Former Oregon Death Row Prisoner Freed 2 Years After Reversed Conviction, 194^th Death Row Exoneration

On September 5, 2023, Jesse Johnson (pic­tured) was released from Marion County Jail in Oregon when pros­e­cu­tors for­mal­ly declined to retry him for the 1998 mur­der of Harriet Thompson. Mr. Johnson was con­vict­ed of Ms. Thompson’s mur­der in 2004 and sen­tenced to death. In ask­ing the Marion County Circuit Court to dis­miss the case against Mr. Johnson, the coun­ty District Attorney’s office stat­ed that ​“based upon the amount of time that has passed and the unavail­abil­i­ty of crit­i­cal evi­dence in this case, the state no longer believes that it can prove the defendant’s guilt.” Mr. Johnson was housed on death row at Oregon State Penitentiary until 2021, when the Oregon Court of Appeals over­turned his case, agree­ing that he had inad­e­quate defense coun­sel who failed to inter­view a key wit­ness. Patricia Hubbard, one of the victim’s neigh­bors, claims that police repeat­ed­ly ​“dis­missed her attempts to give them infor­ma­tion” about an alter­nate sus­pect, and also claims a detec­tive said a black woman was mur­dered and black man was ​“going to pay for it.”

Since his arrest, Mr. Johnson has main­tained his inno­cence and lack of involve­ment in Ms. Thompson’s mur­der, refus­ing to accept any plea deals dur­ing his 25 years behind bars. There was no DNA evi­dence direct­ly con­nect­ing Mr. Johnson to the mur­der and the pros­e­cu­tion relied heav­i­ly on cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that placed him in the victim’s home. Fingerprints were found belong­ing to Mr. Johnson, but his attor­neys note that this only proves they knew each oth­er, which Mr. Johnson had pre­vi­ous­ly admit­ted. Ms. Hubbard spoke with defense inves­ti­ga­tors in 2013 while they were rein­ves­ti­gat­ing the case and told them that she saw a white man flee Ms. Thompson’s apart­ment on the night of her mur­der after she heard loud argu­ing. Mr. Johnson’s orig­i­nal defense attor­neys nev­er spoke with Ms. Hubbard and made lit­tle effort to speak with addi­tion­al neigh­bors. Prosecutors knew about Ms. Hubbard’s tes­ti­mo­ny and the addi­tion­al DNA evi­dence point­ing towards oth­er sus­pects pri­or to the 2021 Oregon Court of Appeals decision.

The Oregon Innocence Project, which began work­ing with Mr. Johnson on DNA test­ing appeals in 2014, strong­ly believes that racism played a role in his wrong­ful con­vic­tion. In a state­ment from Steve Wax, the organization’s legal direc­tor, he writes that ​“there were clear and unam­bigu­ous state­ments of racism by a detec­tive involved in the case who dis­cour­aged a neigh­bor from shar­ing that she wit­nessed a white man run­ning away from the scene on the night of the mur­der.” There have been 194 death row exon­er­a­tions since 1973 in the United States. Of these 194 indi­vid­u­als, 105, or 54%, are black.

In Mr. Wax’s state­ment, he also writes that ​“there can be no more heinous injus­tice imag­in­able than for Mr. Johnson to have heard a sen­tence of death pro­nounced against him all those years ago in Marion County and then to waste away for years on death row.” Mr. Johnson, now 62 years old, pro­claimed his joy as he walked out of Marion County Jail. ​“I’m hap­py and excit­ed and ready for the next phase now. Been a lot of years for some­thing I didn’t do.”