calls Duncan’s case “the purest manifestation of the harm of junk science, bad lawyering, and pro-prosecution bias.” Executing him, he warns, would not be justice but “murder.” With a tough-on-crime Republican governor, Jeff Landry, now in office, Louisiana is poised to resume executions after a 15-year hiatus.

A Family’s Anguish and a Glimmer of Hope

At the Louisiana state Penitentiary at Angola, Duncan spends his days in a cell, his family’s visits a rare reprieve. Photos show him with his parents, Sharon and Bennie, their faces etched with resolve. His legal team declined interviews. But his supporters, including Greene, hold out hope. In October 2023, they presented new evidence to prosecutors in Monroe, urging Tew to reconsider. Tew didn’t attend; Ruddick listened, asked a couple questions, and promised to follow up. But silence followed.

A year later, after the six-day appeals hearing in the fall of 2024, the state filed its response, which left no doubt what it thought of the new evidence presented by Duncan’s defense team: “Defendant, Jimmie Duncan, is a murderer.”

As Duncan awaits the judge’s decision that could mean freedom or death, his case reverberates beyond Louisiana. It serves as a grim reminder of a critical flaw in the broader criminal justice system and human nature—how reliance on a once trusted forensic science that’s exposed as a fraud can have catastrophic consequences, especially when coupled with prosecutors who refuse to admit errors or misconduct, no matter how compelling the evidence. 

Source: propublica.org

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