Louisiana man freed from death row last year dies of cancer: report

[July 03, 2015]  (Reuters) - A Louisiana man who spent three decades on death row before his murder conviction was thrown out has died at his home in New Orleans less than 16 months after winning his freedom, the New York Times reported.

Glenn Ford, 65, who was diagnosed with lung cancer, passed away Monday at a home provided by the nonprofit group Resurrection After Exoneration, which assists freed prisoners, Ford's attorney, William Most, told the Times.

Ford, a black man, was convicted by an all-white jury in the 1983 robbery and murder of Isadore Rozeman, a 56-year-old Shreveport watchmaker, who was found shot to death behind the counter of his jewelry shop.

He had been held on death row since March 1985 in the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola before walking free in 2014 exonerated of the crime.

He spent much of his incarceration in solitary confinement, spending 23 hours a day alone in his cell.

Leaving the penitentiary, he said prison had cost him "Thirty years of my life, if not all of it," the Times reported.

"I can't go back and do anything I should have been doing when I was 35, 38, 40, stuff like that," he said.

A California native who did occasional yard work for Rozeman, Ford had maintained his innocence and filed multiple appeals.

Acting on new evidence that came to light in 2013, prosecutors asked a judge to vacate Ford's conviction and death sentence, saying information revealed Ford was neither present nor did he participate in the crime.

In 2013, another Angola prisoner who spent nearly 42 years in isolation for the killing of a white prison guard, Herman Wallace, won his freedom but died of liver cancer three days after his release.

(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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