An Oregon death row inmate who spent a quarter century behind bars, all while proclaiming his innocence, walked free this week after being exonerated in the late 90s slaying of a young woman.

Jesse Lee Johnson, now 62, was sentenced to death in 2004 for the stabbing death of Harriet Lavern "Sunny" Thompson, a 28-year-old Black woman found slain in her Salem apartment in 1998.

Video released by the Oregon Justice Research Center shows Johnson, walk out of a Salem jail Tuesday evening wearing a light gray sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. Footage shows Johnson laughing and smiling some two years after the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed his conviction.

“I’m happy and excited and ready for the next phase now," Johnson said, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). "Been a lot of years for something I didn’t do."

Johnson has maintained his innocence since the onset of Salem Police Department's investigation, refusing multiple plea deals offered in the case, per the Statesman Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.

In 2021, the case was sent back to Marion County Circuit Court after the state's appellate court reversed his conviction, returning it back to local prosecutors.

Oregon Court of Appeals Judge Rex Armstrong found during Johnson's trial, his lawyers did not include testimony from a neighbor of the victim, who said she watched another man run out of her house the night Thompson died.

Armstrong ruled the post-conviction court, which initially denied Johnson's motion for post-conviction relief, should have determined the lawyers failure to include the woman's testimony could have affected the outcome of Johnson's case.

At first, the Marion County District Attorney's Office filed new charges against Johnson. But on Tuesday, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the case without prejudice.

"Based on the amount of time passed and the unavailability of critical evidence in this case, the state no longer believes that it can prove the defendant's guilt to 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt," deputy district attorneys Katie Suver and Matthew Kemmy wrote in the motion, which highlighted that 'critical witnesses in the case are now dead.

The state then requested the case be dismissed.

A judge approved.

Racial motivation

On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported the Oregon Innocence Project − a non-profit that represented Johnson, who is Black, during his appeal − said Johnson's race played a role in his conviction.

The group, according to the AP, said Johnson's trial lawyers failed to interview "a key witness" who saw a white man leaving the victim's home the night she was slain.

“There were clear and unambiguous statements of racism by a detective involved in the case who discouraged a neighbor from sharing that she witnessed a white man running away from the scene on the night of the murder,” said Steve Wax, the group's legal director, the AP reported.

“You can’t overstate the institutional racism that led to this result,” Lynne Morgan, one of Johnson’s attorneys now, told OPB Tuesday. “It’s breathtaking, really.”

“For 25 years, the State of Oregon has fought to defend their deeply flawed case against our former client, Jesse Johnson,” Wax told the AP. “There can be no more heinous injustice imaginable than for Mr. Johnson to have heard a sentence of death pronounced against him all those years ago in Marion County and to then waste away for years on death row.”

Harriet Thompson slowly bled to death after throat slashed

Thompson’s landlord discovered her body March 20, 1998, in her apartment on 12th Street SE, just south of an elementary school about two miles south of downtown Salem.

Police determined she died from multiple stab wounds. Her throat had been slashed and her hands were covered in defensive wounds from trying to fight back. 

Her couch was soaked in blood, and specks of blood dotted the apartment's linoleum floor. Investigators later learned Thompson, a nursing aide and mother of five, had slowly bled to death.

The Marion County deputy district attorney at the time, Darin Tweedt, called the aftermath of the crime "a scene from a slaughterhouse." The prosecutor said the residence was ransacked and the motive in the killing was robbery. Thompson’s stolen jewelry, he said, was traded for drugs and some pieces were found at Johnson’s girlfriend’s home.

When he was arrested a week later, Johnson told detectives he knew Thompson, but denied killing her or ever being at her home.

Before his 2004 trial, he declined the state’s plea offer for first-degree manslaughter and first-degree robbery.

Jurors delivered a unanimous verdict on March 18, 2004 finding Johnson guilty of aggravated murder in Thompson's stabbing death.

Although he declined to testify during the trial, Johnson spoke during his sentencing hearing. 

"I'm innocent of this crime. I didn't kill Harriet," he said before he was sentenced to death.

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'Heinous injustice'

According to the Associated Press, Wax, also a former federal public defender, said local prosecutors and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum "resisted requests for additional DNA testing of crime scene evidence that might have shed light on what really happened."

In the end, none of Johnson's DNA was found on the tested evidence, the AP reported.

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According to information from the National Registry of Exonerations, Johnson's innocence declaration marks the 23rd exoneration in Oregon. 

Nationwide, prior to Johnson being cleared of the crime, the registry reported 3,368 people had been exonerated since 1989.

Contributing: Whitney Woodworth and Virginia Baretta with the Salem Statesmen Journal and the Associated Press.

Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior correspondent for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @nataliealund.