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Louisiana inmate Glenn Ford released after 30 years on death row

Glenn Ford was wrongly convicted in the murder of jeweler Isadore Rozeman

By Kate Stanton

Louisiana inmate Glenn Ford walked free Tuesday after 30 years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

My mind going all kind of directions, but it feels good," Ford, now 64, told reporters immediately after his release.

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Asked whether he felt resentful, Ford said, "Yeah, because I was locked up almost 30 years for something I didn't do."

Ford, the longest serving death row inmate, was sentenced to death in 1985 for the 1983 murder of jeweler and watchmaker Isadore Rozeman, who was killed in a shooting at his Shreveport shop.

Ford had worked occasionally as his gardener, when in 1984, justice officials charged him and three other suspects in the shooting death. The other men went free, but Ford was convicted by an all-white jury -- based on witness testimony and pawn shop receipts apparently linked to items stolen from Rozeman's shop.

Ford's attorneys, Gary Clements and Aaron Novod, said his original trial "profoundly compromised by inexperienced counsel and by the unconstitutional suppression of evidence at his trial, 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."

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According to an order signed by District Judge Ramona Emanuel, undisclosed evidence had come to light, "supporting a finding that Glenn Ford was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder of Isadore Rozeman."

Assistant District Attorney Dale Cox said Rozeman's murder is now an "unsolved homicide."

[KSLA, Shreveport Times, CNN, WAFB]

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