"Jailhouse Lawyer," by Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull, Penguin Press, 385 pages

Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull's "Jailhouse Lawyer" is a direct account of Louisiana incarceration and injustice, yet its overarching story is of Black men who bonded together within prison walls to fight for one another — not with fists, but with petitions and filings.

Duncan shares his story in "Jailhouse Lawyer" as one of many inmate counsels or jailhouse lawyers who persevered under harsh conditions to learn the law, use the law and win in the courts. Sophie Cull, criminal justice reform advocate, partners with him in co-authoring the book.

From 1982 until 2011, Duncan was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. For 23 of those years, he served as inmate counsel, or jailhouse lawyer, at the Louisiana Sta

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