Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Season Five Home for the Holidays 2
159 Plays18 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS by slip.fm. The song is “No Scars”.
You can reach us at our website truecrimexs.com and you can leave us a voice message at 252-365-5593. Find us most anywhere with @truecrimexs
Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe if you want to hear more and you can come over to patreon.com/truecrimexs and check out what we’ve got going on there if you’d like to donate to fund future True Crime XS road trip investigations and FOIA requests. We also have some merchandise up at Teepublic http://tee.pub/lic/mZUXW1MOYxM
Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Content Advisory
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Introduction to True Crime XS and Case Overview
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:29
Speaker
So obviously it is the home for the holiday series for 2024. I pulled a weird one. This is one, normally I don't know if I would cover it because I have questions about it, but um I do wanna address it. It is what I consider one way or the other to be some kind of miscarriage of justice. I'll let people kind of land where they want to.
Case Discovery and Background Information
00:00:58
Speaker
I ran across this case in a news article that that was kind of a strange one. Had you ever heard of this guy before? I had not. Nope. So this is an area where there's a period of time I worked on several cases from this area that had made their way into the Louisiana appellate courts. Most of what I did was likes pretty rudimentary, like data review, data analysis. um ah One of those cases though, it did end up going
00:01:31
Speaker
to the Supreme Court, and I was a peon on it. But it it was an interesting case. So I keep a subscription to different um search feeds that this one hit on. And the reason that it hit on it was because it's a case that's out of Shreveport, Louisiana. Now, where I came across it the first time was actually in 2015. I had a bookmark about this case.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I'm gonna read a little bit from this article from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette from March 29th of 2015. And then we're gonna cover it, what I promise to keep all these sources together, we're gonna cover it from The National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan's Law School, that's the main ah source for today's episode. But ah we're also gonna pull from some different articles here and there. And I just wanna throw those out there. are The death penalty info, um if you if you go to their site, they have a pretty cool article about him. The University of Richmond Law Review had an article about him.
00:02:46
Speaker
It pops up in Salon. Huffington Post ran an article around the same time as the one that I'm pulling from now. um The New York Daily News had a very interesting article about this, ah something that happens with ah the exoneree sort of after things. But this is from Philip Martin writing for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, March 29th of 2015.
Murder Details and Initial Investigation
00:03:12
Speaker
And the title of his little blurb here is just an open and shut case open again. He says, I remember Isadora Roseman. I can't find a photo of him online, but my memory says that he was a small man who looked older than his 56 years, with thin hair and thick, horn-rimmed glasses. He had cataracts and he was legally blind. He is described as, quote, elderly in some accounts. I wonder where they got that. Maybe from one of my old stories? I hope not.
00:03:44
Speaker
In 1983, Roseman was my neighbor, a couple of blocks in around the corner in Shreveport's Stoner Hill neighborhood. It wasn't a good neighborhood. It was what I could afford. I was living across the street from a den of anarcho-syndicalists in what federal statistics defined as one of the two or three most murderous cities in America. But when someone broke into my car and took my cassette deck,
00:04:14
Speaker
It made me mad, not afraid. Maybe Isadora Roseman was afraid.
Suspect Investigation and Trial Doubts
00:04:19
Speaker
Anyway, he was careful. He ran a small jewelry and watch repair shop out of his home, and he preferred his customer's call ahead. He kept his shop locked up, opening it only after he'd established who was on his porch. He kept a lot of small, valuable items that could easily be fenced in his shop. He was aware of the local crime rate. I was a cop reporter on an afternoon daily that aggressively reported on the ways human beings breached the social contract. Some days I would have five or six stories on the newspaper's front page. I was properly empathetic when I spoke to victims' families. I understood how lives could be disrupted and hearts could be shattered by the fundamentally selfish acts of criminals. But I knew that crime was good for my business and it provided me with interesting work.
00:05:09
Speaker
Someone killed Isidore Roseman on a Saturday morning or afternoon in November. It must have been a terrifying event. They made him lie down on the floor before they shot him behind the right ear through a duffel bag full of dirty clothes. The police surmised the killer used the bag to shield himself from Isidore's blood. They also found a paper sack at the scene crumpled in such a way as to lead the police to believe it had been used as a glove.
00:05:37
Speaker
They later were able to pull a partial fingerprint off of that sack with a whirl pattern that could have been left by roughly a third of the people on the planet. The parish coroner offered the opinion that whoever shot Roseman was left-handed. There was other information. Roseman had employed a man named Glenn Ford as his yard man. Ford was a black man, a poor man, who lived nearby in a transient hotel. He was a few days behind on his rent.
00:06:07
Speaker
Someone said they'd seen him arguing with Roseman, maybe over money, a few days before. Police began looking for Ford almost immediately. The next morning, Ford came down to the police station to the police station and gave a statement. He said two brothers, Henry and Jake Robinson, were scary men who probably committed the murder. They were known to the police. He would cooperate throughout the investigation up until the time three months later,
00:06:34
Speaker
when he, the Robinson brothers, and George Starks were charged with Isidore's murder. A few days after the murder, police searched Ford's hotel room and they found an array of spoons and shirt studs, gold chains, and a pillbox. They found more items likely taken from Isidore in a nearby pawn shop. Ford had signed the receipts. Ford was left-handed. His fingerprints were whirled.
