Supreme Court’s Hand-Picked Advocate Argues for Killing Richard Glossip

To listen to lawyer Christopher G. Michel inform it, the case towards Richard Glossip is easy. Glossip, who has been on dying row in Oklahoma for greater than twenty years for the brutal 1997 homicide of his boss, is clearly responsible, Michel says, and there’s no motive for the U.S. Supreme Courtroom to face in the best way of his execution.

Greater than that, Michel argues that the courtroom needs to be prepared to pressure Oklahoma to hold out an execution that even its legal professional normal opposes.

Ordinarily, a state’s legal professional normal can be the one arguing to the excessive courtroom that an execution ought to transfer ahead. However since just about the second he took workplace in January 2023, Oklahoma Lawyer Normal Gentner Drummond has taken unprecedented motion to spare Glossip’s life. In Drummond’s view, the case towards Glossip was so tainted by prosecutorial misconduct that his conviction needs to be overturned. 

Drummond advised the Oklahoma Courtroom of Felony Appeals as a lot final 12 months, when he got here ahead to ask the courtroom to vacate Glossip’s conviction and order a brand new trial. The courtroom rejected the overture, nevertheless, clearing the best way for Glossip’s execution. Glossip appealed to the Supreme Courtroom for intervention, an effort that Drummond joined. As such, there was nobody from Oklahoma arguing in favor of killing Glossip. Enter Michel.

Michel, a accomplice on the white shoe legislation agency Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and co-chair of its nationwide appellate observe, has argued earlier than the courtroom 10 instances. He was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and collaborated on his memoir. Extra importantly, Michel labored as a legislation clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts and to Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was a jurist on the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. When it grew to become clear nobody would defend the Oklahoma courtroom’s ruling, Roberts tapped Michel to tackle the job.

Whereas it’s extraordinary for a state legal professional normal to say no to defend a dying sentence earlier than the Supreme Courtroom, it’s not completely uncommon for the courtroom to nominate an out of doors advocate for a place not in any other case represented in a case. Michel, a seasoned Supreme Courtroom litigator with impeccable conservative credentials, was effectively positioned for the job.

In a quick filed on July 8, Michel took on the duty with gusto — even when his recitation of the information of Glossip’s case, and of the decrease courtroom’s ruling, was deceptive and incomplete. Michel argues that the courtroom ought to pay no thoughts to Drummond’s considerations concerning the legality of executing Glossip. “Nothing within the Structure compels a state courtroom to offer a selected measure of deference to a state official’s confession of error,” Michel wrote. In different phrases, it doesn’t matter how flawed Drummond believes the case is, the courtroom is beneath no obligation to take these considerations severely.

Oral arguments within the case are anticipated to occur within the fall, with a choice unlikely to return earlier than spring 2025. For Glossip, the courtroom’s ruling may in the end decide whether or not he lives or dies. However it may even have far-reaching penalties for felony defendants throughout the nation. Michel depends on arguments that dismiss long-standing protections towards prosecutorial misconduct and the courts’ obligation to deal with it. In doing so, Michel encourages the justices to, at greatest, disregard a long time of authorized precedent meant to chase away wrongful convictions or, at worst, to undo them. 

A Vital Omission

Richard Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to die for the 1997 homicide of Barry Van Treese inside a seedy Finest Price range Inn that Van Treese owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma Metropolis. No bodily proof linked Glossip, the motel’s live-in supervisor, to the crime. The case towards him was primarily based nearly completely on the testimony of a 19-year-old upkeep man named Justin Sneed, who admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to dying however insisted it was Glossip’s concept. In alternate for testifying towards Glossip, Sneed escaped the dying penalty and was sentenced to life with out parole. Glossip has at all times sworn he’s harmless, and, over the past decade, proof that he was wrongly convicted has steadily mounted.

A lot of this proof helps Glossip’s competition that Sneed — a continual drug person vulnerable to unpredictable bouts of violence — murdered Van Treese and solely later arrange Glossip because the mastermind. New witnesses have countered the state’s portrayal of Sneed at trial, the place he was forged as a hapless follower who acted beneath Glossip’s full management. These witnesses have described Sneed as crafty, manipulative, and fairly able to killing a person on his personal.

