Supreme Court Takes up Death Row Case With a Rare Alliance. Oklahoma Inmate Has State’s Support
Associated Press - October 9, 2024 7:13 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is returning to the case of Richard Glossip, who has spent most of the past quarter century on Oklahoma’s death row for a murder he says he did not commit.
In a rare alliance, lawyers for Glossip and the state will argue Wednesday that the justices should overturn Glossip’s conviction and death sentence because he did not get a fair trial.
The victim’s relatives have told the high court that they want to see Glossip executed.
Glossip has always maintained his innocence in the 1997 killing in Oklahoma City of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme.
Another man, Justin Sneed, admitted robbing Van Treese and beating him to death with a baseball bat but testified he only did so after Glossip promised to pay him $10,000. Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony and was the key witness against Glossip.
But evidence that emerged only last year persuaded Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, that Glossip did not get a fair trial.
Among Drummond’s concerns are that prosecutors suppressed evidence about Sneed’s psychiatric condition that might have undermined his testimony. Drummond also has cited a box of evidence in the case that was destroyed that might have helped Glossip’s defense.
The court will be wrestling with two legal issues. The justices will consider whether Glossip’s rights were violated because the evidence wasn’t turned over. They also will weigh whether the Oklahoma court decision upholding the conviction and sentence, reached after the state’s position changed, should be allowed to stand.