00:07:03
Speaker
Another expert testified particles of gunshot residue were on Ford's hands when he showed up at the police station. And Marvella Brown, the girlfriend of Jake Robinson told police that she'd seen Ford, her boyfriend and his brother on the day of the murder. They had left together. And when they returned later in the day, Ford had a bag full of watches and rings and a gun stuck in his waistband. It was an open and shut, if largely circumstantial case.
00:07:32
Speaker
It didn't matter when on cross examination, Marvella Brown recanted her story. She said, I did lie to the court. I lied about all of it. It took less than three hours for an all white jury to convict Ford. He was sentenced to death. Charges against others were quietly dropped. So this is one of those cases that takes place in Louisiana.
00:07:57
Speaker
ah You've seen a few of these over the years where they have appeal after appeal. Have you ever seen one that you just like read about it and it was like, that is crazy?
00:08:12
Speaker
The first thing I noticed about this case in particular was the element of at least three, it seems like. Yeah, you tell ah at least three people. and the or but Yeah.
00:08:27
Speaker
But it so it played to me um and i and I don't really know, I know that it's just, it usually happens around Christmas and it's like these crazy cases and we've talked about it before where we're like, somebody like comes to the attention of law enforcement for whatever reason. And then they're like, well, this guy might've done it, but it's not quite enough. So who's your friend, right? right Who's your friend that helped you?
00:08:56
Speaker
And then from there, they're like, okay, we've almost got it, but we need one more person. yeah And it's it to me seems like it's probably one of those cases. um And it seems that maybe it started with Marvella Brown. I'm i'm not really sure exactly, but it's one of those types of cases to me. And it is crazy, but Now, I don't know how much was stolen. um i don't like I don't know if this was some sort of big heist. um No. the So the way the court records read is, and and I'm saying this with all deference to what happened here, there was never anything super valuable to take. There was a lot of a little stuff.
00:09:50
Speaker
Right and because of that I mean honestly this type of case uh with a gunshot wound to the pretty much the back of the head to me it seems like it's going to be a it's going to be one person and it's going to be somebody who was wanting probably like a small amount. of i I don't want to say like a drug user.
00:10:22
Speaker
I understand what you're saying. You're saying this is this kind of feels like a petty criminal robbery where they knew they weren't going to get much, but they did it anyways. They were looking, because I feel like people who do drugs that are driven to, you know, their next high, and this is this is how I imagine it. I don't actually know.
00:10:43
Speaker
but I imagine that, you know, they'll do anything to get that, you know, $10 or whatever. um And obviously, a person in their right mind doesn't, you know, still a very small amount of something and kill somebody ah in the meantime. But it, and I don't know, in my mind, four people can't possibly have done this.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the problems that we've run into here. So, all right. And now I'm just going to pull from all the sources and kind of tell you like the rundown of the
Legal Proceedings and Racial Issues
00:11:25
Speaker
story. But I want to kind of start with the National Registry because they organize it very neatly for you and I to try and understand like, how do we get here?
00:11:34
Speaker
Um, so this takes place in Louisiana. The Paris that it takes place is called Cotto. C-A-D-D-O. Um, someone's going to yell at me about the pronunciation for that. That's fine. We'll just, just think Shreveport. Now the most serious crime that he's hit with is murder and his additional convictions are for conspiracy. And then this took place November 5th of 1983. Now he ends up convicted in 1984.
00:12:03
Speaker
And it will be 20 years before this gets back in front of a judge. And it will be 30 years before the look at the main perpetrator, who is going to be Glenn Ford, ah like the look at his role in all of this changes as far as the court is concerned.
00:12:27
Speaker
Now, he sentenced to death. That's important to remember because that makes it a more serious case no matter what jurisdiction you're in and what you're talking about. ah He's a black man, and he was 34 years old at the time of the reported crime. Now, the contributing factors that they put together in terms of like listening it as what caused this wrongful conviction are false or misleading evidence, ah and they specify with this one that it was forensic evidence, and perjury or false accusation, and that there's official misconduct, and they also throw in
00:13:05
Speaker
an inadequate legal defense. One of the last questions they ask is, did DNA contribute to ah like did dna evidence contribute to the exoneration? and The answer here is no. ah the The rundown just kind of repeats some of that story, but it frames it around Glenn Ford here.
00:13:25
Speaker
It says November 5th, 1983, 56 year old Isidore Roseman, who was a jeweler and a watchmaker was found shot to death in his shop in Shreveport, Louisiana. His pockets had been pulled and there were items missing from the store. ah The reason I pulled from multiple multiple sources here is because it is important to remember that this is also ah Mr. Roseman's home, not just like his little store.
