Imagine spending 30 years on death row, convicted mainly on the basis of a witness who admitted on cross-examination that she had been coached by the police and that her story was a lie. Glenn Ford got out of prison yesterday. He entered prison in 1984. He was innocent.
His case includes pretty much every glaring weakness we have in our criminal justice system. His court-appointed lawyers were incompetent and had no experience with murder trials. They didn’t hire expert witnesses because they erroneously thought that they would have to pay for them. They didn’t call character witnesses at sentencing because they couldn’t figure out how to subpoena people who lived out of state. The prosecutors dismissed all the black jury candidates, often without plausible cause. The appeals courts couldn’t bring themselves to admit that Ford’s counsel had been incompetent. No governor would offer him amnesty.
The only thing that went right with this case is that the state of Louisiana never got around to killing Ford.
Since 1976, Louisiana ranks 12th in the nation, with 28 executions.