If We Can’t Prevent Wrongful Convictions, Can We at Least Pay for Them?

Too bad we can't reform the criminal justice system. It's all about the prosecutor and the defense attorney wanting to WIN, no matter whether the person is guilty or not.
And of course money talks. If you have an expensive lawyer you'll get off.

The stunning thing about this case is that the prosecutor actually recognized his responsibility and was willing to explain and apologize for his actions.

The only human thing to do is to start holding people like Cox personally responsible for their decisions. Or at the very minimum make someone pay and pay well - so that you will have a blight on your record and the department will reel in those cowboys going after numbers. Give departments the ability to demote at least. You cannot have that kind of attitude that, "look this is hard" NO you must pay a price when YOU make a mistake with someones life. We have this notion that there are people whose lives matter not. The Poorest and most marginalized MEN are at greatest risk.

I believe many people have began to realize that there may be a hit list on African-Americans and a fund to enrich the person who takes that life. I do not believe the ordinary citizen is sending money to a policeman who shots a man in his back. Most people are appalled. With the money He will receive, he will benefit even after authorities have said that he broke the law. I believe these donations immediately sent are from wealthy donors who have found a way to legally kill African-Americans, Mexicans, and soon other groups. In the past, it might have been lynching by the Klu Klux Klan, but that was accepted, everyone looked the other way. Now that is illegal. I believe these are racist groups who know that the police can get away with murder. Remember the policeman in Ferguson who received so much money before there was even a trail, he was able to marry and retire. Zimmerman who received a great deal of money from donors. We must ask ourselves who are these donors standing in the background.

Is there any reason to expect otherwise from Louisiana , knowing what we know and think about it as a southern state. Unfortunately, it has far more state company than we wish to imagine.

And yet the policeman who shot an unarmed black man eight times as he was running away from him now has a growing defense fund to which people can contribute. This country shows its dirty hands at every turn when it comes to black men and the so-called justice system.

Emily Bazelon

Your thoughtful account is chilling. Especially so in light of the recent killing of a man shot multiple times in the back on camera. Caddo Parish has The Shreveport Times, we have Google, and The New York Times has you.

But who can reverse the 33 years - and return Glenn Ford to health?

I have not heard thousands of police chiefs across the nation exclaiming the obvious in the face of this slaughter. The Civil War rages in our police departments.

The nation seems to have forgotten Abraham Lincoln.

We trash some of our minorities, and promote others.

Many have sought the explanation for all this. I think it's color... and difference, ignorance and fear of difference.

Some of our least secure seek police work to address their insecurities.

Lawmen are among the most lawless. Many are bullying louts.

The wrongful conviction employs the prison guard, unions vote in block.

Our democracy is no longer the arrangement discussed by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, who started his quest for knowledge with a study of our prisons in 1840 or so.

A study of our prisons today would threaten our national identity.

We are a nation of prisons, bragging about the declining crime rate. What crime is declining? Unjust imprisonment?

Congratulations to Emily Bazelon. To The New York Times...

And to The Shreveport Times of Louisiana.

Blessings to Glenn Ford...

This is so disturbing. The state needs to step up and do what's right. No Mr Cox there isn't a "perception of genuine unfairness". It's straight-up genuine unfairness and this man deserves some recompense for his years treated as a murderer.
There also needs to be investigation into these cases of bad lawyering, overzealous prosecutors and OTL judges. Everyone gets mad when the Feds step in but in these cases they should---these offices are not going to investigate themselves properly.
The penalty should hurt the state and the prosecutor's office. A perp, any perp, is not the answer.
Kudos, though, to orignal prosecutor for actually having insight into his youthful errors. That is unusual and to be applauded. I hope he helps Mr Ford in his legal appeal.
Louisiana you should feel deeply ashamed.

We CAN prevent wrongful convictions by making prosecutors liable for their actions during such trials JAIL them for provable offenses, and THEN monetarily compensate the wrongly convicted so that they and their immediate family: spouse and children, are ALSO compensated for the time and affection lost due to the illicit incarceration.

As for Dale Cox the prosecutor who knows all about this case but says "I think we need to kill more people" - some people are like mules. They can have the most obvious thing in the world in front of them but have no capacity to see it.

I agree that someone - Mr. Stroud? - should open an internet donation account for Mr. Ford so people can contribute to help him see his family and help him to be as comfortable as possible.

Apparently the state of Louisana is the scourge of God.

Mr. Ford, if you're reading this, I want to tell you something you might find interesting and beneficial.

In the ancient Asian healing arts including Chinese medicine, the internal organ systems have emotional correspondences. The lungs house grief and sadness (the liver houses anger, frustration, depression, the heart holds joy, the digestive system is affected by worry and overthinking, and the kidneys are affected by fear or strengthened by willpower).

