Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Jailhouse Lawyer

The Jailhouse Lawyer

Duncan, Calvin
Cull, Sophie

Paperback

Biographies GeneralGeneral LawSocial Movements

Publisher Price: $20.00

ISBN10: 0593834321
ISBN13: 9780593834329
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: Jul 7 2026
Pages: 400
Weight: 0.57
Height: 1.01 Width: 5.21 Depth: 7.91
Language: English
A USA TODAY Bestseller - Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Public Library - Winner of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award - A Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Nonfiction

Duncan's story is so incredible it strains belief. It is so heartwarming and hopeful that it will stay with you for a long time. --John Grisham

This brilliantly told story--at once maddening and miraculous--is among the most powerful indictments of our criminal justice system I've ever read. --James Forman, Jr.

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.

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