The Oregon Innocence Project accused the state of committing a “heinous injustice' in its handling of Jesse Johnson's case.
An Oregon man who spent 25 years behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit is now free after his murder conviction was overturned.In the predawn hours of March 20, 1998, a neighbor heard screams coming from the home in Salem of Harriet "Sunny" Thompson and then saw a white man run from the house, leaving Thompson inside dead of stab wounds.
The jury never got a chance to hear neighbor Patricia Hubbard testify to what she saw and heard that night. After Johnson was convicted, Hubbard told investigators that when she began describing what she had seen to a police detective, he responded, twice using a racial epithet: a Black woman got murdered and a Black man "is going to pay for it."Johnson’s trial attorney never sought out Hubbard, a fact that the appeals court cited when it reversed the conviction in October 2021.
On Tuesday afternoon, Johnson walked out of the jail in Salem. Video showed Johnson, smiling and wearing gray sweats with white socks and black slides, walking next to a sheriff’s deputy who was pushing a cart with belongings inside.Johnson’s DNA wasn’t on any of the tested murder evidence. He repeatedly claimed innocence and refused a plea deal over the years.
Asked for comment, Rosenblum said in an emailed statement Thursday: "The Marion County District Attorney’s office made the decision not to retry this case due to the passage of time and loss of witnesses. We respect their decision."The Oregon Innocence Project had asked a court to allow additional DNA testing of crime-scene evidence, but it went unresolved due to the appeals court reversing Johnson’s conviction, Rosenblum said.
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