← Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes Present
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes Present
A Man Who Was Serving Life In Prison For Murder, Has Just Been Elected To Office
00:19:21
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- [00:00]
Amy Robach
This is an iheart Podcast.
- [00:04]
Kal Penn / Ed Helms
Hey audiobook lovers. I'm Kalpen, I'm Ed Helms. Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Irsay The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from audible, listen to Earsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Earsay and start listening listening on the free iHeartradio app.
- [00:34]
Announcer / Advertiser
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- [01:35]
Amy Robach
A GLP one helped you lose weight, but now you're noticing unwanted facial changes.
- [01:41]
T.J. Holmes
Yeah, the weight came off, but facial volume loss and dull sagging skin are making you look older. That's where the next phase of your weight loss journey comes in.
- [01:51]
Amy Robach
There's before weight loss, after weight loss, and then the after. After.
- [01:56]
T.J. Holmes
Yeah, help restore and refresh your facial skin and reclaim your natur looking youthful glow.
- [02:02]
Amy Robach
To learn more, visit face after weight loss.com that's face after weight loss.com I turned off news altogether.
- [02:11]
Kal Penn / Ed Helms
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.
- [02:18]
Announcer / Advertiser
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
- [02:22]
T.J. Holmes
We got clear facts.
- [02:24]
Kal Penn / Ed Helms
Maybe we could calm down a little bit. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
- [02:38]
Cindy Crawford
Black Friday is here and Pandora Jewelry is offering up to 40% off storewide and site wide. Now through December 2nd, explore jewelry designs to last beyond the season. From classic charms to modern rings, bracelets, earrings and more. Whether you're holiday shopping or treating yourself, now is the perfect time to find something Special. Shop@pandora.net or your local Pandora store. Exclusions apply.
- [03:08]
T.J. Holmes
Hey there, folks. It is Monday, November 17, and congratulations to Mr. Calvin Duncan, a man who spent nearly 30 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit. He is free today, but that's not why we're congratulating him. Congratulations, because he just got elected to office in Louisiana. And with that. Welcome to this episode of Amy and tj. A lot of congratulations. You hear a guy who spent 30 years in prison for a crime he says he didn't commit. Congratulations, you're out. But this is a different type of moment. And a county clerk race, Robes is making national headlines.
- [03:52]
Amy Robach
Yeah, right. This is not a race that is typically closely watched, even locally or even reported on in the New Orleans area, let alone, yes, nationally, even internationally. But the more and more we read into the story of Calvin Duncan, the more fascinated I became with him for a number of reasons. But some of the headlines read something like this. A man who was serving life in prison for murder just won an election to oversee the very court system that once imprisoned him. Or how about this? The same court system that denied him access to his own records. He is now the clerk of the court. Like, this is an unbelievable about face and someone who took something that happened to him and made it work for him. His life changed in ways he couldn't have imagined because he was convicted of this crime. He had an 8th grade education period when he was imprisoned at the age of 21. An 8th grade education.
- [04:52]
T.J. Holmes
And look, this is a. This is. Well, there's many facets of the story, but one part of it is that you wouldn't normally look at a guy who has a background in the resume that he has and see him as a politician or see him as the person you want to lead. He is uniquely qualified, better than anybody, I would argue, in the country to do this particular job. Because quite frankly, a lot of us don't even realize what your clerk does, your county clerk. You don't go into the clerk's office that often. Certainly not now. These days, I've made a trip to a clerk's office every once in a while, I think, for a story when I was reporting locally. But other than that, what do you go to your clerk's office for?
- [05:34]
Amy Robach
Right? Everything's digitized. Except in New Orleans, you know, they do everything by paper, but they say.
- [05:42]
T.J. Holmes
They'Re trying to upgrade.
- [05:43]
Amy Robach
Earlier, this was it. This year, they had to send a team out to a dump to go and try and find court records that were accidentally thrown away. This is how archaic the system is. But that's just how important this job is. Specifically in New Orleans right now.
- [06:00]
T.J. Holmes
Things get misplaced. It happens. But to that point as well, maybe he'd have gotten out of prison sooner. Maybe he would have been able to prove his innocence sooner if he, as he argues, had better access to the records at the clerk's office that he is now going to be in charge of.