00:13:51
Speaker
One of the first people to be questioned was 34-year-old Glenn Ford, who was an affable man who had done some yard work for Roseman, like cutting the grass, pulling weeds, little things around his house. Glenn Ford denied being involved in the crime, but he did admit that he had been near Isadora at some point earlier in the day. Witnesses told police that they saw him near there. Depending on which account you read,
00:14:23
Speaker
You either see him the day of, the day before, or a little bit earlier in the week, and several of those witnesses claim that there was some kind of heated discussion going on between Glenn Ford and Isidore Roseman. How accurate that is, we don't ever get a good feeling. In February of 1984, items from this little shop had turned up in a pawn shop, and a handwriting analyst comes along to say,
00:14:52
Speaker
Glen Ford signed those pawn slips. We have Marvella Brown that we just talked about. She comes in and tells police that her boyfriend, Jake Robinson, and then Jake's brother Henry and Glen Ford were all at her house on the day of the crime and that they left together after Ford asked if they were fixing to get going. Now, according to Brown,
00:15:21
Speaker
She said the last time she saw Glen Ford, he was carrying a brown paper bag. When the men returned later in that day, Glen Ford had a different bag, according to Miss Brown, and he had a gun in his waistband. Jake Robinson, her boyfriend, was also carrying a weapon. Marvella Brown said that Jake showed her a bag that was full of watches and rings.
00:15:47
Speaker
So they get everybody together in February of 1984. Just a couple of months have passed since this, ah I would say robbery and homicide had occurred as opposed to just an armed robbery. They all end up, meaning the four of them, Glenn Ford, Jake and Henry Robinson, and this fourth guy, George Starks, they all get charged with capital murder and they all get charged with a conspiracy to commit armed robbery.
00:16:17
Speaker
So in November of 1984, Glenn Ford goes on trial in the Paris district court. Prosecutors have set up their preemptive jury challenges to eliminate any prospective jurors who are black. And so it's 1984, you cannot get much more Southern than Louisiana and the United States. And we have impaneled an all white jury. Now,
00:16:47
Speaker
not to like go into the hot topic part of this, but what do you think of that? Like 1984, a young black man up for capital murder, having an all white jury in Shreveport, Louisiana. I think we're about to find out that his attorneys didn't know what they were doing. Yeah. But I will say I'm not entirely sure that, um,
00:17:13
Speaker
even if they knew what they were doing, that that would have helped the situation. The systemic racism that is sort of displayed with this case with regard to basically empanelling an all-white jury, was it all white men, did it say? I do not know the answer to that question. I know they were all white. My guess is at that time, it was probably the majority men.
00:17:41
Speaker
Okay. And so to me, 1984, I mean, it's 40 years ago, yeah but it, it seems like this should be like 1954 or something like that. Right. Oh yeah. It feels like that. Yeah. But it's hard to, cause I would be very surprised, uh, to learn of any situation.
00:18:10
Speaker
where now, I'm talking about now, where they were like, oh yeah, they dismissed all of the black jurors and there were just white jurors and like they they made it sound like that, right? Would you be surprised by that? Like, I mean, I can see where like you could end up with like, you know, cause the you get called for jury duty based on random things, right?
00:18:40
Speaker
Yes. And, you know, a lot of people that live in the same area can have a lot of the same characteristics. So it is possible that you could have, you know, some sort of consistency among jurors. I just the way this is worded that they like specifically dismissed the black ah potential jurors and they ended up with an all white jury. I feel like that now that would not be the prerogative of a judicial official, a prosecuting attorney or a defense attorney. That would be sort of the last line. The defense attorney would say, hey, wait, you know. But it doesn't seem to be, it seems like 40 years ah ago, should have been it should have been less racist. That is not what we're seeing though.
Defense Challenges and Conviction
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think part of this is that the defense attorneys are kind of SOL from the beginning here. And I say that not to denigrate the defense attorneys because you said something that's very key to all of this. Judicial officials should have recognized some of this was wrong. So Glen Ford is a black guy in Shreveport who is doing yard work to get pocket money, probably trying to catch up on his rent, and he gets appointed to defense attorneys in a capital case. In a lot of circumstances, I will go to ground and die on all the hills to defend public defenders, particularly capital public defenders. In this day and age, they are doing like amazing work, but I will say that like
00:20:32
Speaker
the judicial official appointing Glenn Ford's defense attorneys did him no favors. One of them had basically been handling misdemeanors and speeding tickets, but they had never actually gone and done a criminal trial. The other person who was assisting in this defense of Glenn Ford had never handled any sort of criminal case. So in spite of all that,
00:21:00
Speaker
they do a decent job cross examining Marvella Brown. She falls apart on the witness stand. So under cross examination, she basically says that the detectives made up what she was supposed to say and that what she had been saying was a lie. She said that earlier in her life, she had been shot in the head and the bullet was never removed.
00:21:29
Speaker
because they feared it might do more damage to her. But that bullet being in her head, according to what she said down the road, was that it caused difficulty with not just her thoughts and her thinking, but also with her hearing. So the trial goes ahead with these guys, with Marvella Brown sort of being the key witness.
