The Louisiana House Judiciary Committee April 16 passed a bill essentially eliminating New Orleans’ clerk of criminal court just weeks before Calvin Duncan, a Black man who was wrongfully imprisoned for decades before being elected to the position last year, is set to take office.
The committee quickly passed Senate Bill 256 by Sen. Jay Morris, a Monroe Republican, on an 8-5 vote in a push to get it before Gov. Jeff Landry so that it can take effect before Duncan starts his term as criminal clerk of court on May 4.
The bill would combine the city’s criminal and civil courts under one clerk of court position.
Lawmakers aren't supposed to shorten a politician’s term once they start office, so backers of the bill are trying to avoid having Duncan take office before the bill goes into effect, thus letting him serve out a 4-year term.
But Rep. Kyle Green, a Marrero Democrat, said he wondered if the governor signing the bill before May 4 would count as lawmakers cutting current Clerk of Criminal Court Darren Lombard’s term short.
“We’ll just have to see what happens in the courts, I guess,” Morris said.
In her testimony during the hearing, ACLU of Louisiana Advocacy Director Sarah Whittington also questioned whether the bill would require a new election altogether.
Morris has said Clerk of Civil Court Chelsey Richard Napoleon would simply become clerk of both courts. But Whittington pointed out that the legislature is essentially creating an entirely new office and eliminating both the criminal and civil clerks, and as such, it could require a new election to fill the position.
Rep. Mandie Landry, a New Orleans Democrat, said she believed that behind-the-scenes political infighting may have given the governor and other Republicans an opportunity that they would not otherwise have had if Lombard had won.
Landry noted that Congressman Troy Carter, former Congressman Cedric Richmond and Mayor Helena Moreno all backed Lombard, who Duncan bested with 68% of the vote in November. That combined with the Landry administration's hostility toward Duncan may have created an opening the governor could use to keep Duncan out of office.
“He is being targeted, and I know you found yourself in the middle of dirty New Orleans politics,” Landry said to Morris. “I don't think you knew that before you got in because you probably wouldn't have gotten in.”
Duncan said he believed the governor and Attorney General Liz Murrill were ultimately behind the push to get rid of his job. He was exonerated in 2021 after serving 28 years in prison, but he said the attorney general’s office, then under Jeff Landry and Murrill, pressured him to drop his petition for compensation for his conviction, threatening his law license.
During his election last year, Murrill wrote a letter to Duncan telling him to stop calling himself exonerated “to avoid further action” from the AG’s office.
28 years jfc