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An interview with A.M. Marty Stroud III
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<p>An Interview with A.M. “Marty” Stroud III</p>
<p>By ALEX MIKULICH, PH.D.</p>
<p>Glenn Ford was released from Angola’s death row in Louisiana in 2014 after he spent 30 years there for a murder he did not commit. In a rare and unusual twist for any death penalty case, the former district attorney who prosecuted and gained Ford’s conviction in Caddo Parish in 1984 apologized to Ford in 2015, just months before Ford succumbed to cancer on June 29. Sidney Garmon, director of the Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and I had the privilege of interviewing A.M. “Marty” Stroud III on May 29, 2015, in his Shreveport law office. The following is an abbreviated and edited version of our conversation. A video series of the interview is available at the Jesuit Social Research Institute’s YouTube page.</p>
<p><strong>How do you view the death penalty after Glenn Ford’s release?</strong></p>
<p><strong>AMS:</strong> People say it is “the system.” Who is the system? It’s just doing your job. I was a history major in college and I have studied the Nuremburg trials. One of the big defenses [by Nazi officials] was that they were “just doing their job—just following orders.” The judges in the Nuremburg tribunal universally rejected that defense. When you are dealing with issues of life and death, saying that you are “just doing your job” is not going to cut it. That is the problem with the death penalty system now. Glenn Ford spent 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, and no one takes responsibility. The [Louisiana] compensation statue is written in such a way that it is obscene. Nobody is held accountable for a [man] who spent 30 years on death row. They gave him a $20 cash card when he left prison. That is where the rub is. No one seems to care.</p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Mikulich.compressed.pdf">MORE>></a></p>
<p>By ALEX MIKULICH, PH.D.</p>
<p>Glenn Ford was released from Angola’s death row in Louisiana in 2014 after he spent 30 years there for a murder he did not commit. In a rare and unusual twist for any death penalty case, the former district attorney who prosecuted and gained Ford’s conviction in Caddo Parish in 1984 apologized to Ford in 2015, just months before Ford succumbed to cancer on June 29. Sidney Garmon, director of the Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and I had the privilege of interviewing A.M. “Marty” Stroud III on May 29, 2015, in his Shreveport law office. The following is an abbreviated and edited version of our conversation. A video series of the interview is available at the Jesuit Social Research Institute’s YouTube page.</p>
<p><strong>How do you view the death penalty after Glenn Ford’s release?</strong></p>
<p><strong>AMS:</strong> People say it is “the system.” Who is the system? It’s just doing your job. I was a history major in college and I have studied the Nuremburg trials. One of the big defenses [by Nazi officials] was that they were “just doing their job—just following orders.” The judges in the Nuremburg tribunal universally rejected that defense. When you are dealing with issues of life and death, saying that you are “just doing your job” is not going to cut it. That is the problem with the death penalty system now. Glenn Ford spent 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, and no one takes responsibility. The [Louisiana] compensation statue is written in such a way that it is obscene. Nobody is held accountable for a [man] who spent 30 years on death row. They gave him a $20 cash card when he left prison. That is where the rub is. No one seems to care.</p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Mikulich.compressed.pdf">MORE>></a></p>