- [06:19]
Amy Robach
It's pretty remarkable and the irony is there, but it's also just such a cool, cool story. So the person who had hold held this office before was. He was the incumbent. Darren Lombard was his name. He comes from a prominent political family in the New Orleans area. He had the endorsement of the local paper. He had the endorsement of the mayor elect, she's widely popular. He had the endorsement from the state senator. So he was going to be the guy. He was just going to be reelected. Darren Lombard. There was a three way race between Duncan, who was another Democrat and a Republican and they ended up having to do a runoff. And that runoff happened this weekend. And for a while Lombard was in a comfortable lead until he started playing dirty with his political ads. He went there, he actually went and tried to say in television advertisements, in any sort of public appearance he had that Duncan, he questioned Duncan's innocence. He said, in fact, the Louisiana attorney general even put out a cease and desist. You can't say that you were exonerated. You can't say that you're an innocent man. And they started saying, or at least putting questions in the voters minds that Duncan was actually still tied to, to this crime and could be, perhaps was a cold blooded murderer. But the folks of Louisiana didn't like that so much.
- [07:50]
T.J. Holmes
Yeah, he ended up winning overwhelmingly, did he not?
- [07:53]
Amy Robach
68% of the vote he got. And it's pretty cool. I didn't realize this. They say one of the main reasons why this tactic backfired. New Orleans has one of the highest, the nation's highest rates of known wrongful convictions. So this struck a nerve with the folks of New Orleans, the people of Louisiana, who thought, hey, this man served 28 years in prison for a crime he always maintained he didn't commit and for a crime that he was exonerated from. So it, it basically pissed the voters off and they voted overwhelmingly for Duncan. I think that's a pretty cool, it's not something people expected and a pretty cool outcome from an election that we wouldn't have heard of otherwise.
- [08:37]
T.J. Holmes
No. And and this is a guy, you mentioned 8th grade education, but this is a guy who has a law degree from Tulane. No, not Tulane, Lewis and Clark down there. He got his bachelor's at Tulane. He got his law degree from Lewis and Clark. He has been doing this study, if you will, for the past 30 years of his life as he was in prison for all that time. So this is some sharp guy they can't just dismiss as not capable or not, I don't know, with some experience for the job. So they tried to go with the thing that would work. Hey, here's a convicted killer. You're not going to vote for him, are you? That I guess that didn't work. People were smart enough to see through that and we're smart enough to learn a little about this guy. And once you start reading about him or hear about him, just take a moment, just listen to him, you, you will immediately, I guess robes, he can win you over pretty easily if you are, I guess we know folks in New Orleans, we know how they are. They're plain spoken, laid back folks. And he's one of them.
- [09:37]
Amy Robach
He is one of them. And look, I, we, we did a deeper dive into the crime that he was accused of committing and was convicted of committing. And it's pretty fascinating when we start looking at these criminal trials, but he was given a life sentence for the shooting death of 23 year old David Yeager. This was back in August of 1981. It was happened during an armed robbery and it was Yeager's girlfriend. And you know, we always hear about how eyewitness testimony is the least reliable testimony and yet it was her testimony. She identified him as the shooter. Police apparently showed her a mug shot of him from when he was 14 years old. He was 18. Duncan was 18 years old at the time of the murder. Police show the Victim's girlfriend a 14 year old picture of him. And she says, yep, that's the guy. And his attorneys now or later had said she only was able to say that after she saw him on television being paraded with handcuffs, arrested for the murder. So yeah, in her mind he was the person. But that was literally all they had to connect him. The trial lasted one day. His attorneys spent like a couple of minutes with him before he went into trial and just made sure he had a suit and that was it. There was no prep, there was no nothing. And so he said he knew from that moment on he had to educate himself. And that is what he did for 28 years behind bars. It's remarkable so, yes, he ultimately got the Innocence Project involved. They were able to rep him and they were able to actually question the accuracy of that eyewitness testimony. And they were able to arrange a deal in 2011 that allowed him to plead guilty to a lower charge of manslaughter and attempted armed robbery. Given the time he'd already served, he got out. Here's the deal, though. In 2021, 10 years later, a state law came about where it allowed somebody who always maintained their innocence, who for whatever reason had to plead guilty to something that they still maintained they didn't do. If the facts of the case were shown that that person was innocent, they were able to actually be fully exonerated. And that is what happened to Duncan. He was fully exonerated in 2021.
- [11:49]
T.J. Holmes
Yes, his. His opponents, he will. Proponents will certainly say that. But the argument they're being on the other side, they're questioning this is just semantics. This is all about our semantics. And they want to label them one thing and want to label the case being thrown out. The. The case, the conviction. It absolutely. It was thrown out because it was deemed that he did not get a constitutional trial period point blank. So it was thrown out. The other side is arguing, well, yes, that was thrown out, but it didn't. You never were in court and were able to found not guilty of something. So it's just this, the back and forth semantics and.
- [12:28]
Amy Robach
And then politics.
- [12:29]
T.J. Holmes
They want to do this.
