A death-row inmate has been released late Tuesday after a judge declared that he was wrongfully convicted. Glenn Ford already served nearly 30 years for a crime that he did not commit at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, the Washington Post said. Ford was convicted and detained in March 1985 for the robbery and death of Shreveport watchmaker Isadore Rozeman, Reuters said. Ford has insisted his innocence of the crime, but an all-white jury determined him guilty of first-degree murder and was subsequently sentenced to die via electric chair.
The now 64-year-old Glenn Ford said outside the Angola prison that he resented the fact that he was incarcerated for 30 years. Emphasizing the time it took a court to finally doubt the possibility that he did commit a crime, the denim shirt-clad and dark-rimmed glasses-wearing Ford said, "My sons, when I left, was babies. Now they're grown men with babies."
The Post said lawyers for Ford has been fighting for their client's innocence for years. The paper said that the efforts of Ford's legal camp had paid off when prosecutors filed motions in federal court that said someone else, and not Ford, was the one who killed Rozeman.
The Associated Press quoted Ford's lawyers, who said about his initial trial, "(It was) profoundly compromised by inexperienced counsel and by the unconstitutional suppression of evidence, including information from an informant, a suppressed police report related to the time of the crime, and evidence of the murder weapon, which implicated the true perpetrator."
The Post said prosecutors filed a motion to exonerate their client last week, stating in the filing that there was evidence presented late last year that supported the fact that Ford was neither present at, nor he participated in the robbery and murder of the Shreveport watchmaker. On Monday, the paper said State District Judge Ramona Emanuel had moved to void the conviction of Ford. Ford was a free man on Tuesday.