00:21:53
Speaker
But there are several other witnesses that testify along the way that they saw Glenford near that store on that day. No one testifies that they saw the crime occur and no one testifies that they understood the timeline of the crime. Does that make sense? Like understood, like, like people were saying, we saw him, might've been morning, might've been afternoon, but we're not putting together like that the murder takes place in the morning or the afternoon when these witnesses see him. It's all circumstantial, definitely. Okay. So a gunshot residue expert comes on and they testify for the prosecution that Ford had voluntarily come in for questioning because they knew the police were looking for him and that he had done a test and recovered gunshot residue from Glen Ford's hand.
00:22:51
Speaker
Then they put up a fingerprint analyst. Now he says that from this paper bag found at the crime scene, he lifted a single fingerprint and that the print contained a quote, whirl, W H O R L type pattern. And that Glenn Ford had a whirl pattern, but Jake and Henry Robinson did not.
00:23:17
Speaker
The coroner for the parish at the time was a guy named Dr. George McCormick. And he testified that he had been to the scene of the crime and he had analyzed it. He had analyzed the position of the victim's body and he had analyzed a duffel bag that was found next to the body with a bullet hole in it. So Dr. McCormick said that his conclusions were that the victim was shot by someone who had been holding the gun in his left hand.
00:23:45
Speaker
Glen Ford, again, he's left-handed and both of the Robinson brothers are right-handed. McCormick tried to help with the timeline of the case. He said that he believed that Mr. Roseman had been dead for as long as two hours by the time the body had been discovered. That does approximately time with when some of the witnesses said they saw Glen Ford near Mr. Roseman's house and his store.
00:24:16
Speaker
Glen Ford takes the stamp, and he testifies that he had nothing to do with this, but he admits that he got some of the items found at his hotel room and in the pawn shop from the Robinson Brothers, and he was selling those items for the Robinson Brothers.
00:24:38
Speaker
The trial wraps up and on December 5th of 1984, the jury convicts Glenn of capital murder and the conspiracy to commit armed robbery. They then go on to have their holiday and they come back with a recommendation that Glenn Ford be sentenced to death. So following this recommendation on February 26th of 1985,
00:25:08
Speaker
Glen Ford has now been convicted and he is sentenced to death. At the same time, the prosecution moves to dismiss the charges against Jake and Henry Robinson and against George Starks.
00:25:28
Speaker
With the death penalty, and I know you've seen this before, it triggers, even in the 80s, it triggers automatic appeals. It's not the type of thing that the courts want to appear to be taking lightly. I say they don't want to have appear to be taking it lightly because I feel like this is proof that if you if you look at how all this unfolds, starting with the murder in November of 1983, the arrest in early 1984, he's on death row by March of 1985. So he can't be that efficient, I don't think.
00:26:06
Speaker
It's amazing that um he was not executed, honestly. Yeah. To me. It really is. And the next 16 years, honestly, it is a lot of luck on the part of Glenn for literally 16 years.
Appeals and New Evidence
00:26:28
Speaker
So he goes through a series of appeals that put him through the appellate process and all the way up to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
00:26:36
Speaker
Now, the Louisiana Supreme Court takes a look at his case in 2000.
00:26:44
Speaker
They order a hearing on a post conviction petition that had been filed for a new trial. And it was filed by the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana. So this is a little bit different element of the innocence industry, I guess. Have you ever heard of the capital post-conviction project of Louisiana? I have not. I am familiar that capital cases do get ah eventually some resources. Yeah, they do. So in 1999, there started to be access to funding for capital post-conviction representation in Louisiana.
00:27:31
Speaker
And when that happened, I would say over the next 20 to 22 years, about 36 people have been removed from Louisiana's death row and put back into ah Angola, which is the the big prison there, into general population. And it's either six or seven men have been completely released from incarceration because of their work.
00:28:00
Speaker
Now, the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, their office is technically like kind of fly by night in 2000. They opened their first real office in New Orleans in March of 2001. And that's after the state starts to fund ah under Louisiana statute 15149, like the right to post conviction counsel for strictly death row inmates. So that makes us a little different than like the general cases that we cover. But the idea was that this project was going to provide high quality direct representation to Louisiana clients, the majority of whom were men,
00:28:44
Speaker
who were in post conviction state, meaning a court had convicted them and sentenced them to death. The idea was this project was going to assist ah a network of like individual sort of pro bono, um, lawyers who were working for different firms who were but representing clients at the time statewide.