I see this connection in your case. You had so much to grieve and be sad about that it lodged as a physical illness in your lungs -- how could you not have?

Anything in life is possible, and miracles do happen.

I hope that you will use this little exercise so you can move on and possibly have your health improve: Acknowledge all that grief and sadness you had while spending 30 unjust years in prison -- really feel it all for a few minutes, and perhaps (in your mind/imagination) dump all those toxic emotions and memories back into the prison, inside the gates, in a crack in a sidewalk, or maybe somewhere else... where you are not now... so you can move forward now that you're out, and enjoy your life. Like I said, anything is possible, so please try this. It might help your health improve.

Energy precedes matter, and in many cases, emotions precede physical illness. You won. You deserve to have a good, healthy, long life now. I hope you will try, and that you will win this one too. Wishing you the best.

Dear People Reading,

The seeds of racial hate in the people in black robes and blue uniforms are so in-grained after so many years of partnership around the rewards of such an alliance that reparation to the wronged for the wrongs done will never be justly done anywhere in America. There is even a refusal at all levels of govt. to even open that can of worms. If that can of worms gets rightfully opened then all the wrongful traffic stops, etc. that led to abused authority has to be addressed, all those misdeeds can come calling. No municipality in the Union wants that and neither does any other level of govt. Just though it may be, justice will never see the light of day in this systematic practice of racism.

I hope there is justice for Judge Katherine Clark Dorroh and Cox and it is severe and merciless. As for Florida, I hope the heat gets those responsible for that terrible law ready for retribution.

It is pretty simple to donate money to Glenn Ford. The website of the Innocent Project New Orleans is http://www.ip-no.org/. There is a donate button. I earmarked my donated "For Glenn Ford (Kristin Wenstrom's client).

If all 18 people who have commented at this point were so inclined, I'll bet we could quickly raise the money to allow Mr. Ford to travel to California.

The more judgmental folks are the harder is seems to me for them to admit there were mistakes made. Prosecutors are the best example.

For a start we can dispense with the Supreme Court rulings that grant prosecutors and judges blanket immunity for their official "misdeeds" and negligence. Nowhere does it say in the Constitution that they are entitled to any(Scalia, Thomas, Roberts take note). Now if that happens, true justice can be served, holding all prosecutors and judges to the same standards that we ordinary folk are held to. Every state needs to be required to set aside tens of millions of dollars at the minimum and held in a special account which would be off limits to the State government(s). I mention that because remember the tobacco settlement about a decade ago , that money was supposed to have been used for anti- smoking and smoking cessation programs, instead just about every state legislature did a 180 and started raiding the settlement funds for general purposes. Seeing what the Republican State controlled governorships and legislatures have done with their budgets, i doubt any money will every be placed in such accounts.

Ford spent almost half his life caged up like an animal on death row for a crime he didn't commit. As far as I'm concerned he should live the rest of his life without worrying about money like someone that won a Megabucks lottery.

"The state attorney general’s office, which handles compensation cases, argued that Ford didn’t have “clean hands” — to use the legal term of art — because after Rozeman’s killing, he told the police that he knew about the plans for the robbery, pawned some of the stolen jewelry and tried to sell the gun used in the murder. Ford’s lawyer argued that he cooperated with the police by implicating the real killer. “But now they are coming up with new minor crimes he was never charged with or convicted of,” Kristin Wenstrom of Innocence Project New Orleans told me."

I find it amazing that Louisiana, a red GOP state, takes what appears to be a very anti-Christian stance. In the Bible it is written "let he who has not sinned cast the first stone." The original prosecutor admitting sinning and I really wonder if anyone could pass this test.

The American justice system doesn't care about actual guilt or innocence. The decision of a jury after hearing testimony from advocates for the state and the accused defines guilt or innocence. Whoever tells the more convincing story typically wins the decision. The courts are then off the hook for actual guilt or innocence. Mr. Ford was found guilty by a jury of his peers therefore he was guilty regardless of the actual facts.

Why are we such an incredibly stupid species when it comes to assessing and adequately enforcing fairness? From intractible and systemic racism to deeply entrenched speciesism to perpetuating cycles of extreme poverty to refusing to compensate for damages caused by wrongful conviction and more (the list is long), we are moral imbeciles.

An interesting story, and a lamentable situation. But at least the prosecutor has admitted to the error of his ways, which is more than can be said of the NYPD or its prosecutors who have a dismal record of failure to prosecute police wrong doing. The Times is always quick to run stories about Louisiana or Missouri or Florida or Ohio, as well it should. But perhaps if it turned its vast investigative powers on targets closer to home, it might produce some beneficial effects. Let's face it, the South is a closed society, unlikely to heed the advice of an outside institution. But New York, on the other hand, is supposed to be open. Or is it, really?