In August 2022, the state started releasing packing containers of beforehand undisclosed case paperwork that included proof of significant prosecutorial misconduct. The data present that Sneed gave false statements at Glossip’s second trial — and that prosecutors have been conscious of his misstatements but did not appropriate his testimony. Whereas he was in jail, Sneed had been recognized with bipolar dysfunction and prescribed lithium to handle it. Nonetheless, when he testified towards Glossip, Sneed denied ever seeing a psychiatrist and mentioned he had no concept why he’d been given lithium. 

This was a major omission. Sneed’s way of thinking was central to the query of whether or not he was able to committing such a brutal and reckless crime on his personal. Furthermore, Sneed’s psychological well being dysfunction mixed along with his continual drug use may have negatively affected his capability to precisely recall what occurred the night time he killed Van Treese. Understanding about this mix of things may need given the jury motive to be skeptical of his account.

For years, Glossip’s legal professionals had been making an attempt to unlock data associated to Sneed’s psychological well being. A competency analysis previous to Glossip’s first trial famous that Sneed was unstable, however when protection legal professionals sought entry to Sneed’s well being data they have been rebuffed by the state, which referred to as their efforts a “fishing expedition.” 

Among the many lately launched case paperwork have been notes from a gathering between Sneed and prosecutor Connie Smothermon that befell not lengthy earlier than Glossip’s 2004 retrial. Within the notes, Smothermon wrote the identify of a health care provider — “Dr. Trumpet?” — and a reference to the highly effective temper stabilizing drug lithium — “on lithium?”

The importance of these notes was instantly obvious to Glossip’s legal professionals. As they later argued to the Oklahoma courtroom, “Trumpet” was clearly a reference to Lawrence Trombka, the lone psychiatrist working within the Oklahoma Metropolis jail on the time Sneed was incarcerated there, and thus the one particular person approved to diagnose Sneed’s dysfunction and to prescribe lithium. The notes made clear that Sneed had, at greatest, misrepresented the scenario beneath oath — and that Smothermon did nothing to appropriate his misstatements. 

At Glossip’s second trial, Sneed testified that whereas in jail he had a chilly and requested for Sudafed, however that “in some way they ended up giving me lithium for some motive. I don’t know why,” he mentioned. “I by no means seen no psychiatrist or something.”

“So that you don’t know why they gave you that?” Smothermon requested.

“No,” Sneed replied.

This alternate was on the coronary heart of Drummond’s 2023 movement to vacate Glossip’s conviction — and of the query at the moment earlier than the Supreme Courtroom. “There isn’t 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 seemingly discovered … the true motive for Sneed’s lithium prescription,” Drummond wrote in his movement to the Oklahoma Courtroom of Felony Appeals. “With this data plus Sneed’s historical past of drug dependancy, the state believes {that a} certified protection legal professional seemingly may have attacked Sneed’s capability to correctly recall key information on the second trial.”

“The state has reached the tough conclusion that the conviction of Glossip was obtained with the advantage of materials misstatements to the jury by its key witness,” he wrote.

In his temporary to the courtroom, Michel dismisses Smothermon’s notes as “cryptic” and “barely decipherable” and calls into query whether or not they imply what everybody else thinks that they imply. Glossip and Drummond’s argument depends on a “important overreading” of the notes, Michel argues. Even when the notes do present that Sneed was prescribed lithium by a psychiatrist, he says, this data wouldn’t have made a distinction to the jury. Sneed talked about lithium in his testimony and everybody is aware of that lithium is prescribed for temper issues, Michel argued, so understanding the total and proper story wouldn’t have modified the end result of Glossip’s trial.

Widespread Violations

At play within the present dispute earlier than the Supreme Courtroom are three key authorized ideas designed to guard felony defendants and to maintain state actors sincere. The primary is a requirement that prosecutors flip over to the protection any supplies which might be exculpatory to the defendant or that would impeach a witness. The second obligates prosecutors to make sure that witnesses testify in truth. The third requires courts to contemplate the cumulative impression on a case when prosecutors violate such guidelines.

