Ouachita DA reopens prosecution of former death row prisoner

Jimmie “Chris” Duncan lived in a motel in Alexandria for weeks until he found an apartment. (Photo by Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica) The Ouachita Parish District Attorney’s office attempted to obtain a DNA sample last week from former death row inmate Jimmie “Chris” Duncan in an apparent effort to reopen the case against him for the 1993 death of his former girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter, Haley Oliveaux. Prosecutors also allegedly dispatched West Monroe Police officers to try to obtain DNA from the girl’s mother, Allison Layton Statham, while planning to exhume the girl’s body more than three decades after her death. The district attorney’s actions, first reported by independent journalist Radley Balko, come just three months after the Louisiana Supreme Court threw out Duncan’s murder conviction .

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