Glenn Ford's First Days of Freedom After 30 Years on Death Row

This photo of Glenn Ford was taken by his lawyer
on March 11, 2014— Ford's first day of freedom after
30 years in prison—near St. Francisville, LA (Gary Clements)

Anywhere he wanted to go, the jubilant defense attorneys told a hungry Glenn Ford late Tuesday afternoon as they left the television cameras behind, piled into their car, and left the yawning grounds of Louisiana's notorious Angola prison. Ford was hungry, very hungry, because from the moment he had learned that he would be released from death row—after serving 30 years there for a murder he did not commit—he had decided that he would not eat another morsel of prison food.

On their way back to New Orleans, driving on State Highway 61, there was this one restaurant that Ford had wanted to try, but it had closed for the day. And then the relieved lawyers and dazed client passed a gas station that served Church's fried chicken and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Doughnuts? Ford pondered the possibility until the car was about a mile further down the road. "Look, if you want doughnuts we'll get you doughnuts," even if they come from a gas station, attorney Gary Clements told his longtime client.

So they pulled a U-turn and arrived back at the gas station. The lawyers got out of the car and started to walk in. Ford stayed in the car. It did not immediately occur to him that he would have to open the door himself to get out. When you are on death row for 30 years, when every door in your life is opened and closed for you every day by guards, you forget that you have to reach out and grasp the handle to move from one place to another. "He was just sitting there and waiting for someone to come and tell him he could get out," Clements told me.

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Source: The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen, March 14, 2013

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