- [12:30]
Amy Robach
Politics gets dirty, as it typically does. But I loved what what Duncan said, what Calvin Duncan said when he took his victory lap. This happened Saturday night when the results came in. That's 68% of the vote. He said tonight is a dream that. That's been 40 years in the making. I hope that all those people who died in prison because we couldn't get their records are looking down now. I hope they're proud of me. We never stop fighting for each other's rights, and I will never stop fighting for yours. That's powerful and it's understandable how he got elected.
- [13:04]
T.J. Holmes
I'm going to follow this guy. Really. He's probably going to be again. I really do believe he's the best qualified clerk in the country.
- [13:10]
Amy Robach
Oh, without a doubt. And he was known as basically the jailhouse lawyer. He wasn't an official lawyer at that point while he was still in prison, but he spent hours fighting for the rights of inmates inside the prison from what they were able to eat to getting them dental care. He really used this knowledge that he was gleaning. He said he spent more time in the library than he did in his cell to learn and to learn and to learn. And I just, it's such. I get chills thinking about somebody who had everything working against him and, and was wrongfully imprisoned, was not educated, and found a way to completely change his life. And I just, I am in awe of somebody who can do that. He. I love what. He recently gave a speech at UC Berkeley to some law hopeful, soon to be lawyers, and he said, I got out of prison on a Friday and I was on campus at Tulane University the next Tuesday trying to get into law school. And they were like, yeah, you got to get an undergraduate degree first. He didn't even know. He just thought, I'm gonna walk into Tulane, I'm gonna get my law degree. But that enthusiasm, that purpose, that tenacity, I just find that so inspiring. And to see what he was able to pull off in New Orleans over the weekend is just such a cool inspirational story. It got me all worked up this morning reading about him and everything he did. Even in 2020, because of his legal work, he got the US Supreme Court to end non unanimous jury convictions. There were only two states in this country that still had that on the books, Louisiana and Oregon. It was all rooted in Jim Crow laws. But look at what he's done with everything that he was served.
- [14:48]
T.J. Holmes
Oh, no. This guy is, I guess, one of those remarkable stories. If he chooses to, he'd probably do, I don't know. I'd be curious to see how he does with a statewide campaign, but I wonder if he has his eye on anything. I don't think he would have, but still, there are folks who are going to keep an eye on him and think he might be able to do some good for the party.
- [15:06]
Amy Robach
I would love to talk to him. I've just been just reading some of the things he's said and how he's inspired folks. Like, everyone thinks, oh, they got a bum rap or they aren't able to do something because of X, Y and Z. When you hear his story and you see what he's done with his life, it is pretty, pretty cool. When we come back, we're going to talk about what his opponent, remember the one we were just talking about, who tried to insinuate, and not just insinuate, but say that his opponent, Duncan, was a convicted murderer and should be viewed at that way and certainly tried to win the race by saying that and smearing him. Well, he had something to say when he conceded his loss over the weekend and I think this is just so much more about Duncan's specific case and more about what we can all focus on in politics. I think we can all learn something from him and we'll get into all of that when we come back.
- [16:08]
Kal Penn / Ed Helms
Hey everyone, Ed Helms here and hi, I'm Kal Penn and we're the hosts of Irsay the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen CL classic Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?
- [16:39]
Announcer / Advertiser
You know what?
- [16:40]
Amy Robach
I can see you as Mr. Darcy.
- [16:42]
Announcer / Advertiser
You got a little Colin Firth.
- [16:44]
Kal Penn / Ed Helms
Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad? I'm not Mr. Bennet here, listen to earsay the audible and iheart audiobook club on the iheartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [17:04]
Announcer / Advertiser
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- [18:05]
Cindy Crawford
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- [18:47]
Kal Penn / Ed Helms
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- [19:19]
Amy Robach
Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well, I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told oh wow, you look so good for your age. Like why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age, Every age. That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now. Meaningful Beauty. Beautiful skin at every age.
- [19:48]
Cindy Crawford
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- [19:59]
Amy Robach
Continuing our conversation about Calvin Duncan, he is now the Clerk of Court in New Orleans. He won in a runoff race this weekend with 68% of the vote, beating an incumbent, a well known political figure and political family in New Orleans and really beat every odd you could even imagine to be where he is today. He's a trained lawyer after only having had an 8th grade education, going into prison, convicted of murder and was going to spend the rest of his life in prison, was able to literally free himself from all of the work he did in combination with the innocence projects there in New Orleans and now he is an elected official in the state of Louisiana. It is a a remarkable story, but his opponent Lombard did concede the race and I was a little surprised when I read how I guess it just in these days when first of all just having someone concede a race is a big deal now I think. But the words he used I was actually impressed with. I thought it was going to maybe be mean spirited or not the kind olive branch that he ended up giving him, which was a lovely surprise to read.
