Supreme Court orders new trial for Oklahoma death row inmate in closely watched case
In a rare move for a prosecutor, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond concluded trial attorneys hid evidence that may have led to an acquittal.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave an Oklahoma death row inmate a new chance to prove his innocence, siding with both his lawyers and the state who said Richard Glossip did not get a fair trial in his 1997 murder-for-hire case.
In a rare move for a prosecutor, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond concluded trial attorneys hid evidence that might have led to an acquittal. But the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals last year said Drummond’s request to set aside Glossip’s conviction was not sufficient reason to halt his execution, prompting an appeal to the Supreme Court.
A majority of the court sided with Glossip, saying the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony.
Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said there is a reasonable likelihood that correcting the testimony would have affected the jury's judgment.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Thomas wrote that the court didn’t have the authority to review the decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. And even if it did, he said, the testimony in dispute was “patently immaterial."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with some, but not all, of the majority’s conclusions. She said she would have directed the state court to reconsider how it reviewed Glossip’s case rather than ordering the court to set aside his conviction.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was involved at an earlier stage of the case when he was an appeals court judge, recused himself from the deliberations.
Glossip’s attorney called the decision “a victory for justice and fairness in our judicial system.”
“We are thankful that a clear majority of the Court supports long-standing precedent that prosecutors cannot hide critical evidence from defense lawyers and cannot stand by while their witnesses knowingly lie to the jury,” Knight said in a statement. “Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”
Latest chapter in long-running case
The high court’s reprieve was the latest chapter in the long-running case for Glossip who has received nine execution dates and eaten his “last meal” three times.
He made multiple appeals to the high court, including in 2015 when he lost his challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol.
This time, Oklahoma − the state with the highest per capita execution rate − was in the unusual position of arguing that while prosecutors don’t consider Glossip innocent, he should be given a new trial.
Glossip was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 after a jury found him complicit in the 1997 murder of his boss at an Oklahoma City budget motel.
That conviction was set aside by an Oklahoma court which said his defense was inadequate.
A second jury found Glossip guilty in 2004 after a trial that, like the first one, depended heavily on the testimony of Justin Sneed, the motel’s maintenance man. Sneed confessed to killing Barry Van Treese – who was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat − but said Glossip pressured him into doing it. Sneed’s testimony against Glossip allowed him – but not Glossip − to avoid a death sentence.
Drummond, who took office in 2023, concluded that evidence of Sneed’s bipolar disorder was withheld from the defense and that prosecutors allowed Sneed to falsely testify about his medical record.
The state told the Supreme Court that Glossip’s trial was “fundamentally distorted” by Sneed’s false testimony.
Evidence prosecutors knew Sneed was lying includes a page of notes handwritten by the prosecutor from a pretrial interview with Sneed, according to Glossip's attorneys and the attorney general.
Members of the Van Treese family argued the prosecutor’s notes are being misread and there was no error.
Because the prosecution sided with Glossip, the court-appointed attorney Christopher Michel to argue why his conviction should stand. Michel said Glossip’s attorneys chose not to delve into Sneed’s mental health because it would have helped the prosecution make their argument that Sneed was vulnerable to Glossip’s manipulation.
Glossip’s attorneys said the defendant was denied the chance to show the jury Sneed’s memory was unreliable and that he was willing to lie on the stand.
The Supreme Court last year put Glossip's execution on hold as it considered the appeal.
The case is Glossip v. Oklahoma.