00:29:08
Speaker
because it's not like a real capital public defenders network at that point. um you still got like In the 80s, you still have people clearly being appointed. If someone's never had handled a criminal case before, I cannot imagine that a judge appointing them appointed them out of like a capital public defenders office, which a lot of places do have capital public defenders now. So all of this capital state post-conviction litigation is now funded exclusively four Louisiana death row inmates ah through a 501c3 contract. and Today, in 2024, the staff there, they have seven attorneys. I think they have about three paralegals, an investigator, and they have a ah couple office staffs. They all have full caseloads. and If I remember correctly, ah earlier this year, I think I saw they had a client count of 42 who were directly represented, and I think they were giving resources to another
00:30:08
Speaker
Ten clients who were pro bono cases for other firms um They do contract out to some ah like private post conviction litigators meaning for lack of a better word For richer people on death row who are still paying for their appeals. This is how they make some of their money back It's a big deal. It's a huge deal for people to be able to represent death row inmates in this capacity. And it is not something that has been a guaranteed right forever. So they get the project gets this post conviction petition through in a favorable way at the Louisiana Supreme Court. But the hearing doesn't happen until 2004. So we've got a gap of time like four years of putting this together. And at this hearing,
00:31:02
Speaker
They bring in a defense expert that testifies that the coroner's attempt to reconstruct the crime scene had no connection to anything that had actually happened at the scene and that they felt like the coroner was just speculating. So all of this stuff about he used the duffel bag, he was left-handed, this paper bag was used in the crime, they're literally saying that while it might've been based in the coroner's experience and sort of in his common sense, it wasn't based in science.
00:31:31
Speaker
So it was presented a little more concretely to a jury. I always have a huge problem with ah death row convictions where there's no physical evidence. Yeah. It bothers me, but I was thinking about it. And to put myself in, ah back in 1984, 85, maybe they thought that was physical evidence.
00:31:58
Speaker
Right. Well, I think it's how I at least think that's how the prosecutors intentionally presented it to the jury at the time. They presented all of these things like they were concrete. Well, right, because like if if they're if that's not physical evidence in 1984, what is, right? Now granted, I would argue, unless it's on video, there's absolutely no way to tell that a person who shot the gun was left-handed, which seems to be a huge part of why they zoomed in on him. I mean, you can shoot a gun with your left hand, even if you're not left-handed.
00:32:36
Speaker
and It is really strange that like that seems to be like one of the straws that broke the camel's back, right? yeah As far as him being held accountable for it while everybody else involved, the case was just dismissed against them.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah. But to me, so I and as i immediately, I'm not for death row sentences that don't have like very convincing physical evidence tying the person to the crime. um But you know like I said, I think they may have thought this was physical evidence.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I think the timing of it all, like being in the 80s, and it is like it's ahead of DNA. It's ahead of like some of the things that we do today. There was a lot of junk science sitting around in the 80s that people took very seriously, ah including like graphology or handwriting analysis. It's funny that you brought up the gun thing. You know, one of the first things they did, so I went for the SBI's Academy where they are they're testing you to see if you'll be able to continue in in their program. One of the first things they do after you run and like do your sit-ups and your push-ups and all of that is they give you rubber ducky guns that have a working trigger and you have to be able to fire them right-handed and you have to be able to fire them left-handed. So you're right. like Most people, um you could be doing something else with your dominant hand that it lends you to shooting
00:34:14
Speaker
a gun with your left hand, even though you might be right-handed. Yeah, I i really don't think that that shows much at all, right? and not Not to me. And they at this point, the crime scene expert that they bring in, he basically says that. He says, this is this is speculation at best. It shouldn't have been presented at the jury trial. at you know since We're talking about this being 2004, literally 20 years earlier. He's saying none of this should have been brought up the way it was. They have another defense expert that comes in.
00:34:44
Speaker
And he says that the gunshot residue evidence was pretty meaningless, primarily because we time has passed from the time that this murder occurs to the time that Glen Ford is sitting in the police station. is It's a couple days that they bring him in to question him. He has to get word that they want to talk to him, and he does come in. And then the expert also points out that like he's sitting in a police station, and there's not many more common places for you to pick up gunshot residue than a police station. And that's something I'm not sure that would have been as a parent 20 years earlier.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. So there's another defense expert that comes in at this hearing in 2004 and he points out that the prosecution's fingerprint expert misidentified the fingerprint on the paper bag and that the pattern that it left could have actually been left by either of the Robinson brothers.
00:35:46
Speaker
So these new lawyers from the Capital Post Conviction Project and everybody representing Clint Ford, they bring in the old lawyers from the trial. And they have them testify that they had no idea what they were doing.
00:36:01
Speaker
They had very little experience in criminal cases, and neither of them had any training in capital defense. One of those lawyers at the time that he was representing Glen Ford, he specialized in oil and gas law, and he had never tried a case to a jury, either civil or criminal. The extent of his prior criminal work was handling two It says rudimentary or uniform guilty pleas. The other lawyer had just been out of law school for ah about a year and a half, and he had been working at an insurance firm handling personal injury cases. So you have these two guys in 1984 defending Glenn Ford from a death row murder charge. It's a huge deal. I guess at least he had somebody, but I mean...
