30 April 201520 December 2022 4WardEverUK

If we can’t prevent wrongful convictions, can we at least pay for them?

source: NYTimes.com
published: 9 April 2015

A few weeks ago, a former prosecutor in Caddo Parish, La., named A. M. Stroud III wrote a letter to the editor of The Shreveport Times that quickly caught fire on the Internet.

Over more than 1,400 anguished words, Stroud apologized for his leading role in the 1984 trial of Glenn Ford, a Louisiana man who was convicted of murder and spent nearly 30 years on death row in Angola, the state’s maximum-security prison, until last year, when his conviction was overturned and he was released.

24 March 201520 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Prosecutor apologizes for sending innocent man to Louisiana’s death row

source: Equal Justice Initiative
published: March 2015

Marty” Stroud III, the lead prosecutor responsible for sending Glenn Ford to death row for a murder he didn’t commit, apologized and called for abolition of the death penalty in an open letter published in the Shreveport Times.

Mr. Stroud wrote in response to the paper’s coverage of Mr. Ford’s struggle to obtain compensation for the nearly 30 years he wrongfully spent on death row.

Mr. Ford was released on March 11, 2014, after the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s office filed a motion to vacate his conviction and death sentence based on new evidence that someone else committed the crime. Louisiana law allows compensation of $25,000 a year capped at $250,000 for the wrongfully convicted, but prosecutors are opposing Mr. Ford’s request.

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19 December 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

George Stinney Jr: Black 14-year-old boy exonerated 70 years after he was executed

source: The Independent
published: 19 December 2014

George Stinney Jr became the youngest person to be executed in the US in the 20th century when he was sent to the electric chair in 1944, but more than 70 years after his death his conviction has been overturned.

Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen said the speed with which the state meted out justice against the boy was shocking and extremely unfair, and that his case was one of “great injustice” in her ruling exonerating Stinney Jr.