NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The race for New Orleans clerk of courts is personal and contentious as candidate Calvin Duncan, who spent three decades in prison before his conviction was overturned, faces attacks from Louisiana’s attorney general and the acting clerk of courts over whether he has truly been exonerated.
Duncan, 62, taught himself law in prison and had difficulty accessing his files for years. He says that makes his desire to become the city’s top criminal registrar personal.
“I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else,” said Duncan, whose murder conviction was overturned by a judge in 2021. He is listed on the National Registry of Exonerations alongside figures such as Central Park Five member Yousef Salaam, now a New York City City Council member.
But Duncan’s campaign was marred by disputes over the word “exoneration” in his case, adding drama to the final stretch of an otherwise sleepy local election campaign. Voters go to the polls on Saturday.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and acting Clerk of Court Darren Lombard have both disputed Duncan’s innocence, pointing to a 2011 plea deal on manslaughter and armed robbery charges that Duncan said he accepted only to ensure his release. In television debates, media interviews and campaign advertisements, Lombard called Duncan a murderer.
Duncan, a Democrat, accuses his opponents of trying to mislead voters. Duncan’s supporters say it is an example of hardline politics in New Orleans, where more than 10 candidates are also running to replace term-term Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who pleaded not guilty to corruption charges in September.
Jessica Paredes, executive director of the exoneration registry, said there should be no doubt that Duncan’s case deserves to be listed among the more than 3,700 exonerations recorded since 1989.
“We are taking a conservative approach to maintaining the integrity of the database,” she said. “Calvin’s exoneration was not one of those close calls. His case clearly meets our inclusion criteria.”
A guilty plea and an overturned conviction
Duncan presented fresh evidence of his innocence in a fatal shooting in 1981 – including that police officers had lied in court – before his release from prison. A judge later overturned Duncan’s conviction based on the law’s rule of “substantial innocence” and prosecutors dismissed the charges.
Legal scholars say there is no one-size-fits-all legal standard for exoneration, but Paredes’ group generally defines it as a case “when a person convicted of a crime is formally acquitted after new evidence of his or her innocence is presented.”
Even before Duncan ran for office, his case was being reviewed by Murrill, the state’s Republican attorney general. After Duncan graduated from law school in 2023 and sought $330,000 in state compensation for his wrongful conviction, Murrill threatened to challenge his ability to practice law unless he dropped his claim to the money, according to Jacob Weixler, Duncan’s attorney.
Murrill spokesman Lester Duhe confirmed that report and said Duncan “knowingly and intentionally pleaded guilty in court to this manslaughter.” Duncan dropped his lawsuit to avoid any interference with his legal practice, Weixler said.
Less than two weeks before the election, Murrill escalated the dispute by releasing a public letter accusing Duncan of “gross misrepresentations” for describing himself as exonerated. On Monday, dozens of lawyers in Louisiana signed a letter denying their claims.
A self-taught lawyer
Duncan had already achieved some notoriety in the legal community before running for office.
In his memoirs, he recalls how an older prisoner advised him to learn the law to save himself. With only an eighth-grade education, Duncan honed his legal skills and was allowed to aid other inmates prepare court documents as part of a prison law program.
His persistence ultimately shaped national law. Duncan was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions in Louisiana and Oregon, the only two states that still allow a practice rooted in the Jim Crow era, said G. Ben Cohen, a lawyer in the case.
Duncan said it can take years for inmates to obtain a police report, let alone a transcript of the trial. New Orleans’ criminal court system still relies heavily on paper files, and thousands of files were lost during Hurricane Katrina. In August, criminal court records were mistakenly thrown away, forcing the clerk’s office to dispose of them in a landfill.
Lombard said a fresh digital filing system will come online this year. He calls his opponent unqualified, while Duncan argues he has a unique appreciation for the importance of the office.
“I have seen and experienced firsthand when an office is not functioning properly as an employee,” he said.
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Associated Press journalist Stephen Smith contributed to this report. Brook is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
