Documentary exposes ‘junk science’ that wrongfully sent Jimmie Duncan to death row

Published: April 16, 2026

By: Izzy Wollfarth, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE – In 1998, Jimmie “Chris” Duncan was convicted of first-degree murder in the bathtub drowning of 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux and sent to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Twenty-seven years later, in April 2025, a judge vacated Duncan’s conviction and ordered his release from Angola, saying he was “factually innocent,” and the victim of egregiously flawed testimony provided by a disgraced Mississippi medical examiner who was terminated from his position and barred from performing other procedures.

Duncan’s story, which has yet another twist and turn, is the subject of Catherine Legge’s new documentary, “The Murder that Never Happened.”

On April 28, Duncan will go before the Louisiana Supreme Court, which will hear an appeal by Louisiana prosecutors that the judge’s ruling releasing him was incorrect and that Duncan should return to death row.

Legge, an award-winning filmmaker and journalist, captures the fallout of flawed forensic pathology following Haley’s bathtub drowning in West Monroe. The film had its first private screening at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge last Sunday.