00:36:56
Speaker
I don't know. I think something is better than nothing, but I don't know that that's the case in a capital murder case. I feel like that they, I feel like this was a situation. I don't feel like these guys like were like, Hey, we're really good at this. Let us do it. Right. I think they were like, Hey, you need to get over here and defend this guy. Yeah. yeah So the way that this appears to work, and this is based on me reading the court documents. They don't act. So this happened pretrial. So back in 1984,
00:37:26
Speaker
It looks like one of them was on a list to get trial experience and the other one was in a pool of local appointed lawyers. And so that goes to show you how administrative tasks can lead to catastrophic failures, right? Right. Because clearly in a first degree murder case that has, that's a capital case no less,
00:37:51
Speaker
that results in the punishment being the de defendant being put on death row. Um, I don't know that appointing the local pro bono attorney who's looking for trial experience is the best idea. No, not in the capital. market case But for whatever reason, right? That's what happened.
00:38:17
Speaker
It is. And so they go on and they say, both of them were unaware that they could see court funding for experts. They didn't hire any because they simply could not afford to pay for experts with what they were being paid to do these cases. Both of them were unaware of how to subpoena witnesses even from out of state. So Glenn Ford's family mostly lives in California. None of them came in to testify for Ford at the guilt or the punishment pays of the trial. The defense in this 2004 hearing They present numerous police reports that had never been disclosed to the defense. So you've got kind of automatic Brady violations there, ah to a degree. The reports showed that Shreveport police had received two tips from informants that implicated Jake and Henry Robinson as being the sole ah people responsible for the robbery and the murder. Right. And if you go back and think about it, Marvella Brown was one of the brother's girlfriends, right? Correct.
00:39:17
Speaker
And so it sort of makes sense. Yeah, that she would testify against someone else makes a lot of sense. So other police reports show that some detectives had lied at Ford's original trial about statements that Ford made during his interrogation. This was testimony that according to the defense in this 2004 hearing, the prosecution should have realized was false.
00:39:44
Speaker
Not only that, but there were other police reports that were withheld from the defense that contained conflicting statements made by Marvella Brown and by the other witnesses who said they saw Glenford near the store the day of the crime. These reports, if disclosed properly to the defense, could have been used to impeach the witness's testimony at trial. And yet, with all of this, guess what happens with this post-conviction here?
00:40:15
Speaker
Um, I'm going to go with nothing. The motion for new trial is denied. And I have no idea. Um,
00:40:29
Speaker
I have no idea how that happened, but okay.
Release and Post-Release Struggles
00:40:34
Speaker
So it's going to take another eight years and the capital post conviction project has finally getting its legs under it. And it's building out that staff that we talked about they have today.
00:40:45
Speaker
They file a federal petition for writ of habeas corpus. That means they want to bring something to the court to try and get some sort of motion on Glenford's case. While this petition is pending, the parish district attorney's office there begins reinvestigating the case.
00:41:07
Speaker
And a year later in 2013, they disclosed that they had an informant who had told the Shreveport police that Jake Robinson had admitted to shooting Isadora Roseman. In March of 2014, the prosecution filed into the case with a motion to vacate Glen Ford's conviction and death sentence in light of the newly discovered evidence from this particular informant.
00:41:36
Speaker
On March 11, 2014, a judge vacated Glenn Ford's convictions and the prosecution dismissed the charges. At this point, Glenn Ford is finally released. So that's pretty straightforward.
00:41:53
Speaker
I mean, this guy was literally going to die in the electric chair in August of 1988. And then here we are in 2014. Like I said, it's amazing that um he wasn't put to death. It is insane though. Now granted, I have to think to myself, like they had more information than what we've been given here. Like this random informant said that somebody confessed, right? yeah um They had to have, you know, established the credibility there, but that's a long way from death row, right? yeah
00:42:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's a long way from death. row And, you know, I'm not sure that they were like best friends or whatever, there seems to be testimony that I don't even know how far her testimony took back her statement. I mean, was he even with them that day, right? Yeah. um And so we don't really know, but I and I was Was the person who confessed alive at this point, do you have any idea? So, I don't know the answer to that right this second. You mean, was Jake Robinson able to be held accountable for this? Like, yeah, I just wonder like what part that factored in, right? Oh, like if we can't get someone for this? No, like, no, no. I'm saying like, did they ask?
00:43:25
Speaker
Robin then, right? They indict him. So after, okay, it gets complicated here. They, they indict him, but they had already indicted him on another murder. The, these two guys without like totally derailing this, they had done this before and they had done it again. Right. Okay. And so that would be sort of my point. Like, I feel like, and like,
00:43:53
Speaker
That type of hindsight, um based on that situation, you could definitely see where there was a mistake made, right? yeah You've got these brothers coming up um again, and you guys had let them go and convicted this other dude and sent him to death row. But wait a second, these guys killed somebody else?
00:44:17
Speaker
Yeah, if you go and pull Jake and Henry Robinson and you go do ah like a local news search, between 2013 and 2017, you can read a lot about what the Robinsons get away with. There are multiple murders that they are charged with, and for one reason or another, the charges end up getting dismissed. It is fascinating.
