Entries tagged with “Marion County, OR”

Sep 08, 2023

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…