Calvin Duncan started learning the law as a matter of necessity, he said. He was serving a life sentence for murder and wanted to prove his innocence.
He not only regained his freedom, but helped many other incarcerated people do the same. He graduated from law school at age 60. And last November, he was elected to the job of criminal court clerk in New Orleans, ousting an incumbent after drawing an unusual level of attention to a race that rarely attracts any.
But Mr. Duncan may never get to serve. State lawmakers in Louisiana are racing to abolish the office altogether before he assumes it on May 4.
Republican officials in Louisiana want to eliminate the criminal court clerk job as part of a more sweeping effort to reshape the judicial system in New Orleans, which detractors have long derided as costly and inefficient. The plan, they say, would save money by cutting judges and consolidating court functions.
But while Republicans have talked in the past about combining the city’s criminal and civil courts, it became a priority only after Mr. Duncan was elected.
Under the proposal, the criminal court clerk’s responsibilities — including maintaining an ever-expanding trove of case records and evidence, as well as running elections — would be reassigned to the city’s elected civil clerk.
“This could be a proud moment for the whole state — a person pulling himself up,” Mr. Duncan, now 63, said in a recent interview, expressing his frustration.
Some critics have cast the legislation as another injustice inflicted by the state upon Mr. Duncan, who served 28 years in prison before securing his freedom in 2011. Mr. Duncan, who is Black, described the move as reminiscent of Reconstruction-era tactics employed by white Southern leaders to block Black candidates from elected office.
“The will of the people should be honored,” he said.
Opponents of the proposal have also condemned it as another example of Louisiana’s Republican leaders — namely, Gov. Jeff Landry — exerting their will over the defiantly left-leaning city of New Orleans. It is a recurring tug of war that has flared up over abortion access, homelessness and crime in the French Quarter.
The bill’s supporters denied being motivated by animus toward Mr. Duncan.
“I don’t blame him for not liking it and it seems like he’s done some remarkable things since he’s gotten out of jail,” said Jay Morris, the Republican state senator from northern Louisiana who sponsored the bill. “I don’t know whether he would have been a good clerk or not, but it’s just more about right-sizing and is something that should have been done along time ago.”
An estimate by the nonpartisan legislative auditor found that merging the criminal and civil clerks’ offices in New Orleans would save the state just $37,300 per year. Mr. Morris said the civil clerk’s office — which maintains deeds and mortgage records — generates considerable revenue, while the criminal clerk’s office does not.
Lawmakers are rushing to get the legislation to Mr. Landry, who pushed for the effort, before Mr. Duncan takes office on May 4. The bill has passed in the Senate along party lines and was scheduled to be debated in the House on Thursday.
Mr. Duncan, in seeking the criminal clerk’s office, also argued that was inefficient, disorganized and outdated.
But rather than slashing it, Mr. Duncan campaigned on investing in digitizing records and improving access. He said that he knew from experience the value of case records and evidence in clearing wrongful convictions and achieving justice. He also knew the devastating consequences when the clerk’s office fails to carefully maintain those records.
Mr. Duncan’s run began as a long shot. He was challenging an incumbent from a prominent political family, who had endorsements from the city’s newly elected mayor and the editorial page of The Times-Picayune, the city’s principal news outlet.
But his campaign picked up steam after the incumbent, Darren Lombard, started publicly claiming last year that Mr. Duncan had never been cleared in the murder in 1981 that had sent him to prison. Mr. Lombard cited a letter from the state’s Republican attorney general, Liz Murrill, arguing that Mr. Duncan was not really exonerated because he had pleaded guilty to a lesser charge to secure his release from prison.
But a judge found Mr. Duncan factually innocent long before his campaign. He was also added to the National Registry of Exonerations, having met the standards of the independent clearinghouse maintained by scholars.
In a city with one of the nation’s highest rates of known wrongful convictions, the attempts to discredit Mr. Duncan only galvanized support for his campaign. He forced Mr. Lombard into a runoff, which he won with 68 percent of the vote.
Mr. Duncan has found this new fight — and the difficult odds of winning it — disheartening in part because of the message it sends to voters whose trust he won.
“I had to convince a lot of people to start believing in this system again, and I had to convince them that our votes do count,” he said. “And now, it’s like your vote don’t count.”