In Glossip’s case, the state’s failure to show over the notes concerning Sneed’s analysis and therapy violated the primary precept, which comes from a case referred to as Brady v. Maryland. Smothermon’s failure to appropriate Sneed’s false testimony about his use of lithium violated the second precept, which stems from Napue v. Illinois. Lastly, Kyles v. Whitley enshrines the third precept.

As Michel presents it, Drummond and Glossip’s legal professionals wish to overturn Glossip’s conviction primarily based solely on the “Dr. Trumpet” be aware and Sneed’s deceptive trial testimony — neither of which he sees as a violation of Brady nor Napue.

However this mischaracterizes what Drummond and Glossip’s legal professionals are literally arguing. Of their filings to the courtroom, they argue that the be aware and Sneed’s false testimony are a part of a constellation of violations. “The state’s suppression of Sneed’s psychiatric proof didn’t happen in isolation,” Glossip’s legal professionals wrote. “It was a part of an expansive effort to unfairly shore up the testimony of the State’s star witness and masks vulnerabilities within the State’s principle of the case.”

The eight packing containers lately turned over to Glossip’s authorized group contained a slew of further supplies that had been beforehand hidden from the protection. 

Among the many data was a letter written by Sneed to his public defender in 2003 — a 12 months earlier than Glossip’s retrial — wherein he urged he wished to take again his testimony towards Glossip. “Do I’ve the selection of re-canting my testimony at any time throughout my life, or something like that,” Sneed wrote. 4 years later, Sneed wrote to his lawyer once more, saying there have been a number of issues “consuming at me” that “I would like to scrub up.”

Different paperwork revealed that Smothermon collaborated with Sneed’s legal professional throughout the retrial to change Sneed’s testimony to make it match the forensic proof. On the first trial, Sneed had denied attacking Van Treese with a knife although there had been a knife discovered on the scene — and regardless of the health worker’s findings that there have been puncture wounds on Van Treese’s chest. However on the second trial, Sneed testified that he had, in reality, stabbed Van Treese. 

Glossip’s legal professionals have raised these points in varied appeals in Oklahoma, all of which have been rejected by the state Courtroom of Felony Appeals. However it has executed so with out contemplating the cumulative impression of the prosecutorial misconduct. The impact has been to decrease these violations to particular person errors that the Oklahoma courtroom — and now Michel — claims wouldn’t have made a distinction to Glossip’s destiny. This was the very subject the Kyles case was making an attempt to deal with by requiring a holistic overview. 

“Absent this Courtroom’s correction,” Glossip’s legal professionals wrote, “the OCCA’s disregard of Kyles additionally heralds a robust incentive for prosecutors to trickle exculpatory proof simply slowly sufficient {that a} defendant can by no means current a full-throated Brady declare.” 

Dire Penalties

Apart from the cursory dismissal by the Oklahoma Courtroom of Felony Appeals, not one of the proof withheld from Glossip’s group has ever been absolutely vetted as a part of an evidentiary listening to. Smothermon has by no means needed to testify concerning the substance of her notes or her interactions with Sneed throughout Glossip’s trial.

Glossip’s group has requested for a listening to, however the Courtroom of Felony Appeals has rejected that request too. But even Michel’s temporary means that an evidentiary listening to is perhaps so as — and that would current a approach ahead that might enable the Supreme Courtroom to keep away from having to resolve Glossip’s destiny right now.

“At a minimal,” Michel wrote, “the Courtroom ought to remand for additional truth growth reasonably than vacating the conviction.” 

If the Supreme Courtroom chooses to go ahead with the case and to rule in a approach that degrades authorized precedent, teams which have filed friend-of-the-court briefs within the case warn of dire, nationwide penalties. Almost a dozen authorized students say that “embracing the OCCA’s resolution,” for instance, “would give prosecutors and different attorneys free rein to make selections, on which the integrity of judicial proceedings will flip, that attorneys can’t be anticipated to make objectively and reliably. The end result shall be to extend the issue of false testimony in judicial proceedings — and, consequently, to erode public confidence within the courts’ dedication to judicial integrity.”