Jesse Johnson

Freedom Day: September 5, 2023

Former Oregon Innocence Project client Jesse Johnson was freed in September 2023 after 25 years in custody, 17 of which were spent on Oregon’s death row.

In 2004, Mr. Johnson declined a plea deal of first-degree manslaughter and first-degree robbery and was then tried and convicted on an aggravated murder charge for which he received a death sentence. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of Harriet Lavern Thompson in Salem, Oregon. Ms. Thompson was found dead in her apartment in March 1998. She died from stab wounds. Jesse Johnson was arrested by Salem detectives a week after her death. He maintained his innocence since he was first arrested. 

We became involved in Jesse Johnson’s case in 2014, as one of the first two cases we accepted when we began work that year. We started working on the case when it was still in the post-conviction trial court, assisting trial attorneys Jim Lang and Mike Charlton in getting some DNA testing that excluded Mr. Johnson from several relevant samples. This led to the identification of the man whose DNA was in the victim’s vagina. 

When the post-conviction court nevertheless denied relief and no further testing took place, we filed a DNA testing motion. We represented Jesse Johnson for the purpose of seeking DNA testing of numerous items from the crime scene which were either untested during the original investigation and trial or were tested using outdated technology. Several key items recovered from the scene did not match Mr. Johnson’s DNA. A semen sample taken from a vaginal swab of the victim, a spot of blood by the bathroom sink, blood on the bathroom floor were not a match. He was excluded from the handle of one of the murder weapons as well as the plunger used in an attempt to flush a broken knife blade down the toilet. During the course of our investigation, we were able to identify a match in CODIS from material on one of the vaginal swabs. That man was not previously investigated in the case.   

Our motion for post-conviction DNA testing was denied by the Marion County court in 2018 and we filed an appeal which was heard the following year at the same time as the post-conviction relief appeal. Our post-conviction DNA appeal was ultimately rendered moot when the court reversed Jesse’s conviction in his post-conviction case. 

Jesse Johnson’s murder conviction and death sentence were overturned in late 2021 by the Oregon Court of Appeals. The Court found that his defense team failed to interview a key witness who saw a white man fleeing the home of the victim, Harriet Thompson, in Salem, Oregon. Harriet Thompson’s neighbor, Patricia Hubbard, had seen a white man park his van in Thompson’s driveway around 3:45 a.m. on March 20, 1998, and go inside. Seconds later, Hubbard heard screaming coming from Thompson’s house, a thud and then silence. She told investigators, who found and contacted her after Mr. Johnson was convicted, that she saw the white man run from the house and a few minutes later, a Black man walk down the driveway. She did not identify the latter as Johnson. The jury didn't know all this because Johnson's trial lawyers failed to find Hubbard and speak to her. Police didn't interview her either, even though on the day of the killing she had approached a police officer and said she had information, only to be told he didn’t need her help; the detective discouraged the neighbor from sharing that she witnessed a white man running away from the scene on the night of the murder because, as he regarded it: “A [slur] died, a [slur] is going to pay for it.” Ms. Hubbard was found later by the post-conviction relief trial team.

From 2021 until his release in September 2023, Jesse Johnson was awaiting a retrial. On the eve of an omnibus hearing, his trial attorneys received a call from the Marion County District Attorney’s Office informing them the case would be dismissed. Jesse Johnson was released from jail within two hours. Unfortunately, the District Attorney continues to deny or be complicit in the overt racism that led to Jesse’s wrongful conviction, citing only a lack of available witnesses due to the age of the case in their motion to dismiss.

Our attorneys who represented Mr. Johnson were Steve Wax (Legal Director), Brittney Plesser (former Senior Staff Attorney), and Alex Meggitt (former Staff Attorney.) Attorneys Ryan O’Connor and Jed Peterson of O’Connor Weber represented Mr. Johnson in his post-conviction relief appeal. We also had five groups of law students and researcher John Comery over the years who have worked on the case with us. The trial team that fought and obtained Jesse’s release were Lynne Morgan, Rich Wolf, and Spencer Todd. Jesse also had the support and dedication of investigator James Comstock who led his various investigation teams throughout his appeals.

Jesse Johnson is the first known Oregon death row exoneree. He is the 194th person to be exonerated who has been on death row according to the Death Penalty Information Center.