WASHINGTON– The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear an appeal from Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence and fended off multiple attempts by the state to execute him.
Glossip was convicted in 1997 for the contract murder of the owner of the motel where he worked.
The case will not be argued until the fall.
Glossip now has the support of the state’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, who says Glossip’s life should be spared because he did not receive a fair trial.
The Supreme Court blocked the latest attempt to execute Glossip in early May.
Despite Drummond’s misgivings about the trial, an Oklahoma appeals court upheld Glossip’s conviction and the state’s pardon and parole board deadlocked in a vote to grant him clemency.
But Drummond has also said he does not believe Glossip is innocent of the contract murder of his former boss, Barry Van Treese, in 1997. Another man, Justin Sneed, admitted to robbing and killing Van Treese 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.
Two independent investigations have revealed problems with the prosecution’s case.
Drummond said Sneed lied on the witness stand about his psychiatric condition and his reason for taking lithium, a mood-stabilizing drug, and that prosecutors knew Sneed was lying.
Additionally, evidence was destroyed, Drummond said.
Some Republican state lawmakers who support the death penalty have joined the growing chorus of Glossip supporters seeking to overturn his conviction.
Glossip’s case has reached the Supreme Court before. She was granted a pardon in 2015, although the court later ruled 5-4 against her in a case involving drugs used in lethal executions.
Glossip has been within hours of being executed three times. His last scheduled execution, in September 2015, was halted moments before he was to be taken to the death chamber when prison officials realized they had been given the wrong lethal drug. That confusion helped spur a nearly seven-year moratorium on the death penalty in Oklahoma.
The Glossip case attracted international attention after actress Susan Sarandon, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean in the 1995 film “Dead Man Walking,” took on its cause in real life. Prejean herself has served as Glossip’s spiritual advisor and frequently visited him in prison. His case was also featured in the 2017 documentary “Killing Richard Glossip.”
It is extremely rare for a prosecutor to oppose executing a death row inmate. In a situation similar to Glossip a year ago, judges ordered a Texas appeals court to re-examine the case of a death row inmate who also had the support of prosecutors. The inmate, Areli Escobar, had been convicted and sentenced to death based on forensic evidence that a judge later found flawed.
But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the judge’s order for a new trial, even though the newly elected prosecutor in Travis County, Texas, no longer supported the conviction. When Escobar appealed to the Supreme Court, the prosecutor supported his proposal. Escobar was not facing imminent execution.
The Supreme Court will hear the Glossip case with only eight justices. Justice Neil Gorsuch is not participating, presumably because he was involved in an earlier stage of the case when he was an appeals court judge.
The high court had been weighing Glossip’s appeal since late September. The reason for the delay in acting on this matter is unclear.
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