SALEM, Ore: A Black man imprisoned since 1998 walked free and his attorneys raised concerns about police racism.
In 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.
Yet a Black man, Jesse Johnson, was convicted by a jury in 2004 of aggravated murder and sentenced to death. He walked free this week after 25 years behind bars when prosecutors decided to drop retrial efforts, two years after the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed Johnson’s conviction.
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.
The Oregon Innocence Project, which represented Johnson in his appeal, on Wednesday accused the state of committing a “heinous injustice” in its handling of the case.
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.
