Book Summary and Reviews of The Jailhouse Lawyer by Calvin Duncan

Book Summary

A searing and ultimately hopeful account of Calvin Duncan, "the most extraordinary jailhouse lawyer of our time" (Sister Helen Prejean), and his thirty-year path through Angola after a wrongful murder conviction, his coming-of-age as a legal mind while imprisoned, and his continued advocacy for those on the inside.

Calvin Duncan was nineteen when he was incarcerated for a 1981 New Orleans murder he didn't commit. The victim of a wildly incompetent public defense system and a badly compromised witness, Duncan was left to rot in the waking nightmare of confinement. Armed with little education, he took matters into his own hands.

At twenty-one, he filed his first motion from prison: "Motion for a Law Book," which launched his highly successful, self-taught legal career. Trapped within this wholly corrupted system, Duncan became a legal advocate for himself and his fellow prisoners as an inmate counsel at the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola. Literature sustained his hope, as he learned the law in its shadow.

During his decades of incarceration, Duncan helped hundreds of other prisoners navigate their cases, advocating for those the state had long since written off. He taught a class in the midst of Angola to empower other incarcerated men to fight for their own justice under the law. But his own case remained stalled. A defense lawyer once responded to Duncan's request for documents: "You are not a person."

Criminal justice reform advocate Sophie Cull met Duncan after he was finally released from prison; he began to tell her his story. Together, they've written a bracing condemnation of the criminal legal system, and an intimate portrait of a heroic and brilliant man's resilience in the face of injustice.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Calvin begins his prologue by quoting a line from Charles Dickens' David Copperfield that he used often during his time teaching law at Angola: "'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.'" (p. 1) Why do you think these words are so important to Calvin?
2. In what ways are Calvin's story and the stories of those incarcerated along with him affected by the 1980s and 1990s "War on Crime" era?
3. What unique challenges and opportunities did Calvin and his friends encounter as they tried to help each other in the midst of their confinement?
4. Calvin chooses, early in his incarceration, "…to make the law the site for his battles, ...