The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the upcoming execution of an Oklahoma prisoner after the state’s Republican attorney general filed an extraordinary plea that said prosecutorial misconduct in the case would make putting Richard Glossip to death at this time “unthinkable.”
There were no noted dissents to the court’s order, which delays the execution while the high court considers whether to grant Glossip’s challenge of his conviction. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch recused himself, most likely because he had dealt with the case as a lower court judge.
The court’s decision was highly anticipated in Oklahoma. Glossip’s case had drawn national and international attention, in part because of the remarkable intervention of a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Attorney General Gentner F. Drummond.
Drummond, who took office in January, said a report commissioned by his office, and another commissioned by a law firm directed by the lawmakers, cast grave doubts on whether Glossip, on death row for a 1997 murder, has ever received a fair trial. Among other things, the reports said prosecutors had deprived Glossip’s lawyers of key information about a crucial witness and had failed to correct false testimony in the case.
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“Glossip’s capital sentence cannot be sustained,” Drummond wrote to the Supreme Court in an amicus brief supporting Glossip’s petition asking for a stay of his scheduled May 18 execution.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, an execution will move forward under circumstances where the Attorney General has already confessed error — a result that would be unthinkable.”
Drummond is the state’s top law enforcement officer, but he lacked authority to stop Glossip’s execution on his own. So did Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), although he postponed it twice.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals last month unanimously refused to accept Drummond’s “confession of error” and order a new trial for Glossip. And the state’s pardon and parole board split 2-2 on Drummond’s request for intervention; a positive vote would have been necessary to recommend that Stitt commute his sentence to life without parole. One member of the board recused himself because his wife had been a prosecutor in one of Glossip’s trials.
Glossip’s name is a familiar one at the Supreme Court — although his lawyers said in a petition filed Thursday that Glossip came “this time supported by the chief law enforcement officer (of the) very State that will soon kill him unless this Court intervenes.”
The justices in 2015 ruled 5-4 against him in a challenge to the state’s method of execution. He has had an execution date scheduled nine times. On three of those occasions, he ordered his last meal. He was hours from being executed in 2015 when prison officials discovered they had received the wrong lethal drug, a mistake that led in part to a seven-year moratorium on executions in the state.
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One of Glossip’s attorneys said the long-running nature of the prisoner’s battle against his execution has made it difficult for some to accept the new aspects of his challenge. It relies on both the report commissioned by Drummond and carried out by a former prosecutor and a 343-page investigation performed by the law firm Reed Smith at the behest of Oklahoma legislators.
“A challenge for this case is that Glossip has become something of a symbol of endless, meritless litigation for those who support the death penalty, and of course I disagree with that,” said lawyer John Mills. He said he hoped the current Supreme Court petition “will be able to break through that symbolism.”
Glossip, now 60, was convicted in the murder of Barry Van Treese in a room of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, which Van Treese owned and Glossip managed. It is undisputed that Glossip did not swing the bat that bludgeoned Van Treese. That was a drug-addled handyman named Justin Sneed.
But after he was arrested, Sneed said he carried out the assault at the behest of Glossip, who he said promised to pay him $10,000 for the murder. Sneed was sentenced to life in prison as part of a deal. Glossip proclaimed his innocence, was convicted and received the death penalty.
Glossip’s lawyers say Sneed brought up their client only after repeated prompting by police, and that Sneed has attempted to recant. Glossip’s first conviction was thrown out by the Oklahoma court because of his poor legal representation. But he was again convicted and sentenced to death.
But the recent reports have found fault with that trial, too. Most serious, Drummond wrote, was that prosecutors knew Sneed lied on the stand about never having seen a psychiatrist. But he had, and he had been prescribed the mood-stabilizing drug lithium to treat a serious psychiatric condition.
Besides depriving Glossip’s lawyers of information about the most crucial witness, Drummond said prosecutors’ failure to correct false testimony violates Supreme Court precedent in Napue v. People of the State of Illinois, which held that a conviction obtained through evidence known to be false by the state violates the Constitution.
“There is little scope for second guessing a state’s highest law enforcement officer when he or she has lost confidence in a conviction the state has procured based on a Napue violation,” Drummond wrote. “That is particularly true in a capital case.”
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed. “The facts are not sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for the alleged error, no reasonable fact finder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense or would have rendered the penalty of death,” the court said.
It held Sneed’s testimony “was not clearly false. Sneed was more than likely in denial of his mental health disorders.”
At the Supreme Court, the justices had before them Glossip’s request for a stay of execution and the state’s acquiescence, and no one arguing for the execution to proceed.
