There are many ways to measure 30 years, but for Glenn Ford, the yardstick is simple.

"My sons — when I left — was babies. Now they grown men with babies," he said, speaking as a free man for the first time in nearly three decades.

Ford, Louisiana's longest-serving death row prisoner, walked free Tuesday after spending nearly 30 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit. "My mind's going all kinds of directions, but it feels good,"

Ford, 64, told reporters outside the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, according to CNN affiliate WAFB. One reporter asked whether he harbors any resentment. "Yeah, because I was locked up almost 30 years for something I didn't do," said Ford, who wore a denim shirt, a hat and dark-rimmed glasses. "Thirty years of my life, if not all of it," he said, WAFB reported. "I can't go back."

According to the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, a judge ordered that Ford be freed Monday after prosecutors petitioned the court to release him. New information corroborated what Ford had said all along: that he was not present at nor involved in the November 5, 1983, slaying of Isadore Rozeman, the project said.