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USA - Louisiana. Governor signs HB 675
July 14, 2025: July 14, 2025 - Louisiana. New Louisiana Legislation Will Limit Post-Conviction Appeals, Endangering Innocent Prisoners in an Attempt to Expedite Executions
HB 675 passed the House on May 21, 2025 on a 71-26 vote, passed the Senate on June 9 on a 28-11 vote, was signed by Jeff Landry on June 20, and becomes effective on August 1, 2025.
Recent legislation signed by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry drastically restricts the ability of prisoners to challenge their convictions, which those opposed to the law have argued could lead to the execution of innocent prisoners.
HB 675, signed into law in June 2025, imposes strict time limits on post-conviction relief applications and introduces “abandonment” rules that cut off appeal options for prisoners who fail to meet the law’s strict deadlines. The law goes into effect on August 1, 2025, and applies to all of Louisiana’s 55 death row prisoners, as well as nearly 5,000 people serving life sentences.
This legislation represents a cornerstone of Gov. Landry’s campaign promise to resume executions in Louisiana after more than a decade-long pause. Attorney General Liz Murrill, who championed the new law, has simultaneously petitioned the state supreme court to expedite executions for a handful of death row prisoners.
Under HB 675, prisoners must file complete post-conviction relief applications within two years of their direct appeal decision or forfeit their right to ever do so. The law provides no exceptions for new evidence, including potentially exonerating DNA evidence, which often only emerges years later. The law also grants the attorney general the authority to file procedural objections to prisoners’ claims and to move to dismiss cases. This shift in delegation authority is unusual, as the responsibility is traditionally left to the local district attorney responsible for representing the state in a given case.
Criminal legal reform advocates have serious concerns with this new legislation, particularly in light of Louisiana’s documented history of wrongful convictions. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, since 1989, Louisiana has wrongfully convicted 87 individuals, a dozen of whom were sentenced to death. Testifying in a hearing on this legislation, Innocence Project of New Orleans executive director Jee Park told legislators “it takes so much time to uncover new evidence,” and emphasized that two years would not allow for enough investigation. Court files take months for counsel to obtain and files from the district attorney and police, when still existent, may be too expensive for prisoners to access. Ms. Park’s organization has a queue of nearly 7,000 individuals awaiting assistance in their cases. The last individual the organization helped exonerate had been incarcerated for 35 years by the time they could assist him.
What’s at stake became clear even as the legislation was advancing through the legislature. In April 2025, a judge set aside the conviction and sentence Jimmie Duncan, who was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of his girlfriend’s almost two-year-old daughter. Judge Alvin Sharp pointed to new testimony that bite mark analysis presented by forensic experts at the original trial is “no longer valid” and “not scientifically defensible.” Mr. Duncan’s conviction was based largely on evidence from forensic odontologist Dr. Michael West and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose work has since been discredited. Over the past three decades, nine prisoners have been set free after being convicted in part because of inaccurate evidence given by Drs. West and Hayne, with three of those men on death row. Mr. Duncan has maintained his innocence for more than three decades, claiming Haley Oliveaux’s death an accidental drowning.
Since this ruling, Haley’s family has come forward in support of Mr. Duncan, saying the prosecutors fighting to prevent Mr. Duncan’s release are not speaking for the family. In a public comment, Allison Layton Statham, Haley’s mother, has called on prosecutors to allow Mr. Duncan to go free during an upcoming scheduled bail hearing in late July 2025. Ms. Statham told Mississippi Today that “this innocent man is on death row,” and added, “justice needs to be done.” Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Duncan poses both a flight risk and risk to the safety of Haley’s family and the public. Ms. Statham disagrees and has asked the prosecution to make all the evidence against Mr. Duncan public. “Authorities are still wanting to bury the truth…What they did was railroad him,” said Ms. Statham.
Jim Boren, a capital defense attorney in Louisiana, says Mr. Duncan’s case exemplifies concerns and dangers with the new law: “Here’s a man who, by all accounts, at least in my view of it, is completely innocent of the charges — and he’d be dead if the attorney general had their way.” Mr. Boren said, “[w]hat this bill would like to do is keep any more innocent people on death row from having adequate hearing and trials post-conviction to determine if their trial was fair — or based on fraud like Jimmie Duncan.”
When the new law takes effect, any prisoner with a post-conviction relief application filed before July 2023 will be forced to file final petitions within the next year. The law’s impact will extend beyond Louisiana’s death row, affecting thousands serving life sentences who may also have legitimate innocence claims or constitutional violations in their cases. Many of those opposed to this legislation argue that in the state’s rush to resume executions, it is increasing the risk of executing innocent people and denying justice to those who have been wrongfully convicted. Ms. Park told legislators during a hearing that the bill “will prevent innocent people from coming home.”
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/new-louisiana-legislation-will-limit-post-conviction-appeals-endangering-innocent-prisoners-in-an-attempt-to-expedite-executions (Source: DPIC, 14/07/2025)
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