In the end the sheer dysfunctionality of the US death penalty system saved the life of Glenn Ford. Ford, one of the longest serving prisoners on death row, had spent 30 years in jail awaiting execution for a crime for which he has now been exonerated. On Tuesday the Louisiana man became the 144th prisoner on death row to be exonerated since the US restored the death penalty in 1973. It is an unconscionably slow process reflected in the reality that the 10 people executed in the US this year so far spent on average 19 years on death row before being executed. One served 30 years.
Today there are a total of 3,095 inmates in US jails under sentence of death, and last year the lives of 39 of them were taken, reflecting a continuing decline since the 1999 highpoint of executions that reflects both the broken legal system of appeals and a growing disillusionment with capital punishment. Yesterday, the New Hampshire House of Representatives was due to vote on repealing the death penalty following the six other states that have ended it in the past six years.
Ford (64), an African-American, was convicted by an all-white jury in the 1983 robbery and murder of a watchmaker found shot to death behind the counter of his jewellery shop. For three decades, he has maintained his innocence and filed multiple appeals, most of which were denied. The court on Monday found that there was clear evidence Ford was not present during the murder and had no part in it, that the prosecution had suppressed exculpatory evidence from the defence, and that the trial was profoundly compromised by inexperienced defence counsel appointed alphabetically off a list – one, an oil and gas specialist who had never tried a case to a jury, and a co-counsel only two years out of law school.
Ford’s case is tragically typical of all too many death row cases in a seriously flawed legal system weighted against racial minorities and the poor, and which is certainly no basis for the degree of certainty needed morally to underpin any death penalty system.