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A down-ballot race for new Orleans The clerkship of the Criminal Court has become personal and controversial, as candidate Kelvin Duncan, who spent three decades in prison before having his sentence vacated, faces attacks from the Louisiana Attorney General and the incumbent clerk over whether he was actually exonerated.
Duncan, 62, taught himself law while in prison and fought for the years. He says that the city’s chief criminal recordkeeper searches for him to get personal.
“I never want what happened to me to happen to anyone else,” said Duncan, whose murder conviction was vacated by a judge in 2021. He is listed on the national registry alongside figures such as “Central Park Five” member Yousef Salaam, now A. new york city Council meetings.
But Duncan’s campaign has been overshadowed by controversies about the term “exoneration” in his case, injecting drama into the final stretch of an otherwise sleepy municipal race. Voters head to the polls on Saturday.
louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and incumbent clerk Darren Lombard have both denied Duncan’s innocence, pointing to a plea deal for manslaughter and armed robbery in 2011 that Duncan says he only accepted to secure his release. In televised debates, media interviews and campaign advertisements, Lombard has called Duncan a murderer.
Duncan, a Democrat, accuses his opponents of trying to mislead voters. Duncan’s supporters say it is an example of bare-knuckle politics in New Orleans, where more than 10 candidates are also running to replace term-limited 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 tracked since 1989.
“We err conservatively on maintaining the integrity of the database,” she said. “Calvin’s exclusion was not one of these close calls. His case clearly meets our inclusion criteria.”
A guilty plea and a vacated conviction
Duncan presented new evidence of his innocence in the fatal 1981 shooting – in which police officers lied to the court – before being released from prison. A judge later vacated Duncan’s conviction under the legal statute of “factual innocence” and prosecutors dismissed the charges.
Legal scholars say there is no across-the-board legal standard for exoneration, but Paredes’ group generally defines it as occurring “when a person who has been convicted of a crime is officially cleared after new evidence of innocence becomes available.” ,
Even before Duncan ran for office, his case drew scrutiny from Murrill, the state’s Republican Attorney General. Duncan earned a law degree in 2023 and sought to receive $330,000 in state compensation for his wrongful conviction, with Murrill threatening to fight his ability to practice law unless he dropped his claim to the money, according to Jacob Wexler, Duncan’s attorney.
Murrill’s spokesman, Lester Duhe, confirmed that account, saying Duncan “knowingly and knowingly pleaded guilty to this murder in court.” Duncan abandoned his claim to avoid any obstruction to practicing law, Wexler said.
Less than two weeks before the election, Murrill escalated the controversy, issuing a public letter accusing Duncan of “gross misrepresentation” in order to ostracize himself. On Monday, dozens of lawyers in Louisiana signed a letter rejecting her claims.
a self-taught lawyer
In the legal community, Duncan had already achieved a degree of celebrity before running for office.
He recalls in his memoir how an old prisoner advised him to learn law to protect himself. With only an eighth grade education, Duncan honed his legal skills and was allowed to help other inmates prepare court documents as part of a prison legal program.
His persistence ultimately shaped national legislation. Duncan was the driving force behind the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended non-total jury convictions in Louisiana and Oregon, the only two states still allowing the practice rooted in the Jim Crow era, an attorney in the case, G. Ben Cohen said.
Duncan said obtaining a police report, let alone a trial transcript, can take years for inmates. The New Orleans criminal court system still leans heavily on paper records, and thousands of files were lost during Hurricane Katrina. In August, troves of criminal court records were accidentally thrown away, requiring the clerk’s office to save them from a landfill.
Lombard said a new digital filing system will come online this year. He calls his opponent incompetent, while Duncan argues that he would bring a unique appreciation for the weight of the office.
“I have seen and experienced firsthand when a clerk’s office does not function properly,” he said.
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Associated Press journalist stephen smith Contributed to this report. Brooke 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 undercover issues.