The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will hear an appeal from Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip, who has maintained his innocence and has received atypical support from state officials.
The petition from Glossip, who was sentenced in a 1997 case involving murder-for-hire of the owner of the motel where he worked, has been before the high court justices since September, who decided on Monday to proceed with oral arguments in the fall. The justices previously ruled in May to halt his scheduled death sentence after he gained support from Oklahoma Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who has maintained a belief that Glossip did not receive a fair trial.
For nearly 25 years, Glossip has been in prison for his conviction on paying another man, Justin Sneed, to kill motel owner Barry Van Treese.
Glossip’s petition to the high court claims that Sneed, who was made an “indispensable witness” in his trial, was not credible. Two separate independent investigations have revealed problems with the prosecution’s case, which caught the eyes of the state attorney general and prompted him to support Glossip.
Interest in Glossip’s case rose significantly following the February 2022 agreement by Stan Perry, an attorney with law firm Reed Smith, to conduct an independent review of his case.
After Republican state Rep. Kevin McDugle read the review, he found “grave” concerns with Glossip’s conviction. As a defender of the death penalty, he said he would highly reconsider his position if Glossip was ever put to death.
“I know right now they believe that he’s guilty. And I would, too, but after what I’ve seen and that report, there’s no way that Richard Glossip was guilty. There’s no proof at all that proves that he’s guilty,” McDugle told the Washington Examiner last July.
Drummond, the Oklahoma attorney general, argues that Sneed lied on the witness stand about his psychiatric condition and his reason for taking the mood-stabilizing drug lithium, and that prosecutors knew Sneed was lying, adding that some evidence in the case was destroyed.
“While the State previously opposed relief for Glossip, it has concluded, based on careful review of new information that recently came to light relating to prosecutorial misconduct at Glossip’s trial and cumulative error, that Glossip’s conviction and capital sentence cannot stand,” Drummond wrote in court filings.
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Glossip has already been to the Supreme Court before. He was granted reprieve in 2015, and the high court later ruled 5-4 against him in a case surrounding the drugs involved in lethal executions.
Oral arguments in the case will be slated for sometime this fall.