On September 5th, 2023, Jesse Johnson walked out of jail a free man. He’d spent a quarter century incarcerated, including 17 years on death row, for a crime he always insisted he didn’t commit: the 1998 murder of Harriet Thompson in Salem, Oregon.
Two years after his release, Johnson is suing the state of Oregon and the Salem police detectives who locked him up for much of his life. The lawsuit argues that flagrant racism played a key role in the investigation into Johnson that led to his imprisonment.
The case against Johnson was the focus of the first season of OPB’s investigative podcast series “Hush,” reported by Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas. Today, Ryan joins us for an update.