At age 19, Calvin Duncan was accused of first-degree murder. For years, while he sat in jail, he knew little of the crime he stood accused of. His attorneys hadn’t investigated. As it turns out, a young white woman had ID’d him from a mugshot from a shoplifting arrest from years earlier. She had been standing with her boyfriend David Yaeger at the bus stop by Tastee Donuts at Esplanade and North Broad Streets when two young Black men tried to rob them, then shot the boyfriend dead. 

In 1983, to help fight the wrongful charge, Calvin began to teach himself the law, while being held within the Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans. In his new book The Jailhouse Lawyer, co-written by Sophie Cull, he writes about that time in his life:

Attempting to learn the law in jail was like training for a marathon barefoot. Law books and court opinions were rare gems. Calvin was lucky to get hold of a dictionary. He slept with his pencil and legal pad under his pillow to keep them from being stolen. 

Men on the tiers dubbed “lockerbox lawyers” gave legal advice and drafted motions in exchange for cigarettes. But Calvin quickly realized their advice was inexpert, and their motions were regurgitated from other pleadings. He filed one or two of their briefs—a motion for a speedy trial and a change of venue—but Judge Frank Shea predictably ignored them. 

Occasionally, guys on the tier would offer up briefs filed by their lawyers, and Calvin would study them line by line, breaking down every word until he grasped its meaning. He could spend hours looking up terms in the dictionary only to find he hadn’t yet made it to the end of a single page. In moments of fatigue, he set his reading aside and returned to the card games and the television in the dayroom.

Between June and December 1983, five more trial dates were put off, mostly at the request of Calvin’s lawyer, who had yet to visit him in jail. An older Cuban man with broken English called Calvin “Dog” because of the way his feet wagged back and forth when he was falling asleep. Calvin had embraced the nickname, especially amused when he and Catkiller were dubbed “Cat and Dog.” But now, the guys on his tier started calling him “Setback,” a nickname he despised. 

While he waited for his case to move, he redoubled his efforts to learn the law. He began tearing articles about police investigations and court hearings out of the daily papers and sticking them to scraps of paper with chewed pink bubble gum. At night, he took notes while he watched the news, listening for stories that involved cases in criminal court. 

Occasionally, Earline would go to the state supreme court library for him and send copies of new legal decisions she found. It was a favor reminiscent of their early days together, when Earline used to help with his homework on the bus home from school. Even now, though she had moved on to another relationship, she was loyal to a fault, attending his court dates and bringing cases to the jail. Over a period of months, he compiled an impressive collection of articles and papers—a makeshift law book of his own.

Occasionally a dictionary would appear on the tier and he would vie for it, eager to decipher more of the legal jargon he didn’t know. He concluded that the language of the law was needlessly confusing: “mandamus” meant a command, “indigent” referred to the inability to pay, and a “motion” was just a request. The purpose of legalese, it seemed to him, was to ensure attorneys got paid while poor people were kept in the dark. He was determined to understand it as well as any lawyer. 

A full year and a half had now passed since his arrest. He’d still never met with his court- appointed attorney, and the cycle of setting and resetting trial dates was driving him to despair. In dark moments, Calvin wondered if he was lost to Orleans Parish Prison for good.

After another scuffle on the tier, Calvin was back in the dungeon, huddled over a yellow legal pad. He was glad to be alone in a cell tonight. He had work to do. 

“May it please the court, Petitioner is incarcerated in Orleans Parish Prison and there are no Law Library Facility located in this prison system. Petitioner is indigent, so petitioner is unable to buy a Code of Criminal Procedure (1984, Paperback). . . Petitioner is in custody in the Orleans Parish Prison accuse of a capital offense—First Degree Murder, a crime Petitioner did not commit. Wherefore, Petitioner Calvin F. Duncan prays that this honorable court consider petitioner motion and provide petitioner with a Code of Criminal Procedure Law Book.”

He sat back and ran his eyes over the red ink, wincing at the garish color. It looked amateurish, but he had no choice. He was stuck in the cells without a black pen. The Code of Criminal Procedure was the state’s legal rule book governing how criminal trials worked in Louisiana. Every prosecutor, judge, and criminal defense lawyer had one. He needed one, too. 

He printed a title across the top of the page: “Motion for a Law Book.” After reading through it one last time, he tugged the yellow pages away from the notepad, guarding the perforations so they wouldn’t tear. 

Then he tucked them into an envelope addressed to the state’s highest court. If the justices at the Louisiana Supreme Court knew anything of the conditions at Orleans Parish Prison, they would surely answer his call for help. 

When a response from the court arrived weeks later, however, Calvin realized his mistake. The order, only two sentences long, said the court lacked jurisdiction because his motion wasn’t first adjudicated by the lower courts. The motion was sent back down to the court of appeals, which in turn sent it back down to the trial court, to Judge Shea. Calvin figured the motion was doomed—Judge Shea would only ignore it.

