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.”
The incumbent candidate from a powerful local political family
To date, the Clerk’s Office still closes at 3 pm. Making matters worse, the Clerk’s official website inaccurately states that the Clerk’s Office is open until 4 pm. The Office’s closure at 3 pm likely violates Louisiana law, which requires clerk’s offices to be open from 8:30 - 4:30 pm. See La. R. S. § 13:756.
Mr. Lombard stated that implementing an e-filing system for attorneys would be a top priority in the first 100 days of his administration. Four years later, lawyers working in New Orleans are still waiting. Orleans Parish is the only major metropolitan clerk’s office in Louisiana where e-filing is not available. Mr. Lombard’s broken campaign promise contributes to the delays in processing criminal cases, and relying on paper filing in 2025 increases the risk for the misplacement and loss of court records – not to mention paper filing unnecessarily increases the office’s environmental footprint.
Beyond e-filing, digitizing the Court records increases access to these files for the public – especially for those folks who work 9-5 jobs and cannot get to the office to look these files up before 3 o’clock.
There is a common misconception in Louisiana that if you have a felony conviction that you cannot vote – this is wrong (check out if you are eligible). Mr. Lombard promised to update the Clerk of Court’s website with the eligibility criteria a potential voter must meet if they have a felony conviction. As of today, the Clerk’s Website fails to share this essential voting information. This is not a great look for the City’s Chief Election Officer.
Up until September 5, 2025, under Mr. Lombard’s leadership, the Clerk of Court’s website listed wrong dates for the next election, and listed the wrong voter registration deadlines.
I genuinely don’t understand how the US isn’t yet considered a failed democracy
I consider it failed, as a 31 year old US citizen. I have friends moving to other countries, I wish I could afford to do the same.
Because of who gets to do the considering.
isn’t it? i thought it was already
The real !mildlyinfuriating part is the implication that the propositions are less important than the election of people.
It’s not that they’re less important. These were very important propositions, but normally the election and proposition boxes are the same size.
This was an election where an incumbent candidate from a local political family had already done some things that seemed to undermine getting people to vote in the election.
There is a common misconception in Louisiana that if you have a felony conviction that you cannot vote – this is wrong (check out if you are eligible). Mr. Lombard promised to update the Clerk of Court’s website with the eligibility criteria a potential voter must meet if they have a felony conviction. As of today, the Clerk’s Website fails to share this essential voting information. This is not a great look for the City’s Chief Election Officer.
Up until September 5, 2025, under Mr. Lombard’s leadership, the Clerk of Court’s website listed wrong dates for the next election, and listed the wrong voter registration deadlines.
It’s either coincidental incompetence of the guy up for re-election, or more examples of the much bigger problem Louisiana has historically had when it comes to undermining the democratic process.
Nobody is (usually) standing at polling booths armed in order to intimidate people, but can you really call these passive aggressive attempts to test the boundaries and undermine equal participation “respect” for democracy?
I think it says a lot that they keep bothering with this passive aggressive shit. Why bother trying to stack the deck in your favor if you truly didn’t need to worry about how it’s stacked?
Democracy is trapped under the boot of oligarchy and corruption, but I don’t believe it’s quite dead yet. Looks like Duncan won by ~67%
Calvin Duncan projected to win hotly contested criminal court clerk race against Darren Lombard
Have you never voted before? That’s a perfectly typical form. Of course the candidates have no text description, there is nothing non-partisan one could put there. Of course the propositions have text descriptions, they always do.
It’s the size of the box not the fact that there’s no information about the candidates jfc
The size of the text for the names of the candidates is smaller than even the text of the small individual Yes/No boxes for the propositions.
Also notice how the text is intentionally inaccessible to the common man.
Aren’t all voting machines left to right like this? I guess it would make sense to put the big blocky propositions on the left so that it’s not as easy for people to miss the main question.