Jailhouse Lawyer Shares Journey from Prisoner to Reformer at Liman Center Event

On May 4, Calvin Duncan — legal reformer, author, and former incarcerated person — arrived for his first day of work as the Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal District Court in New Orleans.

Duncan’s electoral victory — even though a change in the law meant he could not take office — was the latest of a series of hard-won battles that began for him in 1982 when he was arrested at the age of 19 and convicted of a murder-robbery.

This winter, Duncan came to Yale Law School to discuss his memoir and law behind bars at an event co-sponsored by the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law. The Criminal Policy Practicum at the University of Connecticut co-sponsored the panel.

Duncan was elected parish clerk in November 2025; he won 68% of the vote, compared with the incumbent's 32%.The office, in charge of court records, oversees access to documents. Duncan had run on an agenda of reform that included making those records more accessible. While imprisoned, Duncan taught himself law, filed appeals, and after more than 28 years, secured his freedom. In 2021, he was exonerated. His story is detailed in “The Jailhouse Lawyer,” co-written with legal reform advocate Sophie Cull.

Joining Duncan at Yale was Bidish Sarma ’08, a colleague of Duncan at Jesuit Social Research Institute (JSRI) at Loyola University, New Orleans. The panel also included Anna VanCleave, Criminal Defense Clinic director and law professor at UConn Law and former executive director of the Liman Center. Liman Center Executive Director Kate Braner moderated.

Duncan recounted that he grew up knowing two things: “that I was going to go to prison at a young age or get killed.” After being charged with murder, Duncan first met his lawyers the night before his trial. No independent investigation occurred. Prosecutors did not turn over key police reports. After a day-long trial, Duncan was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

Duncan explained that, after being sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola and having no lawyers come see him, he joined the prison’s Inmate Counsel Substitute Program. In the program, incarcerated individuals who have taught themselves about law help other prisoners navigate issues related to convictions, appeals, and prison conditions. After conviction, individuals have rights to counsel through sentencing and a first appeal. No provision is made for counsel thereafter. Thus, jailhouse lawyers, while not licensed attorneys, provide guidance to those who often have no other legal support.

“We do almost everything a lawyer does,” Duncan said, from legal research to preparing pleadings to giving legal advice. For 22 years, he worked on hundreds of cases and helped some individuals overturn convictions and gain opportunities to be resentenced. 

In 2011, with the help of the Innocence Project New Orleans, Duncan convinced a judge to reject Duncan’s conviction. He was released after taking a plea to a lesser offense, a condition the judge imposed. Duncan was free, but the conviction remained on his record for another decade. Duncan explained that he accepted that plea because he could either “keep telling the truth” and die in prison or take the deal.

“I earned my freedom by lying to the court,” Duncan said. “Some people say ‘I would never plead guilty to a crime I did not commit.’” Duncan counseled that “you better pray that you are never in that situation.” 

Duncan did not stop pushing to clear his name or advocating on behalf of those behind bars. Moving back to New Orleans, he worked as a paralegal and founded Light of Justice, a program providing legal assistance to prisoners. Duncan enrolled in Tulane University, received his BA in 2019, and earned a JD from Lewis and Clark in 2023. In 2021, he was exonerated when new evidence revealed police misconduct and misidentification. He then returned to Light of Justice, by which time it was based in the JSRI.

Since he has been released, Duncan has worked for reform. One issue he took up was the practice in Louisiana of permitting a conviction without all jurors agreeing on a verdict. While working as a jailhouse lawyer, Duncan learned that many people had been convicted by a non-unanimous jury. In 1879, in Strauder v. West Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that categorical exclusion of Black men from jury service was unconstitutional. Soon thereafter, in a 1898 convention, Louisiana rewrote its constitution to permit convictions if nine out of 12 jurors agreed. As the U.S. Supreme Court noted in 2020, in Ramos v. Louisiana, the chairman of Louisiana’s judiciary committee in 1898 stated the convention’s intention “to establish the supremacy of the white race.” A 1973 amendment changed the rule to 10 out of 12 jurors. By 2018, Louisiana and Oregon were the only states that allowed such convictions. 

We do almost everything a lawyer does.“

—Calvin Duncan on “jailhouse lawyers”

Non-unanimous jury verdicts struck Duncan as wrong and causing a lot of harm. He noted that innocent people were getting convicted. Between 2013 and 2019, working with Louisiana attorney Ben Cohen and with jailhouse lawyers, Duncan helped file 23 petitions arguing that Louisiana’s state law ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court heard one of those petitions, filed on behalf of Evangelisto Ramos, who had been convicted by a non-unanimous jury of second-degree murder. The Court held in Ramos v. Louisiana that non-unanimous jury verdicts violated the Sixth Amendment’s right to an impartial jury. On retrial, Ramos was acquitted. 

