Man, 64, freed after 26 years on death row in US

A man who spent nearly 26 years on death row in Louisiana walked free, hours after a judge approved the state’s motion to throw out his murder conviction in the 1983 killing of a jeweller.

Glenn Ford, 64, had been on death row since August 1988 in connection with the death of Isadore Rozeman, 56, a Shreveport jeweller and watchmaker for whom Ford had done occasional yard work. Ford had always denied killing Rozeman.

Rozeman was found shot to death behind the counter of his shop on November 5, 1983. Reports say no murder weapon was ever found and there were no eyewitnesses to the crime.

Ford walked out of the maximum security prison at Angola on Tuesday, said Pam Laborde, a spokes-woman for Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

Asked as he walked away from the prison gates, Ford told WAFB-TV, “It feels good; my mind is going in all kind of directions. It feels good.” Ford said he does harbour some resentment at being wrongly jailed: “Yeah, cause, I’ve been locked up almost 30 years for something I didn’t do.”

“I can’t go back and do anything I should have been doing when I was 35, 38, 40, stuff like that,” he added.

State District Judge Ramona Emanuel on Monday took the step of voiding Ford’s conviction and sentence based on new information that corroborated his claim that he was not present or involved in Rozeman’s death, Ford’s attorneys said. Ford was tried and convicted of first-degree murder in 1984 and sentenced to death.

“We are very pleased to see Glenn Ford finally exonerated, and we are particularly grateful that the prosecution and the court moved ahead so decisively to set Mr Ford free,” said Gary Clements and Aaron Novod, the lawyers for Ford from the Capital Post Conviction Project.

They said Ford’s trial had been “profoundly compromised by inexperienced counsel and by the unconstitutional suppression of evidence, including information from an informant.”

They also cited what they said was a suppressed police report and evidence involving the murder weapon.

There are 83 men and two women serving death sentences in Louisiana at present, say Laborde.

A Louisiana law entitles those who have served time but are later exonerated to receive compensation.

It calls for payments of $25,000 (€17,975) per year of wrongful incarceration up to a maximum of $250,000, plus up to $80,000 for loss of “life opportunities.”

Ford, an African-American who had been on death row since after his conviction by an all-white jury, said he has missed out on much of his life.

“My sons — when I left — was babies. Now they grown men with babies.

“Thirty years of my life, if not all of it,” he said. “I can’t go back.”

“Glenn Ford is living proof of just how flawed our justice system truly is,” Amnesty International USA senior campaigner Thenjiwe Tameika McHarris said.