This Friday, October 2, is the 13th Annual Wrongful Conviction Day.
This year, we’re marking the day by asking some difficult questions about how wrongful convictions happen and what can happen when the need for an answer becomes more powerful than the evidence.
Join us October 2
The Murder That Never Happened
Wrongful Conviction Day Community Conversation
Friday, October 2 | 6–8 p.m.
University of Montana, North Underground — Urey Lecture Hall
Virtual attendance available
We’ll screen excerpts from the unreleased documentary The Murder That Never Happened and hear from exoneree Jimmie “Chris” Duncan, exoneree and wrongful-conviction advocate Maria Shepherd, filmmaker Catherine Legge, and Montana Innocence Project Legal Director Brady Minow Smith and Executive Director Amy Sings In The Timber.
When a child dies, the desire to understand what happened—and to find someone or something to blame—is deeply human. But that urgency can create pressure to find an explanation before all of the evidence has been gathered or fully understood.
That is one of the central themes explored in The Murder That Never Happened.
The film follows Jimmie “Chris” Duncan, who spent 27 years on Louisiana’s death row after being wrongfully convicted in the death of his girlfriend’s young daughter. Throughout the documentary, we watch the conviction unravel through bad actors and faulty, even fabricated, evidence.
We see these same issues in Montana.
Aaron Oliphant: When the need for an explanation comes before the evidence
In 2016, Aaron Oliphant’s infant son, Raidyn, suffered serious injuries. Aaron was charged with aggravated assault, and the State’s case relied heavily on a diagnosis of Abusive Head Trauma, historically referred to as Shaken Baby Syndrome.
The diagnosis became the foundation of the prosecution’s explanation: that Raidyn had been violently injured while in Aaron’s care.
But critical questions about when and how Raidyn’s injuries occurred were never adequately answered.
At trial, the State presented five medical experts. Their conclusions varied, but Aaron’s defense did not present a medical expert to challenge them. His attorney also failed to obtain Raidyn’s complete medical records.
Years later, MTIP obtained those records and consulted with nationally recognized medical experts. Their conclusions directly challenged the foundation of the prosecution’s case: the injuries were just as likely to have been accidental as non-accidental; there were no neck injuries or other findings consistent with shaking; and CT scans showed almost no swelling, which experts concluded was inconsistent with the State’s timeline. One of the State’s own trial experts agreed that more swelling would have been expected if the injuries had occurred when prosecutors alleged.
Aaron’s case illustrates the danger of allowing a theory to become the explanation before all of the evidence has been fully understood.
When a child is seriously injured, the first responsibility should be to understand what happened—not to force the evidence into a predetermined explanation. In Aaron’s case, MTIP believes the explanation came first, and the evidence was interpreted through it.
Bernard Pease Jr.: When unreliable science becomes evidence
On December 1, 1983, 23-year-old Maria Philbrick was found dead in an alley in Billings. Investigators soon focused on Bernie, then 26, despite the lack of direct evidence linking him to the crime scene. No eyewitness placed him there.
A hair found in Bernie’s room became a key piece of evidence against him. At trial, Montana State Crime Lab Director Arnold Melnikoff testified that microscopic hair comparison showed the hair belonged to Maria.
Melnikoff’s testimony gave the evidence the authority of scientific expertise. But microscopic hair comparison was later shown to be unreliable. In a 2015 review, the FBI found erroneous statements in 96% of the cases it examined in which forensic examiners had testified that hair could be associated with a specific individual through the method.
And in Bernie’s case, modern DNA testing told a very different story: the hair didn’t belong to Maria. It belonged to a cat.
Melnikoff later left Montana for Washington, where he was fired after an audit uncovered serious problems with his work.
Bernie spent nearly four decades in prison.
He was granted parole in 2022. Today, he is rebuilding his life in Billings, reconnecting with family and community, and enjoying fishing and art.
But he is still fighting for formal exoneration.
Bernie’s case shows the devastating consequences when forensic evidence is treated as definitive when it is not, and when the people we trust to interpret that evidence fail to represent its limitations.
The Murder That Never Happened
In The Murder That Never Happened, we will hear about the role forensic experts played in building the case against Chris Duncan—including medical testimony that helped turn a theory into something that sounded like scientific certainty.
The story also examines manipulated and fabricated evidence and the consequences when investigators and experts move from trying to understand what happened to proving the story they have already constructed.
Watch the trailer below:
Wrongful convictions can grow from assumptions, missed information, unreliable science, inadequate defense, institutional pressures, and the very human desire to find an answer when something terrible happens.
Wrongful Conviction Day was established to shine a light on these drivers.
At Montana Innocence Project, our work isn’t only about looking backward at what went wrong.
It’s about asking what we can learn from these cases and advocating for systems changes so the same failures don’t happen again.
On October 2, we invite you to sit with these difficult stories alongside the people who have lived them.
Join us for the conversation.
Friday, October 2 | 6–8 p.m.
University of Montana — North Underground, Urey Lecture Hall
Virtual attendance available
Click here for more information.
Thank you for standing with the Montana Innocence Project and for your willingness to engage with the difficult questions that can help prevent future wrongful convictions.