- [21:12]
T.J. Holmes
Oh, Elections over overwhelmingly. 95% over our lifetime. The nastiest races you've ever seen. When it's time to concede, they they shut up. Even if they have to just bear it, even if they're not grinning and bearing it. You just it's over now.
- [21:30]
Amy Robach
If only we could see that on the presidential level. Sometimes that'd be nice too. But yes. So I guess I shouldn't. We shouldn't be surprised to have someone actually do the right thing. But I guess given these times, sometimes maybe the bar has set much lower. But Darren Lombard said this after acknowledging that he did in fact lose the election. He said, I want to congratulate Calvin Duncan on his victory. I stand ready to support a smooth and professional transition so that the important work of this office continues without interruption.
- [22:01]
T.J. Holmes
Yeah, that's your duty. That's your responsibility. That's an adult. That's a grown up. No matter he was a politician the day before. Now you gotta be a grown up and do your duty. Yeah, that's what you're supposed to. Yes, I'm pleased to hear as well.
- [22:13]
Amy Robach
And I do think that this is. I was surprised and encouraged that voters can and do look past some very questionable choices perhaps we've made or he made in his lifetime, but certainly was able to look past any wrong that may have been done. When you see a transformation, when you see a genuine transformation, do you think that we all can recognize that? And perhaps people in power don't give ordinary folks the credit that we can see through that stuff. We can see when someone's telling us the truth. We can tell when we're being BS'd. We can tell when someone is saying something that isn't true and vice versa. And so I think this option or this ability for us to. Redemption, second chances, I don't know that we give them enough to people. You're not, you're not very big on second chances oftentimes.
- [23:03]
T.J. Holmes
But again, what are we talking about? People? You get judged in society, we say you're willing to give a second chance. But if this man still had a conviction and a served his time and ran for office, would you have supported him? Right. Did it need to be a guy who was cleared of something first? Do we have to make sure he's morally okay, at least in our eyes? So, yeah, I think this is a wonderful story, but I think it is so unique, maybe even to not just this guy and his experience in that office, but also unique in the type of office he was running for and the electorate that he was dealing with, which is particularly New Orleans. So I think a lot of those things had to come together. But exoneration is one thing. If we think about second chances, it's not just because we got cleared. I can stand next to you with my arm around you because I think everybody else thinks you're okay. What if he was still convicted, did his time, would you put your arm around him. So we need second chances. Come with people who actually do wrong, serve their time and come back out and try to get into society, not just people who have done wrong and then got cleared and now it's okay to give them a second chance.
- [24:03]
Amy Robach
Nah, that's. You make a very good point. And I also. I'm curious how someone like Duncan didn't come out bitter, didn't come out angry, didn't come out of prison pissed off and angry at the world. What does that say about someone's spirit and who they are deep inside or within? To be able to use that for good, not just for himself, but for other prisoners? I find that to be remarkable. Do you think you're born with that? Do you think he developed that? I'm fascinated by folks who can take something because I. I think one of the worst things that could happen to you is to be accused of and to be punished for something you did not do.
- [24:47]
T.J. Holmes
Yeah. What's your option? You don't have any options. And he learned through experience, but yeah, you don't have any options. You're going to ball up and cry. And some do and can't go on. But no, he was the opposite and have turned it into. And has turned it into something. A great story. We'll see what he does. But right now it's a great story that is serving in a. Not yet. In a practical way. He can make a practical difference later. But right now he is still making a solid spiritual. He is making an example. He is still making a difference just by what he's done already.
- [25:24]
Amy Robach
Yeah. And I love the fact that he says it can take years for folks in prison. I would not have realized this. To get access to their own court documents that they can start working on their appeals, et cetera. And he's going to change that. He says he is going to make it fair for all prisoners to have easy access to their documents. That's such a cool way to turn around a story that could have had a much worse ending. And so I know that I feel better today about how I'm going to approach life just by reading Calvin Duncan's story. And we can't wait to follow him and see what else he does. But we appreciate you all for listening to us. We hope you all learned something as well from his story. And we thank you for listening to this episode. I'm Amy Robach alongside T.J. holmes. We will talk to you soon.
- [26:15]
Kal Penn / Ed Helms
Hey, audiobook lovers, I'm Cal Penn. I'm Ed Helms. Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from audible. Listen to Earsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.
- [26:47]
Amy Robach
Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line, but first. There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes. No, it's not too soon to start holiday shopping.
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Amy Robach
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Kal Penn / Ed Helms
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- [28:44]
Amy Robach
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