The U.S. Supreme Court left open the question of whether its rule applied to people before 2020. The Oregon Supreme Court made the rule retroactive. The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected that approach. For Duncan, that opinion meant that the Louisiana justice system found it acceptable to let individuals “die in prison,” even if they were convicted under unconstitutional circumstances.
In addition to discussing Duncan’s innovative work, Sarma brought into focus the many procedural barriers people on the inside face when trying to access the courts. 

“There is nobody there to help you except for the jailhouse lawyers, but the reality of what your circumstances are at any given point makes it almost impossible for you to meet the deadlines,” he explained. “States are permitted to create all of their own timelines to govern state post-conviction litigation and how you have to work your way through the courts.” 

Deadlines to review the decision of a direct appeal can pass without a prisoner knowing about it. After leaving prison and starting work at the JSRI, Duncan’s solution was to monitor every appeal decision and mail copies it to incarcerated individuals to alert them of deadlines. 

Sarma highlighted how the clock is ticking on every prisoner’s appeal or post-conviction deadline while they are “navigating this new life and circumstances inside the prison walls.” With no money, incarcerated people cannot get the records they need. 

Duncan pointed out that every person has a fundamental right to access to public records. But, he explained, Louisiana passed a law in 1994 that people in prison are not considered “a person” for the purposes of public records. To get his own records, Duncan donated plasma to pay for copying fees. His sister got a transcript of his trial by cajoling a court staffer. Those experiences prompted him to run for Clerk of the Criminal Court.

VanCleave, who was he chief of the Capital Division of the Orleans Public Defenders from 2014 to 2016, underscored that Louisiana is not unique in imposing obstacles to records and courts. Working with her UConn clinic students, VanCleave said, she has received “letter after letter” from imprisoned individuals who have no access to a law library. State officials have argued that incarcerated people do not need a law library because they have access to lawyers through the state’s Inmate Legal Assistance Program.

The legal assistance program has come under criticism. In 2025, the Louisiana’s correction ombuds asked the Department of Correction to suspend the contract for the private law firm tasked with running the program. A report from the ombuds office described the firm as making few visits to clients and rare court appearances despite numerous requests for legal help from incarcerated people. 

“You have this program, but the program is operating to continue to shut down opportunity for people to litigate,” said Karus Sabio, one of VanCleave’s students. Under those conditions, Sabio asked, “what does access to the court mean?”

Improving court access for people behind bars requires looking “beyond the institutions and government officials,” Duncan said. Such changes might start, he suggested, in the classrooms of law schools to encourage future lawyers to think of themselves as protectors of the entire Bill of Rights. 
Half of the Bill of Rights concerns protecting people accused of crimes, Duncan pointed out. He continued that big law firms defend the First and Second Amendments. There could be equal legal strength behind the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, Duncan argued. He said that Constitution is “the most dangerous weapon in this country” against those who seek to keep procedural hurdles in place, “if we wield it.”

Duncan’s election to Orleans parish clerk of criminal district court in 2025 was to be the next step in his own work. But Louisiana’s state legislature responded with a law, Act 15, that abolished his position and merged its duties with those of the Orleans Parish Clerk of Civil District Court. On April 30, 2026, the governor signed that provision, which took effect on May 3, one day before Duncan’s term was to begin.

A voter sued in state court, arguing that the state legislature could abolish the office only through a constitutional amendment. On May 8, the trial-level court paused the merger; two days later, the Louisiana Supreme Court stayed that order, and on June 1, held that Act 15 was “a valid exercise of legislative power.”

The court, relying on a provision stating that the listed courts and offices are “continued, subject to change by law,” decided that the Louisiana Constitution permitted the change. The court rejected the claim that Act 15 had disenfranchised people who had voted for Duncan in November. The court stated that the right to vote was “sacrosanct, but it is a right granted to our voters, not a mechanism to preserve offices for their elected occupants.”

Three justices dissented. They agreed that the legislature could consolidate the clerks’ offices but that Act 15 should take effect only after Duncan completed his term in office. By not allowing Duncan to serve his term, they argued, the legislature had nullified his election.

Duncan has resumed directing the Light of Justice Program and is continuing to work around the country to improve access to the courts for incarcerated people. He also makes frequent trips back to Angola to meet with the Inmate Counsel Substitutes and helps connect outside lawyers and law students to those inside.