SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Bestselling legal thriller writer John Grisham says, if I created a fictional character like Calvin Duncan, no one would believe him. But Calvin Duncan joins us now for real. His new book, "The Jailhouse Lawyer," is written with Sophie Cull, and it's his story. Mr. Duncan was imprisoned for more than 28 years for 1981 murder of which he's since been exonerated. He read law books at the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, where he went on to help hundreds of prisoners file appeals for their cases and motions to improve the treatment of inmates. Calvin Duncan is a lawyer today. And Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull, thank you so much for being with us.
CALVIN DUNCAN: Thank you.
SOPHIE CULL: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: I'd like you to tell me about a fellow inmate at Angola called Big Dugger (ph). He gave you some advice, didn't he?
DUNCAN: When I first got arrested and placed in an Orleans Parish jail, people were generally, you know, they was always telling me that I was going to get the death penalty because, you know, the government position was that I should be executed. And I was, you know, telling guys that I didn't commit my crime. And they was saying, well, you got the same lawyer that I had and same judge that I had. And then I asked, well, how can I help myself, you know? Like, what Big Dugger told me was that I have to become a lawyer.
SIMON: And, Sophie Cull, this is going to sound awfully naive, but how difficult is it for inmates to get representation with a lawyer?
CULL: After their trial is completed, virtually impossible. Most people in our prisons and jails are indigent, meaning they don't have the funds to hire an attorney themselves. And in most states, people without representation have no right to counsel in their post-conviction appeals. So really, 90% of state prisoners don't have access to representation after their trial is complete.
SIMON: Mr. Duncan, how did you learn the law in a place where access to reading material is limited and prescribed?
DUNCAN: Well, several ways - is virtually - in the parish jail, we had no access to law books or law library. So what I would generally do is write to people on the outside world and ask them to send me copies of cases. But once I got to Angola, Angola had a law library. And it was my, you know, desire and my duty to get access to the law library, which the prison provide at that time.
SIMON: Not all the guards were in favor of your legal career, were they, Mr. Duncan?
DUNCAN: No, not all of them, but most of them was. We talked about in the book, Miss Rabalais. She was actually the legal director of the legal program, and she knew the value that the counsel subs serve and provide an access to the courts to people in prison that could not afford. So she's just one example of many that actually did appreciate the services in our job.
SIMON: And why did you take up the cases of other people, not just your own?
DUNCAN: I'm a firm believer that to maintain hope for yourself is to make sure that you help other people and make sure that they have hope. And I've always believed that everybody should be entitled to access to the courts to have their cases heard, especially when a person wasn't afforded a fair trial or that was innocent. So helping other people helped me maintain hope, as well.
SIMON: You got out of prison at the age of 48, but you say in this book that you felt 19.
DUNCAN: Yeah, because when you go to prison at a young age, you grow. You mature. But in your mind, you're still that 19-year-old kid that's thinking everything is possible. You know, you're still naive to the world. So, yes, yes. As a matter of fact, right now, when people ask me how old I am, I said, well, the time I stayed in prison don't count, so I'm actually, like, 34 now.
SIMON: (Laughter) Well, you sound like a young man to me.
DUNCAN: Thank you.
SIMON: And we should say you graduated from Lewis & Clark Law School at an age some people would consider to be 60. How's that sound?
DUNCAN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But when I started law school at 57, and I graduated, I was 60. Yes.
SIMON: What does that mean to you?
DUNCAN: It was a great accomplishment for myself. And it's also as a testament that if we give people a chance, you know, no matter how old they are. In our cases, the prison complex keep us in prison for so long that if we lucky to get out of prison, it's at a young age. And what it tells the world that even when people have spent a lot of time in prison, if you give them a chance once they're released, you know, good things could happen, like me pursuing my undergrad at Tulane University, getting a degree in paralegal studies and then going off to law school and then graduating.
SIMON: I want to ask both you, Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull, what do you think we could do right now to make the U.S. legal system better? Sophie Cull?
CULL: Oh, that's a big question, Scott. There's so much that needs to change. You know, it makes me think about a young law student named Emily Bolton, who met Calvin at Angola and asked him the simple question, what can I do to help you? And he said, help us get our records. And Emily Bolton graduated from Tulane Law. She began going to DA's offices and police departments and gathering records that Calvin and his fellow inmate counselors needed to work on cases and provided those records. And that was a simple act, but it ended up creating the Innocence Project New Orleans. Together, Emily and Calvin and the jailhouse lawyers at Angola were able to work on the cases and free many people. That work continues today. So when I think about a system as big as the criminal justice system and how much it needs to change, Calvin reminds me that it can be one act by one person asking how they can help people on the inside that can make the world of difference.
SIMON: Calvin Duncan, what do you think?
DUNCAN: For starters, I think there's several things that people can do. But I think starters would be if they read the book - or when they read the book, they actually get a full picture of how our criminal justice system disregards people's rights to a fair trial. And it also would show that how - like Sophie had talked about Emily - how some of the things that they can actually do to help people that's in prison get access to the courts. And it also would show that act of kindness goes a long way.
So I think about starters, people, you know, once they read the book, they can actually see, you know, do we actually want a criminal justice system that looks like this? Do we want our prosecutors and judges to treat cases like they treated Calvin's case? And I'm quite sure once they see this and read it, the answer is going to be no. We got to do something. We got to change our way of handling cases for people that are just not represented.
SIMON: Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull - their new book, "The Jailhouse Lawyer." Thank you both so much for being with us.
DUNCAN: Well, thank you.
CULL: Thank you so much, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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