The Supreme Court ordered a new trial Tuesday for Richard Glossip, scrapping his conviction and death sentence in an Oklahoma murder nearly three decades old.
Glossip, 62, was first found guilty in 1998 and ordered executed over the 1997 murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese, Glossip’s former boss. Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors did not fork over important evidence that could have changed the outcome of the case.
“We conclude that the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony,” liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the 5-3 majority opinion. “Glossip is entitled to a new trial.”
After Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond took office in 2023, he reviewed the state’s death row cases and concluded that Glossip did not receive a fair trial either of the first two times he came before a jury.
Neither side had wanted to defend a lower court ruling rejecting Glossip’s pleas for a new trial, so the Supreme Court had tapped Christopher Michel, a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts, to argue the case against a new trial during oral arguments last year.
Everyone involved in the case agrees that motel maintenance man Justin Sneed used a baseball bat to beat Van Treese to death on Jan. 7, 1997.
The main dispute has been over whether Glossip sent Sneed $10,000 to murder his former supervisor, a claim that Sneed backed with trial testimony.
Evidence made public in 2015 revealed a witness allegation that Sneed admitted to fibbing about Glossip’s guilt and laughing about it.
The evidence also included a psychiatric evaluation about half a year after the murder, in which Sneed made no reference to Glossip being involved.
In 2022, Oklahoma officials uncovered additional evidence that prosecutors doubted Sneed’s credibility, a fact which hadn’t been disclosed.
Despite the spate of new evidence, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) spurned Glossip’s push for a new trial, triggering an appeals process that made its way up to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments back in October.
“The OCCA denied Glossip’s unopposed petition without a hearing,” Sotomayor noted. ” … If the evidence impeaching Sneed’s credibility was already overwhelming, then no reasonable jury could have convicted Glossip in the first place, given that the prosecution’s case rested centrally on Sneed’s credibility.”
Conservative justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case because he had dealt with it previously as a lower court judge.
Justice Clarence Thomas penned the dissent arguing against the Supreme Court intervening in the case at all, and was backed by fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito.
“The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) denied Glossip’s application as both procedurally deficient and nonmeritorious, and Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency,” Thomas wrote. “Because this Court lacks the power to override these denials, that should have marked the end of the road for Glossip. Instead, the Court stretches the law at every turn to rule in his favor.”
Thomas ripped into the majority opinion’s interpretation of case law and rattled through the evidence while casting doubt on whether the revelations about Sneed would have changed the trial outcome.
“Correcting Sneed’s allegedly false statements would not have led the jury to believe that Sneed’s mental condition led him to attack Van Treese on his own initiative,” the justice argued.
“Glossip’s defense team was well aware of Sneed’s condition and chose not to use it as impeachment evidence. As appellate judges examining a cold record 20 years after the trial, we should be wary of believing that we understand the import of evidence better than Glossip’s counsel.”
Thomas argued that the Supreme Court has “no authority to order a new trial” in the case and at most could only remand the matter back to the lower courts for additional proceedings.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett staked out a middle-ground position, concurring with parts of both the majority and dissent opinions, ultimately arguing that the appeals court should decide the next steps
She contended that the high court went too far in throwing out Glossip’s conviction and should have corrected a legal interpretation used by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and remanded the case back to the lower courts.
“We lack jurisdiction to review a state court’s adjudication of federal claims if the state court’s decision ‘rests on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment,’” she wrote.
Glossip’s bizarre case had bounced around in the courts for decades.
It was tossed out by Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals in 2001 and then reaffirmed in a subsequent 2004 trial.
The Supreme Court had also reviewed a 2015 petition from Glossip and other death row inmates to bar the use of the lethal drug midazolam for capital punishment, arguing that it was cruel. Ultimately the high court went 5–4 against the prisoners.
