Louisiana GOP races to eliminate an elected office won by an exonerated man

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A man imprisoned for nearly 30 years before being exonerated won a landmark election in New Orleans promising to fix a judicial system that failed him. Now, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and the GOP-controlled Legislature are racing to eliminate his job before he can be sworn in.

Calvin Duncan won 68% of the vote last November to become the Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court after pledging to reform the justice system based on his own experience fighting to access court records while in maximum security prison.

Duncan rebuilt his life, in part by running for and winning the clerk’s office. But Louisiana Senate Republicans on Wednesday voted to scrap Duncan’s new job as part of a broader GOP effort to streamline the judiciary in New Orleans, a Democratic hub with a predominantly Black electorate. The state Legislature is largely Republican and white, and the deeply red state has been leading efforts to gut the Voting Rights Act.

Duncan’s swearing in is scheduled for May 4.

He told The Associated Press he believes he’s being retaliated against by Louisiana officials who have long denied his innocence, even though his name is listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

Republicans say it isn’t personal and defend the effort as a step toward government efficiency.

“The citizens of New Orleans overwhelmingly said: ‘I want to give this person a chance, he can make a difference,’” Duncan, a Democrat, told lawmakers during a March committee hearing. “What this bill does, it says: ‘Thank you but you wasted your time.’ It disenfranchises everybody.”

The wrongful conviction that landed Duncan in prison

The case started with the 1981 murder of 23-year-old David Yeager and landed Duncan in prison for more than 28 years. In 2011, on the eve of a hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to time served if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan was freed, but he didn’t give up trying to clear his name.

Finally, in 2021, a judge agreed that he had been unjustly convicted and vacated Duncan’s sentence altogether.

As state attorney general in 2023, Landry opposed Duncan’s petition to be compensated for his wrongful conviction. Duncan withdrew the petition after Landry’s successor, Liz Murrill, threatened to go after Duncan’s law license in the state. When Duncan ran for clerk, Murrill vowed to take “further action” against him if he did not stop calling himself “exonerated.”

Landry and Murrill have pointed to Duncan having accepted the 2011 plea deal for manslaughter and armed robbery.

“The Attorney General made it clear during the election that if I continued to accurately speak about my innocence and exoneration that I would face consequences from her office,” Duncan told The Associated Press. “We are seeing those consequences today as she and the Governor try to undo the will of 68% of voters in New Orleans.”

Murrill said she had “no involvement” in the move to eliminate the office.

Republicans say the current system needs an overhaul

Landry told the AP that eliminating Duncan’s elected office was about improving “government efficiency” and “cleaning up a system in Orleans Parish that has been plagued by dysfunction and corruption for years.”

Proponents of consolidating the criminal clerk of court with the civil clerk of court say the offices are combined in other parishes. Terminating the criminal clerk of court position would save the state an estimated $27,300, according to the office of the legislative auditor, which added that the costs of combining clerks’ offices were “unknown.”

The bill’s Republican author, Sen. Jay Morris, who represents a district in north Louisiana, acknowledged that once Duncan’s elected position is eliminated, the civil clerk of court might struggle to handle the influx of cases. The solution, he says, is to “hire someone.”

Other New Orleans elected judicial officials whose jobs may be eliminated in the future would be allowed to serve out their terms, but not Duncan.

Morris told lawmakers that the goal is to pass the law in time to prevent Duncan from taking office before the start of his four-year term.

The bill, on track to be passed by the GOP-controlled House and approved by Landry, would immediately go into effect with the governor’s signature.

“I have never seen something so barbaric,” Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat representing New Orleans said on the Senate floor. “I understand politics and I know you all are going to vote how you are going to vote. But just know, when we are all done here, history has a record.”

Duncan, 62, was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions. He has also founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system. He has said being elected to the clerk’s office was the culmination of his life’s work.

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Cline reported from Baton Rouge.

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Brook 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 undercovered issues.