Supreme Court Will Hear Richard Glossip’s Innocence Claim

The Supreme Court will hear an enchantment from Richard Glossip, a person on dying row in Oklahoma who has maintained his innocence all through a number of makes an attempt by the state to execute him.

Glossip, whose case will probably be heard within the fall, has survived 9 execution dates. Each time, his scheduled dying has been delayed because of both questions in regards to the legality of the state’s methodology of killing or due to the overwhelming proof that he’s not responsible of the crime for which he was sentenced to dying.

In the years since Glossip’s first execution date in 2014, there have been a sequence of botched executions in Oklahoma, prompting researchers to look at the autopsies of the individuals who have been killed. Those autopsies present indicators that the the state’s deadly injection protocol could torture folks because it kills them. At the identical time, the stack of proof pointing to Glossip’s innocence has continued to develop. At this level, Glossip’s innocence claims are so credible that Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) — the state’s high prosecutor, who would sometimes defend a dying sentence in court docket — is now attempting to save lots of Glossip’s life.

Glossip, 60, was twice convicted and sentenced to dying for the 1997 homicide of Barry Van Treese, the proprietor of a Best Budget Inn the place Glossip labored as a supervisor. Justin Sneed, the motel’s 19-year-old handyman, admitted to killing Van Treese, however he claimed that it was Glossip’s thought. There was no bodily proof of Glossip’s involvement — solely testimony from Sneed, who prevented the dying penalty by implicating Glossip at trial.

The Oklahoma Court of Appeals vacated Glossip’s first conviction in 2001, discovering he acquired ineffective help of counsel. The court docket’s opinion famous that proof corroborating Sneed’s testimony “was extremely weak.” But Glossip was tried and sentenced to dying once more in 2004.

Since then, a number of witnesses continued to come back ahead with proof that Sneed had acted alone. Ahead of Glossip’s first scheduled execution in 2014, Sneed’s daughter advised the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that her father had been contemplating recanting his testimony and that she strongly believed Glossip was harmless. Still, the board unanimously denied Glossip’s request for clemency.

Glossip survived his first two execution dates due to points associated to the state’s deadly injection protocol. His third execution date was stayed after his legal professionals launched affidavits from folks with related information to the case. One got here from a person named Michael Scott, who stated that Sneed advised him whereas they have been in jail collectively that he had blamed Glossip for the homicide to save lots of his personal life. Shortly after the third execution was postponed, one other man who was incarcerated with Sneed, Joseph Tapley, got here ahead and stated that Sneed spoke intimately about his crime however by no means indicated anybody else was concerned, The Intercept reported in 2015.

Faced with mounting proof that they’d been working to execute an harmless man, prosecutors refused to concede any wrongdoing. Then-Oklahoma City District Attorney David Prater dismissed the brand new info as a “bullshit PR campaign” and labored to intimidate witnesses.

Oklahoma paused executions in 2015 after the high-profile botched killings of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner, each of whom confirmed seen indicators of ache after being injected with deadly medication. Glossip, who by then had survived 5 execution dates, was briefly spared from dying.

In 2017, Republican state Rep. Kevin McDugle watched a four-part docuseries about Glossip’s case. He wasn’t instantly satisfied of Glossip’s innocence however he needed to know extra. He received in contact with Glossip’s post-conviction lawyer and devoured all the fabric he might discover. He discovered about how the district legal professional’s workplace ordered the destruction of proof earlier than Glossip’s second trial, complicating Glossip’s efforts to disprove the state’s claims.

McDugle went to go to Glossip on dying row and located him to be “genuine, kind.” He advised McDugle, “There’s two things they can’t take away from you in prison and one is your gift of giving and one is your gift of joy,” New York journal reported.

McDugle organized a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers who requested the regulation agency Reed Smith to conduct a professional bono impartial evaluation of Glossip’s case. For months, a crew of greater than 30 legal professionals spent greater than 3,700 hours investigating the case.

Their preliminary findings launched in 2022 and the 5 subsequent supplemental experiences have been damning for the state. The regulation agency revealed a shoddy police investigation and intentional destruction of proof by the state. It discovered that Sneed solely implicated Glossip within the killing after detectives talked about Glossip’s identify six instances throughout an interrogation.

“Considering the facts we uncovered, and that there exists no physical forensic evidence or credible corroborating testimony linking Glossip to the crime, our conclusion is that no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first-degree murder,” Reed Smith associate Stan Perry stated in an announcement in June of 2022.

The agency additionally reviewed letters Sneed wrote to his lawyer suggesting he regretted testifying towards Glossip. “Do I have the choice of recanting my testimony at any time during my life, or anything like that?” he requested his lawyer in 2003, forward of Glossip’s second trial.

“There are a lot of things that are eating at me,” Sneed wrote in 2007 after Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Glossip’s second conviction. “Somethings [sic] I need to clean up.”

After Reed Smith disclosed its findings, Glossip requested the Court of Criminal Appeals to grant him a listening to to current new proof of his innocence. Sixty-one lawmakers, largely Republican, urged then-Attorney General John O’Connor to help his request, however O’Connor declined and the court docket rejected Glossip’s evidentiary listening to request.

Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) delayed Glossip’s sixth and seventh execution dates to permit the court docket time to rule on pending litigation.

In January of final 12 months, Drummond, the newly inaugurated legal professional basic, appointed an impartial counsel to evaluation Glossip’s conviction and dying sentence. The evaluation, carried out by a former District Attorney named Rex Duncan, prompted Drummond to disavow Glossip’s conviction.

“After thorough and serious deliberation, I have concluded that I cannot stand behind the murder conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip,” Drummond stated in an April 6 assertion. “This is not to say I believe he is innocent. However, it is critical that Oklahomans have absolute faith that the death penalty is administered fairly and with certainty. Considering everything I know about this case, I do not believe that justice is served by executing a man based on the testimony of a compromised witness.”

In a shocking flip of occasions, Drummond filed a movement with the Court of Criminal Appeals asking it to overturn Glossip’s conviction and ship the case again to trial court docket.

Still, the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Glossip’s conviction. Days later, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 2-2 to deny his clemency request. The board’s fifth member recused himself as a result of his spouse helped ship Glossip to dying row and below the board’s guidelines, a majority is required to advocate clemency. Glossip’s lawyer argued in a court docket movement that the board ought to have discovered an alternate fifth member to keep away from a tie vote.

On July 5, Drummond urged the Supreme Court to vacate Glossip’s conviction and grant him a brand new trial.

The Court of Criminal Appeals’ refusal to just accept the state’s admission of error “cannot be the final word in this case,” Drummond wrote. “After all, the injustice of allowing a capital sentence to be carried out where the conviction was occasioned by the government’s own admitted failings would be nigh unfathomable.”