The 'Jailhouse Lawyer' Who Freed Innocent People — Including Himself

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🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

While serving a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit, Calvin Duncan studied law, hoping to appeal his case. In the process he became a jailhouse lawyer. We'll talk about how he managed to help free many wrongly convicted prisoners, including himself, while facing countless legal obstacles confronting people who are poor and Black. His memoir is The Jailhouse Lawyer.

Maureen Corrigan recommends two summer non-fiction books: The Salt Stones By Helen Whybrow and A Marriage at Sea By Sophie Elmhirst.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from MSNBC's newest original podcast, The Best People with Nicole Wallace.
0:06.4	Each week, Nicole speaks with someone who inspires her, including Jason Bateman, Rachel Maddow, Sarah Jessica Parker, and more.
0:13.6	Listen now. New episodes drop on Mondays.
0:16.8	This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Calvin Duncan became a jailhouse lawyer, an official one,
0:23.7	while serving 28 and a half years in prison for a murder robbery he didn't commit. Rather than
0:29.3	letting his life sentence crush his soul, he spent his time in the prison law library and learned
0:34.9	enough to help free other wrongfully convicted men and eventually won his own
0:39.3	freedom. Duncan grew up poor in New Orleans. In 1982, when he was 19, he was getting vocational
0:46.6	training in a job court program in Mount Hood, Oregon, when the police arrested him, in spite of
0:52.2	his insistence that he knew nothing about the crime.
0:55.2	This was six months after the crime was committed in New Orleans. His lawyer did virtually
1:00.1	no research, presented a minimal defense. The eyewitness testimony was unreliable, but Duncan was
1:07.4	sentenced to life. He served most of his time in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
1:13.5	That's where he became an official jailhouse lawyer as part of Angola's inmate counsel substitute program.
1:20.6	Angola had the largest legal library of any U.S. prison.
1:25.1	Duncan worked on hundreds of cases and helped free many people incarcerated there.
1:29.7	After years of trying to get his own case reopened, and often coming close, only to encounter
1:35.1	yet another obstacle, he finally succeeded with the help of the Innocence Project of New Orleans.
1:41.7	The DA agreed to his release, based on time served, in exchange for a plea deal.
1:47.8	Later, Duncan was exonerated. After he was released on 2011, he went to college and got his
1:53.7	BA from Tulane. This past spring at the age of 60, he received his law degree from the Lewis and Clark
1:59.8	University in Oregon. He now lives in New Orleans, where he's the founder and director of the Light of Justice program, which works to improve access to the courts for people who are incarcerated. His new book, co-authored with Sophie Cull, is called The Jail House Lawyer. Calvin Duncan, welcome to fresh air. Congratulations on being a
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