Glenn Ford, who was exon­er­at­ed last year after spend­ing almost 30 years on Louisiana’s death row, died of lung can­cer on June 29 at the age of 65. At the time of his release, Ford was the nation’s longest-serv­ing death row exoneree. Just hours after his death, Ford’s case was cit­ed in the dis­sent­ing opin­ion of Justice Breyer in Glossip v. Gross, as pro­vid­ing ​“strik­ing” evi­dence ​“that the death penal­ty has been wrong­ly imposed.” Justice Breyer men­tioned inno­cence, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al wrong­do­ing, the length of time inmates spend on death row, and the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of cap­i­tal con­vic­tions among the rea­sons why he now ​“believe[s] it high­ly like­ly that the death penal­ty vio­lates the Eighth Amendment.” In 1984, Ford was con­vict­ed of mur­der on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a wit­ness who lat­er said police had helped her make up her sto­ry. Ford’s attor­ney had nev­er tried a case before a jury. After Ford’s exon­er­a­tion, the lead pros­e­cu­tor on his case, A.M. ​“Marty” Stroud III, issued a pub­lic apol­o­gy. He expressed his belief in Ford’s com­plete inno­cence, say­ing, ​“There was no tech­ni­cal­i­ty here. Crafty lawyer­ing did not secure the release of a criminal…Pursuant to the review and inves­ti­ga­tion of cold homi­cide cas­es, inves­ti­ga­tors uncov­ered evi­dence that exon­er­at­ed Mr. Ford. Indeed, this evi­dence was so strong that had it been dis­closed dur­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tion there would not have been suf­fi­cient evi­dence to even arrest Mr. Ford!” Stroud urged the state to grant Ford com­pen­sa­tion for his wrong­ful con­vic­tion, but no com­pen­sa­tion was grant­ed before Ford’s death. 

Gary Clements, Director of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, tells DPIC that ​“At 2:11 [Monday] morn­ing, Glenn slipped away very qui­et­ly and peace­ful­ly. He was held and sur­round­ed by peo­ple who cared about him, and was lis­ten­ing to a song he loved.”

(A. Burris, ​“Glenn Ford, exon­er­at­ed death row inmate, dies,” The Shreveport Times, June 29, 2015; M. Berman, ​“Innocent man who spent 30 years on death row died hours before Supreme Court jus­tices cit­ed him,” The Washington Post, June 29, 2015.) See Innocence.

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