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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfter nearly 30 years on death row, Glenn Ford is exonerated — and free
My sons, when I left, was babies, Louisianas longest-serving death row inmate told reporters after his release late Tuesday. Now theyre grown men with babies.
Standing outside in a denim shirt and dark-rimmed glasses, 64-year-old Glenn Ford said he feels resentment when remembering the nearly 30 years he served on Louisianas death row for a crime he didnt commit. In fact, prosecutors now say he wasnt even at the scene of the murder and did not participate in it.
But now, hes a free man. A judge ordered Fords release from the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, where he had been held since March 1985.
He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die by electrocution by an all-white jury that found him guilty in the robbery and murder of Isadore Rozeman, a Shreveport watchmaker who was killed in his repair shop on Nov. 5, 1983, according to Reuters. It was a verdict Ford always disputed, saying he wasnt even there. But, until recently, the courts wouldnt listen.
Heres the motion to vacate filed March 11 in which prosecutors acknowledge that had they known then what they know now, Ford would not have been charged.
The Atlantic details the series of events that led to Fords conviction, including the testimony of a woman named Marvella Brown who claimed Ford was with two of the other suspects and in the possession of a firearm on the day of the murder. She then testified she had lied during Fords trial.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/12/after-nearly-30-years-on-death-row-glenn-ford-is-exonerated-and-free/?tid=pm_pop
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/freedom-after-30-years-on-death-row/284179/
jsr
(7,712 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)thesquanderer
(11,990 posts)question everything
(47,521 posts)And attorneys with no criminal background.
One of the points that several attorneys tried to make was the prosecutors dismissed two black jurors for no cause.
Dustlawyer
(10,497 posts)man's receiving and trying to pawn some of the jewelry justifies his sentence. I wonder how he would feel in the same situation with an all black jury where all the whites were struck, evidence exonerating him was hidden... And Rethugs bitch about taxes and the deficit but want to lock up everyone accused of a crime for the rest of their lives! The level of hate and bigotry knows no bounds.