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For the final 4 months, Richard Glossip and his spouse, Lea, have had an everyday Monday ritual. Glossip calls Lea from his loss of life row cell very first thing within the morning. Lea makes espresso in her Oklahoma Metropolis condo whereas they speak. After which she opens the pc. “We’d open the docket and examine the orders checklist from the Supreme Courtroom,” she stated. “It’s at all times an enormous second that’s wrapped up with so many feelings and this sort of terrifying anticipation.”
In Might, the courtroom blocked Glossip’s looming execution whereas it determined whether or not to take up his most up-to-date enchantment. The couple knew {that a} choice wouldn’t come earlier than the autumn. However fall got here and went as they dutifully made their weekly docket checks. Glossip’s case simply wasn’t there. The courtroom saved pushing aside its choice. Over time, they grew snug not realizing, relieved to have the ability to benefit from the holidays in relative peace after a protracted and irritating yr.
Then on January 22, there it was. “Abruptly, I stated, ‘It’s there. I see Glossip.’” The courtroom had determined to evaluate the case. “I instructed him, ‘It’s granted! It’s granted!’”
Lea felt a rush of emotion. “It was actually overwhelming.” She instructed Glossip to name his lawyer, Don Knight. “We’re going to Washington,” Knight responded.
The reality is that the state of affairs is each a blessing and a curse. Glossip has discovered the exhausting manner to not put his religion within the Supreme Courtroom. Almost 10 years in the past, Glossip was the named plaintiff in a problem to Oklahoma’s controversial new deadly injection protocol. After oral arguments within the spring of 2015, the justices shortly dismissed issues that the tactic may quantity to torture. The ruling greased the wheels for Glossip’s execution, which might have gone ahead later that yr if not for a last-minute revelation that the state had procured the mistaken mixture of medicine, forcing it to name issues off. The state later revealed that it had already used the identical inaccurate protocol to execute a distinct man.
The fallout over Glossip’s near-execution was swift. The state issued a moratorium on executions and convened a bipartisan fee to review Oklahoma’s loss of life penalty from prime to backside. In 2017, the fee issued a sweeping indictment of the system. Amongst its conclusions: The state of Oklahoma had condemned harmless folks to loss of life. The fee additionally provided a bunch of suggestions for reform; to this point, just about none of them have been carried out. In 2021, Oklahoma restarted executions utilizing the identical three-drug protocol as earlier than.
In the meantime, Glossip’s case started to attract extra nationwide consideration — significantly after Investigation Discovery aired documentarian Joe Berlinger’s four-part sequence on the case. “Killing Richard Glossip,” which was impressed by The Intercept’s reporting, revealed proof that undercut the state’s case in opposition to Glossip, whereas prompting new witnesses to come back ahead with data that bolstered his innocence declare. It additionally galvanized an unlikely contingent of supporters: Highly effective state Republican lawmakers turned satisfied that Glossip was harmless. Decided to save lots of him from execution, they rallied assist amongst their friends and satisfied the regulation agency Reed Smith to undertake a sweeping reinvestigation of the case.
The ensuing 343-page report, launched in 2022, painted the clearest image to this point of Glossip’s wrongful conviction. Amongst its revelations had been gorgeous cases of prosecutorial misconduct. Nonetheless, no sooner had the explosive findings been made public than the state set a fourth execution date for Glossip.
That Glossip is alive in the present day is thanks in no small half to the Oklahoma’s lawyer common, Gentner Drummond, who took workplace in early 2023. Within the first weeks of his time period Drummond introduced a separate impartial inquiry into Glossip’s case by a former elected district lawyer and GOP state lawmaker Rex Duncan. Duncan’s report highlighted extra cases of prosecutorial misconduct, prompting Drummond to conclude that the state couldn’t stand by Glossip’s conviction — not to mention his execution. In April 2023, Drummond took the unprecedented step of asking the Oklahoma Courtroom of Prison Appeals to vacate Glossip’s conviction. However the courtroom refused, setting the stage for Glossip’s enchantment to the Supreme Courtroom. In an announcement, Drummond applauded the justices’ choice to take Glossip’s case. “As Oklahoma’s chief regulation officer, I’ll proceed preventing to make sure justice is completed on this case and each different.”
Oklahoma Legal professional Common Gentner Drummond arrives to testify in the course of the Home Homeland Safety Committee on Jan. 10, 2024.
Glossip was twice tried and sentenced to loss of life for the January 1997 homicide of Barry Van Treese inside a seedy Greatest Finances Inn that Van Treese owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma Metropolis. No bodily proof linked Glossip, the motel’s 34-year-old supervisor, to the crime. As an alternative, the case in opposition to him was constructed virtually fully on the testimony of 19-year-old Justin Sneed, who labored on the motel as a handyman.
Sneed admitted to murdering Van Treese however claimed that he was coerced by Glossip. On Sneed’s phrase alone, prosecutors theorized that Glossip needed Van Treese useless so he may take over operations of the low-rent motel. At trial, they painted Sneed as powerless to withstand Glossip’s instructions. In alternate for testifying in opposition to Glossip, Sneed prevented the loss of life penalty and was sentenced to life with out parole.
Glossip has maintained his innocence, and over time, proof of his wrongful conviction has mounted. New proof means that Sneed, a continual drug consumer with a violent streak, initially deliberate to rob Van Treese, then killed him when the plan went sideways. Sneed implicated Glossip on this scheme throughout a coercive police interrogation. Witnesses who had been ignored by police and prosecutors have since come ahead to say that Sneed was crafty and manipulative and fairly able to killing a person on his personal.