In addition to compensation -- these kinds of cases should force judicial review and reforms. I am surprised by Louisana's response to Mr. Ford and can only imagine what the system does to the people doing the prosecution and punishment as it seems they too lose touch with their humanity, integrity, and heart. In the end, everyone pays when we participate in a system that brutalizes and reduces other human beings. I hope Mr. Ford is re-joined with his family and is supported to live a satisfying life with whatever time remains for him.

The formula should be simple and the money should be paid upon release.

Pay big, and assess knowing parties in the convictions; it can be a deterrent to falsely reached convictions.

I think each and every one of these wrongfully convicted people be given a high paying salary to serve as a judge (or justice) in actual criminal cases, The duration and court level of the service depends on the nature of the wrongful conviction. Let these people now be the judge!

I don't think what Mr Stroud did is that special. It is what he owes Mr Ford. He owes more than that, much more. At least he had the decency to admit what he did and he should be anguished. Many prosecutors of the wrongfully convicted who are released refuse to do that. Mr Stroud should help Mr Ford and his family (if they will let him) in the compensation appeal and his law suits.

It would be more honest to say that the judicial system doesn't care if an innocent man would spend 30 years in jail. Eventually the most important thing is to put somebody in jail.

Those wrongly accused and later found to be innocent should be paid a lump sum, a substantial lump sum, in the low millions, and then so much for every year they spent in prison. This should be painful for the State, after all, this is the most egregious mistake a State can make.
Also the prosecutor and representatives of the State that participated in the original prosecution should be vigorously prosecuted and punished to the full.
The purpose of the law has to be to protect the innocent and punish the guilty, but the point is to find the Truth, not to merely prosecute someone, which is too often it seems what is happening.

shame. To add shame upon piles of shame, the man was left in jail with an untreated lung cancer, which will, quite likely, kill him before anything can be done to right these wrongs (and let's not doubt that the good state of Louisiana will opt for a lengthy process)

Mr. Stroud, start a GoFundMe campaign to support Mr. Ford. It won't take long to raise a significant amount from people outraged by what Mr. Ford has experienced. It's not an answer to the systemic problem, but it would help Mr. Ford--and demonstrate that a lot of people are behind him.

"...a confidential informer, questioned about an unrelated killing, had identified another man — suspected in four subsequent murders — as the culprit in Rozeman’s death."

We hear far too little about what happens to those who are victimized by the criminal who goes free after someone is wrongly convicted. This is especially so when the actual perpetrator was known to the authorities but wasn't pursued because someone else became the focus of the investigation and subsequent trial. That doesn't appear to be the case here but it has happened. When it does, injustice is piled upon injustice.

In the coming decades, our descendants will look back at our current prison system and wonder how something so primitive could have survived while other institutions were modernized. They appear little changed from the days of Charles Dickens.

I don't know how some of these people mentioned, or any of us for that matter, can sleep at night knowing that these types of egregious inhumanities exist in what we call our society. I don't know how we as a nation can draw a breath and consider ourselves free and just.

"With liberty and justice for all" - These are just a bunch of pretty words that we teach primary schoolers to recite. The thinking adults in this country know better.

What a small minded, niggardly state Louisiana is. Too bad Ford’s name isn’t Long, Jindal, Vitter. Cassidy or someone else’s who commands attention and kowtowing. Backwards is as backward does. There is no justice in Louisiana.

The penal system in the US is CRAZY. Time to do away with the death penalty -- and much of excessively long MANDATORY sentencing (of course those privatized prison companies will NOT be happy with that. I don't know what amount of money should be available to ALL released "felons.' But people certainly need help getting back on their feet post-prison. Still don't know why some kind of work is not part of prison life although education may be and that's not a bad thing either.

Twenty states have no compensation for those wrongly convicted? Not surprising. Yet there was no hesitation to pay millions upon millions to the spouses of fire fighters and policemen killed in New York after 9/11.

If courts can issue tens of millions to family members whose loved ones have been killed by accidents, terrorism, medical malpractice, etc., certainly the life of someone completely destroyed by the justice system of this country that is supposed to protect them is equally deserving, if not more so.

The entire justice system in this country needs to be rewritten, from how police deal with people on the street, to the representation they receive in court, to the treatment while in prison and finally what is done to help them become contributing members of society after they are released.

The system is broken.

Not only pay , but investigate the judicial procedure , along with the police. Many times it starts with the cops, rolls over to the prosecutor , landing before a judge. Either they are in collusion or totally incompetent. All three components, simultaneously....
What are the chances of that?