OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Oklahoma prosecutors have announced their decision to retry Richard Glossip, a longtime death row inmate, for a third time regarding his alleged involvement in the 1997 murder of his former boss, Barry Van Treese. This announcement was made by Attorney General Gentner Drummond on Monday.
The decision to move forward with a retrial follows the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in February, which overturned Glossip's conviction and death sentence. The Court found that the original prosecutions allowed a key witness to provide testimony they knew to be false, thereby violating Glossip's constitutional right to a fair trial. Glossip has consistently maintained his innocence throughout the legal proceedings spanning over two decades.
Glossip was convicted twice and sentenced to death for the murder of Barry Van Treese, who owned a motel in Oklahoma City. Prosecutors contended that the killing was carried out as part of a murder-for-hire scheme. Justin Sneed, the state's key witness, confessed to the murder, admitting he brutally beat Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. However, he claimed that he acted under the promise from Glossip to pay him $10,000 for the crime. Sneed was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
Following the Supreme Court's decision, Attorney General Drummond expressed that retrying Glossip’s case after more than 25 years would pose significant challenges. Notably, Drummond took the highly unusual step of requesting the Court to overturn Glossip's conviction, stating that while he believed Glossip had some level of involvement in the killing, he did not believe he received a fair trial.
"I do not believe Richard Glossip is innocent," Drummond stated after the Supreme Court's ruling. "The mission of this office is to seek justice, not to defend the prosecution." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who authored the opinion for a majority of the justices, highlighted additional prosecutorial misconduct during the trial, which included interference with Sneed's testimony, destruction of evidence, and the withholding of witness statements. These factors significantly weakened the reliability of the original verdict.
Throughout his time on death row, Richard Glossip faced various challenges related to his execution. Courts in Oklahoma set nine different execution dates for him, and he came alarmingly close to being executed, having experienced the ordeal of receiving three separate last meals. In 2015, he found himself confined in a cell adjacent to Oklahoma’s execution chamber, only to have his execution postponed at the last moment due to a mix-up with one of the lethal drugs designated for the procedure. This drug did not conform to the established execution protocols. The fallout from this incident led to a nearly seven-year moratorium on executions in the state of Oklahoma.
