Glenn Ford, a former death row inmate who served 30 years in a Louisiana prison for a murder he didn't commit, died early Monday morning in New Orleans of cancer, according to a release from Resurrection After Exoneration, the non-profit where Ford was living. He was 65.
Ford was exonerated last March of robbing and killing a watchmaker in Shreveport in 1983, after the state said it uncovered evidence proving he wasn't at the crime scene.
Earlier this year, the prosecutor who sent Ford to death row, A.M. "Marty" Stroud III, apologized for the conviction.
Alison McCrary, a civil rights attorney who volunteered at Resurrection After Exoneration, told NBC News that Ford hadn’t been diagnosed at Angola, the state prison where he was incarcerated, with the various cancers that killed him, including lung, brain and bone cancer. His medical costs — about $2,000 a week — were paid by private donations, she said.
Ford hadn’t been able to speak for roughly the last week, and he was in “excruciating pain” when he died at 2 a.m., McCrary said. Still, she added, “There’s also a peacefulness about Glenn. He had no hatred in his heart. He was really looking forward to the afterlife.”
A funeral will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday at the Charbonnet Funeral Home in New Orleans.