The a number of inquiries into Glossip’s case have uncovered startling police and prosecutorial misconduct. The state destroyed a field of essential proof earlier than Glossip was retried in 2004, and prosecutors suppressed proof that Sneed sought to recant his incriminating testimony. Notes discovered within the state’s case file additionally reveal that prosecutors knew that parts of Sneed’s testimony had been false.
Sneed had been identified with bipolar dysfunction and prescribed lithium to handle it by a psychiatrist who evaluated him on the Oklahoma Metropolis Jail. At trial, Sneed denied that the analysis ever happened and stated he had no thought why he was given lithium. “I by no means seen no psychiatrist or something,” Sneed testified. The prosecutors, who knew about Sneed’s prognosis, did not right his testimony. This failure is partially what animated Drummond’s conclusion that Glossip’s conviction couldn’t stand.
“There is no such thing as a dispute that Sneed was the state’s key witness on the second trial. If Sneed had precisely disclosed that he had seen a psychiatrist, then the protection would have probably discovered … the true cause for Sneed’s lithium prescription,” Drummond wrote in his movement asking the Oklahoma Courtroom of Prison Appeals to vacate Glossip’s conviction. “With this data plus Sneed’s historical past of drug habit, the state believes {that a} certified protection lawyer probably may have attacked Sneed’s capability to correctly recall key details on the second trial.”
“The state has reached the tough conclusion that the conviction of Glossip was obtained with the good thing about materials misstatements to the jury by its key witness,” Drummond wrote.
The courtroom dismissed Drummond’s conclusions, rejecting the concept Sneed’s assertion was false and suggesting that he was “greater than probably in denial of his psychological well being problems.” The protection didn’t cross-examine Sneed about his prognosis, the courtroom speculated, as a result of doing so would have demonstrated that he was “mentally weak to Glossip’s manipulation and management.” The ruling cleared the best way for the state to set a brand new execution date for Glossip. Knight, his lawyer, vowed to enchantment to the Supreme Courtroom, calling it “unconscionable” for the OCCA to “try and pressure the state to maneuver ahead with this execution” given the lawyer common himself agreed that the state’s star witness had been discredited. The Supreme Courtroom stayed Glossip’s execution simply days earlier than he was set to die.
Lea and Richard Glossip on the Oklahoma State Penitentiary on Might 5, 2023.
Within the uncommon variety of loss of life penalty instances that attain the Supreme Courtroom, state attorneys common are sometimes within the place of defending the conviction. Glossip’s return to Washington is extraordinary in that Drummond has made clear to the justices that he helps Glossip’s bid to overturn the case.
“Regrettably, the Oklahoma Courtroom of Prison Appeals refused to simply accept the state’s confession of error, as an alternative reaching the extraordinary conclusion that Glossip’s execution should go ahead,” Drummond wrote. “That call can’t be the ultimate phrase on this case.”
Drummond argued that the OCCA was mistaken on each the details and the regulation. Since Sneed was the “sole inculpatory witness” in opposition to Glossip, the state had a constitutional obligation to show over details about Sneed’s psychological well being prognosis to the protection and an identical obligation to right his deceptive testimony.
“The OCCA’s choice can’t be reconciled with this courtroom’s precedents, the report on this case, or bedrock rules,” Drummond wrote.
With out Drummond to defend Glossip’s conviction, the state’s highly effective prosecutors group, the Oklahoma District Attorneys Affiliation, has stepped into the void. In a friend-of-the-court temporary, they argue that the prosecutors within the case did nothing mistaken, Sneed’s testimony was immaterial to Glossip’s conviction, there have been no constitutional violations, and the OCCA was proper to dismiss the case as little greater than a frivolous try and delay Glossip’s execution. They accuse Drummond of being duped by an activist agenda. “Glossip and his abolitionist supporters are trying to create the specter of an harmless particular person being executed, in order that they will additional their marketing campaign in opposition to the loss of life penalty.”
“These folks is not going to admit that they’re mistaken.”
Former Oklahoma County District Legal professional David Prater, whose workplace oversaw Glossip’s prosecution, has staunchly defended the conviction, dismissing all proof on the contrary as nothing greater than a “bullshit PR marketing campaign.”
Knight dismisses the DA’s temporary as an unserious argument pushed by political grievance. “That is us in opposition to the District Legal professional’s Council,” Knight stated. “These folks is not going to admit that they’re mistaken. And so they can’t stand the truth that Drummond did admit that they had been mistaken.”
Oral arguments earlier than the Supreme Courtroom will probably happen within the fall. The courtroom has by no means been solicitous of capital instances and has grow to be even much less so in recent times as its ideology has lurched to the suitable. Nonetheless, as he waits for his case to be offered a second time, Glossip feels maybe extra hopeful than ever. “Wealthy’s complete expertise has been the last word lack of religion within the system,” Lea Glossip stated. To see so many individuals prepared to step up and combat for him has finished a lot to revive his perception that he might lastly stroll out of jail someday. After the previous yr of unrelenting execution dates, “we’re past grateful.”
For Knight, who has spent the higher a part of a decade preventing to maintain his consumer alive, the courtroom’s choice to take the case was a hard-won victory in a saga marked by exhilarating highs and devastating lows. However it’s not over but. “I’ll really feel vindicated the day Wealthy walks out of jail. I’ll really feel vindicated then. Till then I can’t say as a result of who is aware of what they’ll do.”
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