But Drummond stopped short of declaring Glossip innocent, saying only that he is deserving of a new trial.
There were no noted dissents to the court’s order, which delays the execution while the high court considers whether to grant Glossip’s challenge of his conviction. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch recused himself, most likely because he had dealt with the case as a lower court judge.
The court’s decision was highly anticipated in Oklahoma. Glossip’s case had drawn national and international attention, in part because of the remarkable intervention of a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Attorney General Gentner F. Drummond.
Drummond, who took office in January, said a report commissioned by his office, and another commissioned by a law firm directed by the lawmakers, cast grave doubts on whether Glossip, on death row for a 1997 murder, has ever received a fair trial. Among other things, the reports said prosecutors had deprived Glossip’s lawyers of key information about a crucial witness and had failed to correct false testimony in the case.
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“Glossip’s capital sentence cannot be sustained,” Drummond wrote to the Supreme Court in an amicus brief supporting Glossip’s petition asking for a stay of his scheduled May 18 execution.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, an execution will move forward under circumstances where the Attorney General has already confessed error — a result that would be unthinkable.”
Drummond is the state’s top law enforcement officer, but he lacked authority to stop Glossip’s execution on his own. So did Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), although he postponed it twice.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals last month unanimously refused to accept Drummond’s “confession of error” and order a new trial for Glossip. And the state’s pardon and parole board split 2-2 on Drummond’s request for intervention; a positive vote would have been necessary to recommend that Stitt commute his sentence to life without parole. One member of the board recused himself because his wife had been a prosecutor in one of Glossip’s trials.
Glossip’s name is a familiar one at the Supreme Court — although his lawyers said in a petition filed Thursday that Glossip came “this time supported by the chief law enforcement officer (of the) very State that will soon kill him unless this Court intervenes.”
The justices in 2015 ruled 5-4 against him in a challenge to the state’s method of execution. He has had an execution date scheduled nine times. On three of those occasions, he ordered his last meal. He was hours from being executed in 2015 when prison officials discovered they had received the wrong lethal drug, a mistake that led in part to a seven-year moratorium on executions in the state.
Supreme Court upholds lethal injection method in Oklahoma
One of Glossip’s attorneys said the long-running nature of the prisoner’s battle against his execution has made it difficult for some to accept the new aspects of his challenge. It relies on both the report commissioned by Drummond and carried out by a former prosecutor and a 343-page investigation performed by the law firm Reed Smith at the behest of Oklahoma legislators.
“A challenge for this case is that Glossip has become something of a symbol of endless, meritless litigation for those who support the death penalty, and of course I disagree with that,” said lawyer John Mills. He said he hoped the current Supreme Court petition “will be able to break through that symbolism.”
Glossip, now 60, was convicted in the murder of Barry Van Treese in a room of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, which Van Treese owned and Glossip managed. It is undisputed that Glossip did not swing the bat that bludgeoned Van Treese. That was a drug-addled handyman named Justin Sneed.
But after he was arrested, Sneed said he carried out the assault at the behest of Glossip, who he said promised to pay him $10,000 for the murder. Sneed was sentenced to life in prison as part of a deal. Glossip proclaimed his innocence, was convicted and received the death penalty.
Glossip’s lawyers say Sneed brought up their client only after repeated prompting by police, and that Sneed has attempted to recant. Glossip’s first conviction was thrown out by the Oklahoma court because of his poor legal representation. But he was again convicted and sentenced to death.
But the recent reports have found fault with that trial, too. Most serious, Drummond wrote, was that prosecutors knew Sneed lied on the stand about never having seen a psychiatrist. But he had, and he had been prescribed the mood-stabilizing drug lithium to treat a serious psychiatric condition.
Besides depriving Glossip’s lawyers of information about the most crucial witness, Drummond said prosecutors’ failure to correct false testimony violates Supreme Court precedent in Napue v. People of the State of Illinois, which held that a conviction obtained through evidence known to be false by the state violates the Constitution.
“There is little scope for second guessing a state’s highest law enforcement officer when he or she has lost confidence in a conviction the state has procured based on a Napue violation,” Drummond wrote. “That is particularly true in a capital case.”
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed. “The facts are not sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for the alleged error, no reasonable fact finder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense or would have rendered the penalty of death,” the court said.
It held Sneed’s testimony “was not clearly false. Sneed was more than likely in denial of his mental health disorders.”
At the Supreme Court, the justices had before them Glossip’s request for a stay of execution and the state’s acquiescence, and no one arguing for the execution to proceed.
But Drummond stopped short of declaring Glossip innocent, saying only that he is deserving of a new trial.
