Imprisoned in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for nearly thirty years, Calvin Duncan spent decades fighting to obtain the court records needed to free himself and overturn his murder conviction.

After being released from prison in 2011 and later having a judge annul his conviction, Duncan is seeking election as the clerk of criminal court records in New Orleans.

“The reason why I’m running for clerk of court is because I don’t never want to have what happened to me happen to nobody else,” Duncan said.

He says he hopes to become the custodian of criminal court documents to improve their preservation and accessibility in a city where troves of criminal case files ended up in a garbage dump earlier this year.

But with elections for mayor, city council and clerk days away in New Orleans, Duncan is having to fight to clear his name once again.

In a public letter, Louisiana's Attorney General accused Duncan of misrepresenting himself as exonerated and his opponent, incumbent clerk Darren Lombard, told the AP he considers Duncan to be a murderer.