00:44:47
Speaker
um You would have to Google around. I think the one that I remember the most like reading the most about was a man named um Harold Cotton, I think was one of them. ah Then there there was a second one. It was Claudel Staton. So I think if I were and I'm pulling this from my memory. So if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I think Jake was accused of killing Harold Cotton.
00:45:16
Speaker
And then Henry, who was a year older than Jake, he was accused of killing Claudel Staton. But the bottom line is, there are no strangers to the cops. And there's a ton of information out there that they have probably committed quite a few other similar crimes. Right. And so to me, that um that could that could be very credible, right?
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think it would be credible. I mean, you know, I've read, um, I pulled a Wiki on this because I have one little interesting part. I read that the prosecutors felt like they regretted how things had gone down. Uh, one of the prosecutors was a guy named Marty Stroud III, and he says that he believed that Glen Ford had an unfair trial and key evidence was suppressed by police and prosecutors and that Ford's lawyers were kind of up against it and never got everything turned around. But he said he felt that if he had done his job at the time and all the evidence had been properly collected, they never would have been of arresting Glenn Ford or trying him and they might have stopped quite a few other deaths. Right, because it seems like, um I guess the biggest thing, well, Marvella testified, but then she recanted and there were other issues there. But they did have ah the situation where the defendant got on the stand and
00:46:39
Speaker
basically said, yeah, I, I pawn that stuff, but it was because the brothers gave it to meet upon. Right. And that ends up working against him. So, well, I know. And that's my point. Like, cause that is some evidence except like having made the statement, right? Yeah. It seems to me like it would be worth considering like, Oh, well, he at least told us, right? So if they go to the brothers are like, Hey, did you guys give him the stuffed upon? And they're like, no, right? Well, I mean, you've got one person telling the truth and one person's lying, which is which, right? Yeah. Well, in this instance, um,
00:47:25
Speaker
they sort of never get him out from under the cloud. And I hate to be like on a downer episode, but it is the home for the holidays episodes. He does get a Christmas out. Um, he's released. So Glenn Ford is ultimately released in March of 2014 pretty quickly. Um, unfortunately he goes missing on April 22nd, 2015.
00:47:51
Speaker
And during the missing person search for him, it's discovered that ah the the reason they're looking for him is they were trying to put him into hospice care. He had gone missing. It was April 22nd, 2015. Police were looking for him. They end up finding him, but he does pass away June 29th of 2015. And one of the weirdest things that that happened with this case was even though, so at the state level,
00:48:21
Speaker
There was a judge named Ramona Emanuel. That judge is the one who facilitated his release with the prosecutor's motion. And that's all in 2014. But when they put everything together for him to be eligible under Louisiana law for a settlement of about $300,000, which is not that much money if you think about how long he was in prison. He's basically in prison from 1984 for 30 years to 2014.
00:48:50
Speaker
But a judge denied the petition for the funds stating that it was likely that Glenn had some role in the initial crime because he had been in possession or admitted to being in possession of goods stolen from the crime scene when he was arrested. And that judge, according to the 60 Minutes that aired, and this this is their statement, they felt like Ford knew that a robbery was going to take place and had a duty to stop it and that him pawning items taken from the robbery and trying to find buyers for the jewelry and even for the murder weapon that had been used by the brothers implicated Ford in the murder. So in the middle of this, Glen Ford passes away June 29th, 2015 from complications due to lung cancer and the federal relief that is is state and soft and the state relief that is a state and soft.
00:49:49
Speaker
was denied. I think there's still one pending motion out there for his family to get something for him having spent 30 years in prison, but that felt like kind of a downer.
Compensation and Reflections on Injustice
00:50:01
Speaker
Yeah, I i don't agree um with what I was being said there with regard to him not getting money and I do realize though and And I'm not saying that it's, I don't go along with it, it is it just is what it is. There is a huge burden ah on essentially taxes, taxpayer money, ah when these officials make these big mistakes, right?
00:50:32
Speaker
And um i'm not I feel like ah somebody that's wrongfully imprisoned for any amount of time should be compensated. But I do see where they nitpick at this stuff. And I realize that it it's not a level playing field even now. like Because we're 10 years out from when he was released and you know unfortunately subsequently died.
00:51:02
Speaker
um But ah there's really not a completely solid ground for people who were wrongly imprisoned to be compensated. it It has to do with how you pursue it, right? Yeah. And we may get there someday. We may not. I don't know.
00:51:27
Speaker
but without more information. I find it really hard to believe that even with what was stated, like he had a duty to stop a robbery, which is, I don't feel like it's the case, but, uh, cause he could have gotten hurt himself in the meantime. Right. i And it doesn't really support the fact that he told the cops that he pawned the stuff. Right. yeah But maybe, maybe, that maybe that there's more to it than that. But to me,
00:51:57
Speaker
I feel like that's just a cop out to not give him any money. And, um, I also don't see how, like, if he knew that there was a robbery, why on earth, um, that would somehow justify them and prisoning him for murder on death row for 40 years. No, how long? 30 years yeah for 30 years. It's been 40 years now, but.
