Breaking: Fifth Circuit Court Blocks Ruling that Allowed Exoneree Calvin Duncan to Take Office
Duncan won nearly 70% of the vote, but just days before he was to take office as the Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal District Court, the governor signed legislation eliminating the role.
The Fifth Circuit has stayed, or paused, a lower court’s ruling that temporarily blocked a new Louisiana law that eliminated the elected office of Orleans Parish Criminal Clerk, from taking effect. The new law was set to take effect on May 3, the day before exoneree Calvin Duncan was supposed to start his first day in office.
Duncan, who is Black, won nearly 70 percent of the vote, but just days before he was to take office, the Republican Governor Jeff Landry, who is white, signed legislation that eliminated the role.
The Center for Constitutional Rights and others, including the ACLU of Louisiana, filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the law. Last night, a federal court granted their request for a temporary restraining order, which blocks the law from going into effect, although it expires after 14 days. Duncan’s attorneys argued that the new law targeted Duncan, who has been an outspoken critic of the criminal legal system.
SB 256, also known as Act 15, consolidated the functions of the civil and criminal court clerk positions in Orleans Parish into one office, to be held by the current civil clerk, thereby eliminating the position Duncan was elected to hold.
“High-powered officials in Louisiana state government are engaged in an unconstitutional campaign to prevent Plaintiff Calvin Duncan, Clerk-Elect of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court and an Orleans Parish voter, from taking the office to which he was duly elected by a landslide,” Duncan’s attorneys wrote in their petition for a Temporary Restraining Order.
The defendants appealed the decision to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which granted their request for a stay.
During the campaign, Duncan told voters that, if elected, he would work to preserve case records and evidence; make courts more efficient and accessible; and ensure fair and transparent elections.
In 1982, at the age of 19, he was arrested for a murder he did not commit. After a one-day trial, he was convicted in an Orleans Parish courtroom and sentenced to life without parole. Last year, he published a book, co-written with Sophie Cull, chronicling his work as a jailhouse lawyer.
“It tells the story of how I went from facing the death penalty in Orleans Parish Prison to becoming a self-taught ‘counsel substitute’ at Angola, thanks to the mentors, books, and friendships that shaped me,” Duncan wrote on his substack. “It explores the cases I worked on, the obstacles I faced, and the fight for justice inside a system designed to keep poor people out of the courts.”