At his next status conference, just as another uneventful hearing unfolded, Calvin was preparing to be taken back to the cells when an unexpected movement caught his eye. Judge Shea instructed the bailiff to hand defense counsel a copy of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Calvin’s lawyer raised his brows as the bailiff set the hulking book in his hands. 

Astonished, Calvin turned toward the judge, but Shea continued the proceedings, never meeting his gaze. When court adjourned, Calvin’s lawyer met him in the holding cell with the book. “Apparently you asked for this. Don’t let them take it away,” he warned. 

Calvin knew the rules: nothing was allowed back on the tier. Even a law book was deemed contraband. He approached the sheriff’s deputy at the door to the stairwell with caution, but the deputy let him pass. So did the next. When he made it all the way to his cot with the book tucked safely under his arm, he felt like Moses parting the Red Sea. 

He laid the treatise on his mattress, watching it sink into the thin bedding, heavy with a thousand procedural rules he would need to learn. He stared in disbelief. He hadn’t just filed his very first motion in court—he’d won it.

The first suit Calvin prepared on his own was over the jail’s failure to provide him with a high-fiber diet. A doctor had ordered that he eat raisins and bran cereal as a remedy for a bout of severe intestinal pain, yet the jail continued to serve him the same food as everyone else. 

When the trial date for his lawsuit arrived, Calvin was taken to court to represent himself. The judge nicknamed the lawsuit the “Case of the Missing Raisins” and ruled in Calvin’s favor, and the jail began providing him with the proper diet. Months later, he received a check for $250 in damages, which he used to purchase a legal dictionary and a legal writing textbook. 

His first suit a success, Calvin began filing suits about other sorts of dehumanizing treatment: when the shake-down crew confiscated his legal work while turning over the cells, or when he was beaten by deputies. Each filing gave him a better feel for how the law worked in practice. 

He started to file suits on behalf of other men, many of whom were enduring worse conditions than he was. He helped them file over the lack of medical care, arbitrary disciplinary procedures, inadequate food portions that were leading some people to starve, and failure to provide mental health treatment. Having been demoralized for so long, Calvin found that defending others helped him regain a sense of purpose. 

One lawsuit in particular showed him how powerful the law could be. 

Old-timers sent back from Angola to the parish prison for court appearances weren’t being provided dentures when they were placed in the jail. (Indeed, there was no dental care provided in the jail at all, save for tooth extractions.) As a result, they couldn’t properly chew their food. 

Calvin watched them suffering over their meals and losing weight by the week. He filed an emergency suit on their behalf, arguing that the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed their right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The sheriff fought the suit initially, but once it became clear that the judge wasn’t going to dismiss it, he gave the men their dentures to moot the case. 

When Calvin saw the elderly men able to eat—that simple, precious act—he fell in love with the law. He could wield the very thing holding him in prison to challenge those who had taken his freedom. The law gave him a way to fight back. 

After a string of wins, the guys in the jail dubbed Calvin “the Snickers Lawyer,” referring to his policy of accepting only a candy bar for helping with a suit. He wouldn’t accept any other payment for his work.

In early 1986, Calvin learned about a new U.S. Supreme Court case, Michigan v. Jackson, which established that once a suspect requests an attorney, they cannot be interrogated further without the attorney present. He requested a copy of the decision from the court—no easy task from inside the jail—and used it to support his appeal, arguing that his statements to authorities after his extradition hearing should have been excluded from trial.

He sent the handwritten appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal, the state appellate court that handled appeals of criminal cases from New Orleans, just in time to meet his deadline. Despite his constraints, he was pleased with the brief.

When his lawyer finally sent him a copy of what he’d filed, Calvin was incensed. It was only two pages long and contained a single claim.

Worse, the trial lawyers hadn’t objected to the issue, meaning it wasn’t preserved for appeal. His appellate lawyer hadn’t even read the record closely enough to realize he was filing a meaningless claim.

Calvin prepared a bar complaint against the attorney, but he knew that wouldn’t save him in court. He tried to reassure himself that his own brief would be enough to win a new trial, even without his attorney’s help. While he waited for the court to rule, he focused on getting to Angola so he could access the law library and prepared his defense.

The opportunity finally came when Calvin saw the sheriff’s attorney at the jail one day. They recognized each other from prior court hearings on Calvin’s many suits. Calvin called him over to the bars. “If you get me transferred to Angola, I’ll drop all my lawsuits,” he offered.

The lawyer’s brows twitched with interest. “I’ll see what I can do.”

A few weeks later, Calvin was on his way.

Excerpted from The Jailhouse Lawyer. Published with permission from Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, © 2023 by Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull. On Thursday, July 10 at 6 p.m., Baldwin & Co. will host the launch of  The Jailhouse Lawyer in the Georges Auditorium at Dillard University, with special guest Sister Helen Prejean. RSVP here.

Duncan has arranged with his publisher to get free paperback copies of his book to people still incarcerated. For every three copies of his book that are sold, one copy will go to a person in prison. / Also, Duncan sat down this week with The Lens’ Bernard Smith. That interview is here.