A firestorm of controversy continues to rage in Louisiana, from New Orleans to the state capital in Baton Rouge, over the electoral victory of Calvin Duncan, an exonerated former inmate who won an important office in Orleans Parish in 2025. 

At Final Call press time, the election for the office was in the midst of intense litigation at the federal appellate level, as the case is poised to set a historic legal precedent regarding voting rights in the United States.

Having defeated the incumbent, Darren Lombard, by 68.2% to 31.8% during a November runoff  election, critics maintain that efforts by Louisiana’s Republican lawmakers to eliminate the office of Clerk of Criminal Courts District by changing the law after Mr. Duncan’s landslide win were motivated by politics and a blatant dismissal of the voters’ will.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Mr. Duncan from taking office on May 4 as it reviews the case, which has yet to be decided.

Until the appellate court delivers its formal opinion, Mr. Duncan’s case remains in flux, with the next step being an appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court should their decision fail to uphold the local electorate’s choice. In the interim, the office remains consolidated under the parish Civil Clerk’s office.

“My reaction for this morning was that I was going to finally be able to live out the dream … that’s been in the making over 40 years,” Mr. Duncan said during a May 4 press conference broadcast by WDSU News 6 in New Orleans.

“I got a chance to be a clerk for like three hours, and that’s what I concentrate on.  It’s been an ongoing legal saga,” he said of the state’s last-minute passage of a law to eliminate the office he won with over two-thirds of the vote.

Mr. Duncan spent 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. While incarcerated, he began studying law.  According to reporting by NPR, “Duncan dreamed of changing the system by becoming clerk of court to help people get their records.

Duncan was finally released in 2011, with the help of the Innocence Project New Orleans.  He was later exonerated.  In 2023, he earned a law degree.  He finally felt qualified to run for his dream job, clerk of criminal court, who is also in charge of elections.”

However, after his victory, political roadblocks were erected.

Former New Orleans City Council President Oliver M. Thomas Jr., who held office between 2002 and 2007, told The Final Call that the machinations against Black people in the state capital are nothing new in Louisiana and that the unspoken rules of racial hierarchy and class have stratified his city’s majority Black population between the interests of its masses and the interests of the wealthy, regardless of race and party affiliation.

“The conservatives and many people who are anti-democracy feel that the national tide has turned in their favor in many cases, and that below the Mason-Dixon line there’s an environment of complacency amongst Black voters and people who’ve been disenfranchised,”

Mr. Thomas said. He drew a parallel between voter apathy within inner cities and among the poor to an abused person who won’t leave their abuser, while the people who are most organized and focused take controlling roles in local politics.

“They’ve been beaten down, they don’t put up a fight, even under extreme conditions, so in many cases, we act the same way,” Mr. Thomas said of his analogy. He explained that he sees little change coming until conditions become so unbearable that a generation will rise and won’t take it anymore.

Community activist, Byron S. Cole of Fathers Advocacy, a mentorship program championing education and juvenile justice issues for at-risk youth in New Orleans.

Told The Final Call that the Criminal Courts District office oversees more than judicial administration and records management. He said the office also provides election oversight throughout Orleans Parish. It is a position and office of critical importance.

“They (those in power) don’t want to have the discussion that they’ve been trying to control the courts because the clerk of courts controls the elections,” Mr. Cole said.

He stated that only months after Calvin Duncan’s victory, both the state senate and the state house passed legislation to merge the Clerk of Criminal Courts District with the office of the Civil District Court Clerk, and explained that the timing of the legislative actions through SB (Senate bill) 256 disrespects the will of the people who voted. 

Baton Rouge-based civil rights activist Gary Chambers delivered an impassioned message to the Louisiana State House of Representatives on April 28 after the bill, introduced February 26, passed the Louisiana Senate on April 8 and the House on April 23.

“I know how the political process works, so I know that most of what we say at this microphone doesn’t mean much to you at all as representatives,” Mr. Chambers said to the State Representatives present at the hearing.

