By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday in favor of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip in his bid to challenge his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-hire plot and granted him a new trial.
The justices, in a 5-3 ruling authored by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reversed a lower court’s decision that had upheld Glossip’s conviction and had allowed his planned execution to move forward despite his claim that prosecutors wrongly withheld evidence that could help his defense.
Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberal members to form a majority.
During Oct. 9 arguments in the case, the justices probed whether an Oklahoma court properly weighed newly revealed information that Glossip’s lawyers said would have aided his defense and which the state’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, called wrongly withheld by prosecutors. Drummond, a Republican, supported Glossip’s appeal.
Glossip’s lawyers asked the justices to throw out his conviction and grant him a new trial after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld his death sentence despite potentially exculpatory evidence being found in an independent investigation ordered last year by Drummond.
Glossip, now 62, was convicted of commissioning the murder of Barry Van Treese, owner of the Best Budget Inn motel in Oklahoma City where Glossip was a manager. All parties agree Van Treese was fatally beaten with a baseball bat by maintenance worker Justin Sneed. Sneed confessed to the murder but avoided capital punishment by accepting a plea deal that involved testifying that Glossip paid him $10,000 to do it.
Securing a murder conviction against Glossip hinged on the testimony of Sneed, who was a methamphetamine addict. Glossip admitted to helping Sneed cover up the murder after it occurred, but denied knowing Sneed planned to kill Van Treese or encouraging him to do so.
The Supreme Court in 2023 halted Glossip’s scheduled execution while his appeal proceeded.
The evidence disclosed in 2023 by Drummond – including a prosecutor’s hand-written notes from a meeting with Sneed – cast doubt on Sneed’s credibility, according to Glossip’s lawyers.
They argued that they were kept in the dark about Sneed receiving psychiatric treatment for bipolar disorder immediately after his arrest, and that prosecutors failed to correct Sneed’s false statement about his prescription for the medication lithium.
Because Oklahoma’s attorney general supported Glossip’s appeal, the Supreme Court tapped an outside lawyer, private attorney Christopher Michel, to argue to uphold Glossip’s conviction.
Drummond became an unlikely ally of Glossip after the investigation he commissioned led him to conclude that prosecutors hid evidence that might have led to an acquittal. Although Drummond said he believes Glossip’s role in covering up Van Treese’s murder makes him at least an “accessory after the fact,” justifying a long prison sentence, Glossip’s murder conviction was too flawed for him to defend.
The victim’s family, represented by former federal judge Paul Cassell, filed a brief with the Supreme Court saying, “The truth here is that no evidence was suppressed and Glossip commissioned the murder of Barry Van Treese.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case, apparently because he earlier dealt with the matter while serving on a lower court.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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