Wrongly convicted, he became ‘The Jailhouse Lawyer’ — and helped free himself

Calvin Duncan was 19 in 1982 when the police arrested him for a murder-robbery in New Orleans. The eyewitness testimony at his trial was unreliable, but Duncan’s lawyer offered only a minimal defense, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

While in prison, Duncan studied law, hoping to appeal his case. In the process he became a jailhouse lawyer — officially as part of the Inmate Counsel Substitute Program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

“In places like Louisiana, once a conviction is upheld on direct appeal, we’re not entitled to a lawyer,” Duncan says. “[Jailhouse lawyers] actually provide legal assistance to those individuals that cannot afford an attorney.”

Duncan worked on hundreds of cases while he was in prison. “There are guys that committed their crimes. There are guys that didn’t commit their crimes,” he says. “As a jailhouse lawyer, we provided assistance to everybody that we determined that was not afforded a fair trial.”

One of the biggest challenges Duncan faced was obtaining public records: “I used to donate my plasma just to save enough money to buy my records,” he says.

Duncan helped many fellow inmates overturn their convictions. After years of trying to get his own case reopened, Duncan finally succeeded with the help of the Innocence Project of New Orleans. In 2011, he was released from prison after serving more than 28 years, and he was later exoneration of the crime.

Following his release, Duncan went to college and got his BA from Tulane. This past spring, at 60, he received his law degree from the Lewis and Clark University in Oregon. He now lives in New Orleans where he’s the founder and director of the Light of Justice program, which works to improve access to the courts for people who are incarcerated.

“Going back to help people that need help is the thing that I live for,” he says. “I know there’s a lot of people in prison need help and they want people to come help them. And, for me, to go back to actually fulfill that obligation that’s what keeps me going.”

Duncan’s new memoir, co-authored with Sophie Cull, is called The Jailhouse Lawyer.

Interview highlights

On his role as a jailhouse lawyer

Our function was to provide legal assistance to people that could not afford to hire a lawyer, in which case we function just like lawyers. We spent most of our time reading the records, if we could get our hands on the records. We spent a lot of time researching issues, and then in the process of reviewing a person’s case … [looking for] errors that happened in the case that prevented that individual from being afforded a fair trial, all the facts in the cases that really raise raised flags as to the person possibly innocent.

If a person is innocent, we actually contact the Innocence Project New Orleans to look at the individual case, but if we don’t have any facts of innocence, and we determine that the person wasn’t afforded the fair trial, we actually draft the petition which is generally, in most states, is a petition for post-conviction relief. Once we prepare it, we get with our clients, and if they approve of it, the client signs it and sends it to the court. In a nutshell, we function just like lawyers. One of the things that we can’t do as lawyers is leave the prison to provide investigations.

On the Innocence Project taking his case

The Innocence Project New Orleans accepted my case, and they started investigating my case. They actually went and talked to the witness. They got access to documents that I couldn’t get on my own. And as a result of that, they discovered evidence that, had the jury heard about this evidence, I would not have been found guilty. And one of the things that was key to my case was that the two detectives that arrested me in Oregon, they was under investigation themselves. Both of them was being investigated by the FBI for trying to fabricate evidence against a representative in Oregon. And one was charged. Another thing that we discovered from the files … was that the statements that they say that I had told them, they actually told me those statements. And getting access to those records proved that the detectives in my case had lied to the jury that convicted me.

On being exonerated 10 years after being released from prison

In 2021, I was called back to court and I was exonerated. … Because my case had never been actually adjudicated, the new evidence was never reviewed at the time that I took the deal, they reviewed it [later], and they determined that my conviction was unconstitutional. I was innocent, and therefore, they vacated the two guilty pleas and I was totally exonerated. … That was the second best day of my life. The first best day of my was when I got out January the 7th, 2011. The second best day of life was August the 3rd, 2021.

The judge said that she’s sorry for what happened to me, but I didn’t get any reparation. … What I did get when I got released was a $10 check. And I still have that $10 check.

Calvin Duncan

On whether he got an apology or reparations after spending more than 28 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit

The judge said that she’s sorry for what happened to me, but I didn’t get any reparation. I did apply for it. In Louisiana, they have this wrongful conviction compensation law that allows a person that been wrongfully convicted, innocent, they would give you up to $400,000 and you would get $40,000 a year for a 10-year period. Well, I actually applied for that, but … I didn’t get it. But what I did get when I got released was a $10 check. And I still have that $10 check.

 On his persistence despite all of his obstacles

What I firmly believe is that we all entitled to hope. You make sure you keep hope and make sure other people maintain hope. … In Louisiana we don’t have a right to a lawyer and so you have all these people convicted by non-unanimous jury verdicts [which were legal in Louisiana prior to 1991] we know that the conviction is unconstitutional and so I believe that once we know that an injustice has occurred I think it’s [the] obligation of every person to keep on educating people, telling people, “Look this law is creating harm. This law is unjust.” … My persistence comes in that just believing that if you give people an opportunity to do the right thing that they would do it. Sometimes it takes a long time for that to happen. But history has shown that it actually happens and you just can’t give up in spite of being told “No, no, no,” especially when you know you’re right.

On the American judicial system

It’s so twisted. It’s so crude to tell poor people that because you don’t have enough money to hire a lawyer, we’re not gonna give you the same justice that we’ll give somebody that could afford a lawyer. To me, that is a crude way of really treating poor people because I’ve seen people that have lawyers prevail. People without lawyers don’t prevail.

Sam Briger and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.