The conviction for murder of a candidate from New Orleans has been canceled, but the state still disputes its past

New Orleans- New Orleans (AP)-A race by ballot for the post of registrar of the New Orleans Criminal Tribunal has become personal and controversial, while candidate Calvin Duncan, who spent three decades in prison before his conviction was canceled, faces the attacks of the Attorney General of Louisiana and the outgoing clerk to find out if he was truly discussed.

Duncan, 62, learned the right in self -taught in prison and has had trouble accessing his files for years. He says it makes his quest to become the main goalkeeper of the more personal criminal record.

“I never want what happened to me does not happen to anyone else,” said Duncan, whose conviction for murder was canceled by a judge in 2021. He is registered in the national register of exemptions alongside personalities like Yousef Salaam, member of “Central Park Five”, today a member of the New York Municipal Council.

But Duncan’s campaign was overshadowed by controversies on the word “exemption” in his case, injecting drama into the last straight line of an otherwise asleep municipal race. Voters will go to the polls on Saturday.

The general prosecutor of Louisiana, Liz Murrill, and the outgoing clerk Darren Lombard both denied Duncan’s innocence, highlighting a plea agreement of 2011 for manslaughter and armed robbery that Duncan says he accepted only to obtain his release. In televised debates, interviews with the media and campaign advertisements, Lombard described Duncan as a murderer.

Duncan, a democrat, accuses his opponents of trying to mislead voters. Duncan’s supporters say that this is an example of a naked hand policy in New Orleans, where more than 10 candidates are also in the running to replace the mayor with limited mandate Latoya Cantrell, who pleaded not guilty in September of corruption accusations.

Jessica Paredes, executive director of the exemption register, said that he was in doubt that the case of Duncan deserved to be listed among the more than 3,700 exemptions identified since 1989.

“We are cautious to maintain the integrity of the database,” she said. “Calvin’s exemption was not one of these accuracy incidents. His case clearly meets our inclusion criteria.”

Duncan presented new evidence of his innocence during a deadly shooting in 1981 – notably the fact that the police had lied to court – before leaving prison. A judge later canceled Duncan’s conviction under the legal status of “factual innocence” and the prosecutors rejected the accusations.

Jurists claim that there is no general legal standard for exemption, but the group of relatives generally defines it as occurring “when a person who has been found guilty of a crime is officially innocent after new proofs of innocence are available”.

Even before Duncan appeared in the elections, his case attracted the attention of Murrill, the public prosecutor of the State. After Duncan obtained a law diploma in 2023 and sought to obtain $ 330,000 in state compensation for his unjustified conviction, Murrill threatened to challenge his ability to exercise the right to give up his request for money, according to Jacob Weixler, Duncan’s lawyer.

Murrill’s spokesperson Lester Duhe confirmed this version, saying that Duncan “knowingly and intentionally pleaded guilty of this manslaughter before the court”. Duncan abandoned his request to avoid any obstacle to the practice of law, said Weixler.

Less than two weeks before the elections, Murrill intensified the conflict by publishing a public letter accusing Duncan of “false gross statements” for having said to be exonerated. Monday, dozens of lawyers from Louisiana signed a letter rejecting her allegations.

In the legal community, Duncan had already acquired a certain celebrity before appearing in the elections.

He recalls in his memories how an older inmate advised him to learn the right to save himself. With only an eighth year education, Duncan has perfected his legal skills and was authorized to help other detainees preparing court documents as part of a legal program in prison.

His perseverance finally shaped national law. Duncan was the driving force behind a decision of the United States Supreme Court in 2020 which ended the non-unanimous convictions of the juries in Louisiana and Oregon, the only two states still authorizing a rooted practice in the Jim Crow era, said G. Ben Cohen, a lawyer in charge of the case.

Duncan said that obtaining a police report, not to mention a transcription from the trial, could take years in detainees. New Orleans’ criminal judicial system is still largely based on paper files, and thousands of files were lost during Hurricane Katrina. In August, many criminal files were thrown in error, which forced the registrar’s office to recover them in a discharge.

Lombard said that a new digital classification system would be put online this year. He considers his opponent to be unskilled, while Duncan affirms that he would bring a unique appreciation of the weight of this function.

“I have witnessed situations in which a clerk office did not work properly,” he said.

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The journalist of Associated Press Stephen Smith contributed to this report. Brook is a member of the body of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non -profit national service program that places journalists in local editorial rooms to cover insufficiently publicized subjects.