Exonerated Former Prisoner Wins Election for Chief Record Keeper in New Orleans
On November 15, 2025, a man who was once serving a life sentence for murder was elected as the chief record keeper for New Orlean’s criminal court. Calvin Duncan, 62, spent 28 years in prison before winning his freedom in 2011 with the help of Innocence Project New Orleans (now known as Innocence & Justice Louisiana). At the time, Duncan’s murder conviction was vacated in exchange for pleading guilty to lesser charges; in 2021, he was exonerated by a judge.
While locked up, Duncan became a talented jailhouse lawyer and later, at 60, graduated from law school. In addition to helping out countless other prisoners, Duncan worked with the litigation team that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end non-unanimous jury convictions in Louisiana and Oregon, which were the only two states that allowed the Jim Crow era practice (though Alabama still sentences prisoners to death on the recommendation of a non-unanimous jury).
The jailhouse lawyer’s legal advocacy often required him to track down records with court clerks throughout Louisiana. Most of the time, the documents were either online or easily requested, Duncan told The New York Times. But that wasn’t the case in New Orleans, where the criminal court is reliant on paper files; the filing system is so cumbersome that in August of this year, the clerk’s office was forced to wade through a landfill to find documents that were thrown away by mistake.
Winning 68% of the vote, Duncan’s campaign centered on his promise to fast track the digitization of the court’s records and improve public access. His odds were boosted when his opponent, Darren Lombard, inaccurately claimed late in the race that Duncan had never been fully exonerated and that he had ties to a “coldblooded murder.” Lombard, the Democratic incumbent from a prominent political family, failed to consider that his message might flop in a city with one of the highest rates of known wrongful convictions.
“Tonight is a dream that’s been 40 years in the making,” Duncan said on the night of his victory. “I hope that all those people who died in prison because we couldn’t get their records are looking down now. I hope they’re proud of me.”
Sources: The New York Times, Associated Press
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