Glenn Ford: 'I'm trying to make every day count'

NEW ORLEANS – Glenn Ford admits he doesn't sleep much. An hour or two or three gets him by.

The rest of the 20 hours or so a day, he's up doing whatever he can to take in life.

"I'm trying to make every day count," he said from his home in New Orleans.

The need to measure every second zoomed into overdrive when he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. On Feb. 23, doctors told him his life expectancy, once at six months to a year, had dwindled to four to eight months.

It was the second death sentence for Ford.

The first came on Dec. 5, 1984, when Ford, then a 33-year-old California-turned-Shreveport resident was convicted and sentenced to death for the Nov. 5, 1983 shooting death of Isadore Rozeman, a 56-year-old Shreveport jeweler who was robbed and killed in his Stoner Hill shop.

Following his formal sentencing in March 1985, Ford became a resident of death row at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. Ford never stopped maintaining his innocence.

On March 10, the state of Louisiana finally believed him. Information about the real Rozeman triggerman secured during an unrelated homicide investigation in 2013 caused the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office to ask a Caddo district judge to vacate Ford's conviction and sentence.

So on March 11, after spending 30 years and four months behind bars, Ford walked through the prison gates a free man once again.

That's why the cancer dealt a gut-wrenching blow to his hopes of forging ahead with the second phase of his life and more importantly re-establishing connections with family still in California. But in addition to a dogged determination to put up the biggest fight possible against his cancer, Ford is once again fighting the state of Louisiana.

A law allows wrongfully convicted individuals to get compensation from the state if they meet certain criteria. In court documents, the Louisiana Attorney General's office says Ford is not entitled to any money because he cannot prove he is factually innocent.

The Attorney General's office filed a motion opposing Glenn Ford's request for $105,000, representing the first payout of a possible $330,000 compensation package outlined by Louisiana law for wrongfully convicted individuals meeting statutory requirements.

Ford's attorney, Kristen Wenstrom, of the Innocence Project in New Orleans, says the state is wrong in its opposition and points out it was the state's disregard of evidence that gave Ford a death sentence.

A ruling on the compensation request was deferred during a Feb. 5 hearing before Caddo Parish District Judge Katherine Dorroh. Wenstrom said Dorroh said she would do her best to rule within 30 days

Wenstrom anticipates an answer in early March, but an appeal by the losing side is likely, which could further delay an answer for Ford.

Meanwhile, Ford, now 65, realizes he is fighting the clock and the possibility of getting that money while he is alive is iffy. Attorneys that are included in a team of supporters working with him through Resurrection After Exoneration, a nonprofit organization created by another death row exonoree John Thompson to provide services to exonorees to get re-established in society, will explore if the money could be passed to Ford's family upon his death.

"I want to leave everything to my grandkids," said Ford, who grins when he says that number is somewhere between 17 and 21. "There's no less than 17 and no more than 21."

Daily life

Ford is fortunate to have found help from Thompson's organization shortly after his release.

Thompson, who spent 14 years on death row for a murder he did not commit, at first provided housing free of charge for Ford on the top floor of a print screen business that creates jobs for other exonorees. But he recently moved Ford into a house just down St. Bernard Avenue, allowing Ford to have full use of a downstairs apartment space.

Ford, Thompson admits, has become a father figure. He wants to make Ford's life as comfortable as possible. He's hopeful if the end days come some of Ford's family can make it to New Orleans to be with him.

The house, sitting like many others in this New Orleans neighborhood just feet from adjacent ones, is across from a fast food eatery, a grocery and other stores, allowing Ford quick access to basic needs. Social Security disability and food stamps give him financial assistance.

The support team enters the picture again when it comes to getting Ford to his many doctor's visits. He started two weeks ago with an aggressive chemotherapy treatment that quickly hospitalized him.

Now, the treatments are coming in "short bursts," but will be done five days a week. After that, radiation.

Ford is not giving up. He's adapting his diet and is about to join a gym to increase his exercise.

"I'm going to do what it takes to live," he said

Cancer struck Ford while he was on death row. But he didn't know it at the time.

"There's never no medical rush for death row," Ford said of his request for a doctor call. An initial diagnosis was a thyroid problem after Ford said he ballooned with a 40-pound weight gain within a month.

The morning that he left Angola, a physician handed him a bottle of pills for his thyroid. Continued health problems following his release led to the cancer diagnosis in July. By then it was stage 2.

Down 70 pounds, Ford gives the outward appearance of a healthy man. A two-hour interview in his home Friday found him dressed smartly in a gray beanie cap, coordinating sweater, creased jeans and dress shoes with a silver cross dangling from a cord around his neck.

At least once, Ford wobbled when standing up. He apologized. The morning's chemo treatment made him a little unsteady.

Talking about his possible demise this year didn't cause him any pause, though. He talked matter-of-factly about it, likely a by-product of the decades he sat in a cell with a death sentence hanging over his head.

Behind bars

Ford breaks out in a smile when recalling that day almost a year ago when learned he no longer was considered a convicted killer. He had known since 2013 that court documents filed in federal court opened the door to his innocence. He was always optimistic the key to his release would be in in federal court, not state court.

But Ford experienced disappointment before when other appeals didn't fall in his favor. His attorney, Gary Clements, kept him apprised as the new information was under review.

"But I had gotten to the point that I didn't have high hopes," he said.

On the morning of March 11, Ford was playing chess with another death row inmate when a guard told him he had legal call. Clements was on the phone and told him he was about to be released.

"I said, 'OK, what else is new?' He said, 'No, I'm serious,'" Ford said. He went back to his cell and resumed the chess game. "I said I wasn't going for that."

Then the cell door opened and ranking prison officials were standing on the other side. "Then I knew it was true. … I made my last chess move, threw my stuff everywhere and I flew out of there."

What he described as a "whirlwind" hasn't stopped. "I've not had a chance to marinate, so to say — or breathe."

Ford went to California to see his four sons and their families last Easter then make a return trip in July. That's when his illness kicked in, however, and it's been doctors' visits ever since.

Ford concedes he's scared. When he does sleep, waking up with different symptoms triggers fears of the nearness of possible death.

Still, Ford doesn't harbor ill feelings for his life's heart-breaking path.

"Anger, I don't have no anger. I have anger that I have cancer. I have resentment Angola allowed this to happen. I guess everything is for a reason. I really don't know," he said.

And whether his time left on Earth is long or short, what does he hope to accomplish?

"More life," Ford answered. "I would like to live a little longer that's all."