00:52:25
Speaker
ah how How does that work, right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean I'm kind of I guess I'm I'm subtly realizing as you and I look at all this that this is how I changed my mind about the death penalty was reading through all of these cases and all these things that had happened and like the the compensation and I haven't fully developed like an idea about the compensation part of it for these cases and I think that this guy being imprisoned is one of the cruelest and most inhumane things I can think of. This is a person who was already struggling before they get imprisoned and convicted of a murder and sentenced to death. And here we are. This is one of the saddest i things I've ever read about, honestly. ah but Now, it's not it doesn't stand to learn there's other people who've gone through similar things, right?
00:53:23
Speaker
But um there's people who go to prison, they're wrongfully convicted, they sit on death row or you know in prison, and then they get out and they like almost immediately die, right? Yeah. um That's terrible. Yeah, we we covered several of those like over the last couple of years while we do these, yeah. Right, and ah and to me, like I have a really hard time understanding what's going on there, right? because it's awful. And I feel like it's a lot to tax your brain with to think about how people end up in these types of situations. Cause a lot of times they didn't do anything, right? Except choice of who they were around. And then like their name gets brought up at the wrong time. Exactly. That's how I i feel like it happens. And it's almost like just
00:54:22
Speaker
luck of the drawl or something I don't even know how to put it but these cases um so I am not against the death penalty but I very rarely think that cases have enough Evidence behind them to justify putting someone to death. Yeah um Just because of cases like this, right? So I would never say like, oh we can't put anybody to death but really You know a lot of governors won't sign death warrants and it really doesn't matter You basically you sit on death row until you die. They don't execute you right? Yeah
00:55:04
Speaker
um And we've seen this year where they won't release people. I don't know if you saw all the stuff that went down in Missouri. That's kind of a different episode, but yeah. I do agree there that if you read enough of these types of cases, right? Yeah. You start to wonder if it's really okay because it seems like just one cog in the wheel can really set things off the course, right? yeah Just one person being too zealous the wrong direction. Just like a couple of attorneys or a judge or an administrator at the courthouse not realizing
00:55:45
Speaker
like how what a bad idea it is to put like somebody that's wanting trial experience on a capital murder case. like It's an innocent mistake that just went awry. But I don't know at that point in time would anything have kept him from being convicted, because it doesn't sound like there was a whole lot to begin with.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yeah, there wasn't much there. Well, I thought I would end this one stealing from Philip Martin's again. He's got a really good article. He he was writing for Arkansas online at the time. um I saw there was a byline under there that said blooddirtangels.com that may have more of his writing. ah But this was the end of his article.
00:56:30
Speaker
um He says that Ford had stage four lung cancer. that the prison doctors knew it and they denied him care. And that is one of the lawsuits that I have found is still out there. It says yeah this is a man with grandchildren. But ah he says in in the time, like this is 2015, a couple of months after Ford was let out of prison, Jake Robinson was arrested for an unrelated murder. Police say he's a suspect in four others. His brother Henry has been in arrested in connection with one of them.
00:57:06
Speaker
I've heard different, that's probably since then, kind of stories about the Robinson brothers, but this is the last line, it absolutely chilled me, because this is the result of when crap like this happens. The Isidore-Roseman case remains open and unsolved.
00:57:25
Speaker
I don't know if that's still accurate today. I would have to dig a little deeper than I was able to.
Unresolved Case and Final Thoughts
00:57:32
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that it's probably open, but it's solved. Yeah. I mean, even if you've got to eenie, meenie, miney, mo, which one of the other three people who was initially accused, right? Yeah. Not to mention, it seemed like they had some pretty good evidence leaning towards like a pattern of behavior, right? Yeah.
00:57:58
Speaker
Yeah, and I did end up finding, I found an an article that had like a picture of Isadora Roseman and like his family and they did not take this well either. This put the Roseman family through absolute hell and in their opinion, he wasn't, you know,
00:58:15
Speaker
ah but Innocent so it's you know, it's hard to figure out like where to come out in a case like this I i personally do not believe that Glen Ford was guilty enough to do any of this to him and I think his family should have gotten compensation and But there are articles you can read from the Roseman family out there in 2015 and 2016, particularly Philip Roseman, who is Isidore Roseman's nephew. They had multiple interviews that they did and articles that they did. I just thought this was a way to feel a little bit better about maybe how your life's going ah around the holidays is to look at something like this.
00:58:57
Speaker
and to see like how narrowly this guy escaped being executed by the state. Although, did he? Really? Because he kind of then being denied care and dying at a year and a half after getting out. See, yeah, but it's not exactly a bifurcated path there, right? I know. Yep. So that's all I got on this one. Did you have anything else on Glenford or Isidore Rosewood? Nope.
00:59:28
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com.
Episode Credits and Acknowledgments
00:59:34
Speaker
If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
01:01:35
Speaker
One day it will be my baby and me
01:02:27
Speaker
The True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
Zencastr Promotion
01:02:58
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network, and I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great.
01:03:15
Speaker
And we we were able to join their creator network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. you know I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcasts. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now and I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah What they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use