LOUISIANA — The Louisiana Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling on Monday to overturn the 1998 conviction of Jimmie "Chris" Duncan for the killing of Haley Oliveaux. The court upheld a lower court's decision to dismiss the conviction, citing flawed forensics practices used at trial.

Justice Cade R. Cole wrote the opinion on behalf of the seven-member court. The opinion stated that new evidence presented by Duncan's legal team left no doubt that his conviction should be overturned. "The post-conviction evidence undermined the core factual premises on which the state depended," Cole wrote.

Chief Justice John Weimer and one other justice issued opinions concurring with Cole. Weimer wrote in a concurrence that the bite mark evidence used to prosecute Duncan was similar to "trial by water" tests used by witch-hunters in the 17th century. "We now look back at those practices as asinine and absurd, since those who fell victim to those practices often did not survive, regardless of whether they were found guilty or innocent," Weimer wrote. He added, "The bite mark evidence and the sexual abuse evidence used in the trial against the accused has proven to be similarly specious."

Duncan's 1998 conviction was based largely on bite mark evidence presented by forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne. Their analysis claimed to match marks on Haley Oliveaux's body to Duncan's teeth. Experts have deemed bite mark evidence to be junk science.

Nine other prisoners have been released after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence given by West and Hayne in the 28 years since Duncan's trial. Three of those prisoners were on death row. Duncan was the last person awaiting execution based on the work of West and Hayne.

Cole referenced a video of West's 1993 examination of Haley Oliveaux, which was not shown to jurors at trial. The video shows West taking a mold of Duncan's teeth and grinding it into and across the girl's body. Cole wrote that it was "scientifically indefensible" to identify the marks as having been made by Duncan, and that the angles shown in the video were "physically impossible for a human bite."

Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation with the Innocence Project and a member of Duncan's legal team, expressed relief regarding the ruling. "I am flooded with relief," Fabricant said. He added, "It would have been a moral outrage for the conviction to be reinstated."

Police arrested Duncan on Dec. 18, 1993, after Haley Oliveaux was pronounced dead a few hours after being found in the bath. Duncan had been babysitting the child in the home he shared with her mother in West Monroe. He told law enforcement he found her floating face down after hearing a noise from the bathroom while he was downstairs washing dishes. Duncan was initially booked for negligent homicide. Prosecutors elevated the charge to first-degree murder after Hayne and West conducted Haley's medical exam and claimed to discover evidence of sexual assault and intentional drowning. A jury found Duncan guilty and sentenced him to death following two weeks of testimony in 1998.

Postconviction attorneys for Duncan uncovered an expert witness who stated the child's death was an accidental drowning, not a homicide. Investigators also interviewed a jailhouse informant who recanted his earlier trial testimony that Duncan had confessed to the crime. Former Ouachita Parish Judge Alvin Sharp overturned Duncan's conviction in April of the previous year. Allison Layton Statham, Haley's mother, and family members of Haley's father, Lloyd Donald Oliveaux, have publicly supported Duncan's release and the overturning of his conviction.