THIS IS PART OF “OPERATING CAPITAL,” AN ONGOING LENS DISCUSSION ABOUT LOUISIANA’S RESUMPTION OF EXECUTIONS.
On March 11, 2014, Glenn Ford got here house to stay as a free man after being launched from Demise Row at Louisiana State Penitentiary. For over 30 years, he had instructed each court docket and each decide that he was harmless of the 1983 homicide of a neighborhood jeweler. Nobody believed him.
Eleven years and one week after Glenn’s launch, the governor of Louisiana intends to renew executions, beginning with Jessie Hoffman on March 18. This would be the first execution in 15 years, the final being Gerald Bordelon in 2010.
Glenn wasn’t launched on a technicality and even on new scientific proof. As an alternative, it was Caddo Parish prosecutors who pressed for his launch, telling the court docket in 2014 that they’d “credible proof” that “Ford was neither current at, nor a participant in, the theft and homicide of Isidore Rozeman.”
I might hope that folks of various opinions can all agree that Louisiana shouldn’t execute harmless folks. Glenn’s case helps us perceive that proof of innocence may even arrive 30 years after the crime happens.
Glenn’s experiences additionally assist us perceive why the dying penalty is at all times unsuitable, no matter guilt or innocence.
The reality is, our prison justice system is unreliable. Since 2000, Louisiana has exonerated extra folks on Demise Row than it has executed. The courts have been satisfied that Glenn was responsible…till prosecutors mentioned that he wasn’t. The identical is true for Glenn’s good friend from dying row, John “JT” Thompson, who was exonerated after 14 years on dying row.
Time and again, our prison justice system will get it unsuitable. One research signifies that over 80% of Louisiana dying sentences have been reversed. Police might have obtained proof illegally or coerced a false confession. In some circumstances, folks had incompetent and unqualified attorneys. In others, prosecutors illegally withheld proof. The lead prosecutor in Glenn’s case, Marty Stroud, publicly apologized, indicating he was extra occupied with “successful” than in justice.
“Successful” in Louisiana can now end in an individual cruelly being gassed to dying. Authorised within the state’s 2024 particular legislative session on crime, this barbaric Holocaust-era killing method is deeply offensive to many. As dying by gassing is each painful and extended, some states have outright prohibited veterinarians from utilizing it on animals. And but, Louisiana intends to make use of on people what’s prohibited for canines.
Glenn knew what it felt wish to be handled as lower than human. Out of doors train for folks on Demise Row was solely allowed in a “recreation cage,” a small, naked, kennel-like pen enclosed on the highest and sides by a sequence hyperlink fence. Regardless of being confined 23 hours a day in his 8×10 cell, he refused to go exterior for years. For Glenn, the “recreation cage” was for canines, not for males. He continued to refuse rec time even when sentenced to dying, selecting to recollect he was nonetheless a human being.
Over his 29 years, 3 months, and 5 days on Demise Row, Glenn obtained to know different folks sentenced to dying. They grew to become his household, dwelling side-by-side of their particular person cells for many years. After he got here house, he talked about how among the folks on the Row weren’t “proper of their minds,” both from a psychological well being situation or an mental incapacity.
He revealed the compassion and rituals they shared when one in all their very own was executed by the state. He witnessed their rebirth as folks on Demise Row realized from—and tried to atone for—their prior acts. And since he knew the every day bruising ache of spending the remainder of his life in jail, unable to be with—and supply for—his household and mates, he additionally knew that the dying penalty was pointless. Life in jail was an endless punishment.
Glenn Ford taught me that each probability for all times issues. The identical state that freed him in 2014 had secured a 1991 dying warrant for his execution. Glenn finally died as a free man 15 months after his launch from most cancers. He confronted his personal dying with braveness and beauty, surrounded by folks he known as household. Greater than something, he died hoping his story may assist save the lives of others.
Glenn Ford opposed the dying penalty. He knew from his personal expertise that our courts, judges, and juries might be unsuitable. He personally witnessed the humanity and redemption of individuals sentenced to dying, together with Jessie Hoffman, who has constructed a repute for kindness and integrity even inside the confines of Angola. This time round, we are able to consider Glenn and select mercy for these he left behind on Demise Row.
Andrea Armstrong is the executrix of the property of Glenn Ford. She can be a legislation professor at Loyola College New Orleans, Faculty of Legislation, a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, and an knowledgeable on incarceration.
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