“But your state ranks 50 in the nation because you continue to do these things. We rank 50 in the economy, number 50 in crime, number 46 in education, number 44 in healthcare, number 49 in natural environment, but you got time to take away clerks of court seats,” Mr. Chambers said.

“You’re proud Republicans, proud conservatives, you’re reconstructionist, and it’s racist and every one of your votes reflect your moral character and the lack thereof,” he said plainly.

“If you believe in local representation, like I know most of you truly do, you wouldn’t be meddling in this local community, and you don’t do this anywhere else in the state, which shows it’s racist,” Mr. Chambers stated.

Designed to go into effect May 3, one day before Calvin Duncan was to start his four-year term, Republican Governor Jeff Landry officially signed the bill into state law  as Act 15 on May 1. 

The Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal Court, having been legally abolished, has been officially consolidated into the Civil Clerk’s office, although the case is on an expedited schedule before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to determine its constitutionality. 

According to a May 11 article by Veritenews.org, the New Orleans City Council voted 5-2 to appoint an interim court clerk, retired Judge Calvin Johnson, and called for a special election on November 3, but it’s not clear if  the election will be allowed to proceed.

‘“The council’s votes came in spite of a warning from Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who, in a letter, said the clerk’s position has already been filled.

According to Murrill, under the newly passed law—which abolished the position Duncan was elected to last year and consolidated the city’s two court clerk offices into one—the incumbent Clerk of Civil District Court Chelsey Richard Napoleon is now the Orleans Parish clerk of court and will remain so for a full four-year term,’” the Verite News article stated.  

Veritenews.org further reported that in a May 8 letter, Murrill said the council’s actions would be “not only legally misguided but also irresponsible,” and warned that she would take legal action to prevent Johnson from taking office and the special election from being held.

Political scientist and host of Inside the Issues on Sirius XM satellite radio channel 126, Wilmer J. Leon III, Ph.D., told The Final Call that Mr. Duncan’s being blocked from assuming office reflects the idea that elected officials select their voters rather than voters selecting their elected officials.

“Now they want to do away with the position that he ran and was duly elected for,” Dr. Leon said. “What we’re seeing play out with Calvin Duncan is just another unfortunate example of electoral politics in this country moving backward in terms of ‘Make America Great Again,’

Instead of moving forward. Donald Trump is not the causation; Donald Trump is the culmination, he is the symptom, not the cause,” Dr. Leon said of America’s current state of affairs.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, has constantly and consistently warned about the volatility of America’s political system and of the manipulation and machinations of those in power, which come at the expense of American citizens. Minister Farrakhan forewarned of the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

“We are not going to let voting rights die; but, I want you to be prepared for something: Every time we received an ‘amendment,’ it had to be followed by a ‘civil rights action’ (because they passed an amendment, but their brethren didn’t like it),”

Minister Farrakhan said in a June 14, 2013, message as part of the “Never Forget, Never Again Pilgrimage,” to commemorate the 1965 demonstration for civil rights known as “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama. The title of the message is, “Soldiers in the Movement of Christ.”

“So someone doesn’t like the fact that there is “Section V” of The Voting Rights Bill that gives state and local government enforcement powers, and so there are those who want to deprive you of that right by gerrymandering, by redistricting, by doing all the little tricks that the wicked one does to deprive us of a right that is, really, ours,” Minister Farrakhan said.

Student Minister Willie Muhammad of Mosque No. 46, under the leadership of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, told The Final Call that the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad reflects how the life of a man like Calvin Duncan,

Who was wrongfully convicted, sentenced to life and spent decades behind bars for a crime he did not commit, gives warning to the nature of a system that is unraveling before the eyes of the entire world.

 “Think about all the good a man like Calvin Duncan could do as Clerk of Courts when there are countless Black men and women sitting in jail because of delays, lost paperwork, lack of resources or failures within the system,”

Student Minister Willie Muhammad said. “A man who lived through injustices may be more committed than anyone to making sure others are not forgotten by the same system that once failed them,” he said.