Judge Swallows Prosecutors' Discredited Arguments to Keep Richard Glossip in Jail

The Intercept

4 days ago

In an order that reads like it was written two decades ago, an Oklahoma County judge on Wednesday denied bond for Richard Glossip, keeping him in jail while the state prepares to try him a third time for first-degree murder.
In the 18-page document, District Judge Heather Coyle underplays the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court's February ruling that overturned Glossip's most recent conviction. The ruling instead largely adopts the state's theory of the crime that sent Glossip to death row — while ignoring volumes of evidence that have been discovered in the intervening years.
'Having considered the record, arguments of all parties, and the exhibits submitted by the parties, the court finds that the state has sufficiently shown by clear and convincing evidence that the presumption of the defendant's guilt of a capital offense is great,' Coyle wrote. 'Accordingly, the court finds Mr. Glossip's request for bond should be, and is hereby, denied.'
The order comes despite last week's revelation that, in a 2023 email exchange, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond agreed to a tentative plea deal that would have allowed Glossip to walk free.
The correspondence, first reported by The Intercept, is at the heart of a motion filed by Glossip's defense attorneys who have asked Coyle to enforce what they describe as a legally binding agreement. The state has responded by denying that the deal was ever reached, but the judge has yet to rule on the matter.
Glossip was twice convicted of the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese inside room 102 of the rundown motel his family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death, but insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.
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Until recently, it was clear that Sneed had been discredited as a witness — including by Drummond. After taking office in 2023, Drummond ordered an independent investigation into Glossip's case, concluding that he had lost confidence in Glossip's conviction.
Drummond took unprecedented steps to block Glossip's execution and to overturn his conviction, successfully arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that Sneed — the state's once 'indispensable witness' — had lied on the witness stand.
Drummond now seems determined to go forward with trying Glossip for murder a third time using the same evidence previously used to convict him. During a June bond hearing, prosecutors offered nothing new, instead asking the judge to review the transcripts from Glossip's 1997 preliminary hearing and his 2004 trial.
That appears to have been enough for Coyle. In her order denying Glossip bond, the judge relies heavily on Sneed's prior testimony while suggesting there are other witnesses who could bolster the state's case against Glossip. But for the most part, these other witnesses offered nothing more than circumstantial evidence that called into question Glossip's behavior after Van Treese's murder.
Glossip was originally charged as an accessory after the fact for initially failing to give police information about the murder. The night Van Treese was killed, Glossip said, Sneed had woken him up around 4 a.m. by knocking on the wall of his apartment, which was adjacent to the motel's office. Standing outside with a black eye, Sneed told Glossip he had chased off some drunks who had broken a window in one of the motel rooms.
According to Glossip, he asked Sneed about his black eye, and Sneed flippantly replied, 'I killed Barry.' It wasn't until the next morning, when no one could find Van Treese, that Glossip realized Sneed might have been serious. Still, Glossip didn't tell the cops right away; he said his girlfriend suggested waiting until they figured out what was going on.
In her order, Coyle relies on witnesses who describe things Glossip did that suggest he covered up his knowledge of the crime — including that Glossip had helped Sneed put plexiglass over the broken window of the room where Van Treese was killed.
Coyle cited in particular the notion that Glossip was trying to steer people away from Room 102, in an apparent attempt to ensure that Van Treese's body would not be discovered. 'Multiple witnesses support that Mr. Glossip followed through with this plan,' Coyle wrote, emphasizing her point in bold.
The fact remains, however, that these accounts only look damning through the lens of Sneed's story about Glossip being in on the murder itself. Aside from Sneed's already discredited testimony, there is still no evidence to support this.
While prosecutors have offered nothing new to support the position that Glossip is a murderer, his defense team has spent more than a decade uncovering new evidence and new witnesses that not only point to Sneed as the sole perpetrator of the crime, but also reveal that the state hid and destroyed evidence before Glossip's 2004 retrial.
At the bond hearing and in court briefs, Glossip's attorneys tried to offer Coyle much of this evidence — including letters Sneed wrote expressing his desire to recant his testimony against Glossip. They also said several of the witnesses the state relied on have since died — meaning the defense would have no opportunity to cross-examine them about new and previously undisclosed evidence.
While Coyle said she would consider some of the defense's new information, her ultimate order reflects that she didn't consider any of it — save for a single paragraph noting that the Supreme Court had overturned Glossip's conviction.
As for the prosecution's star witness, 'if the state had wanted the court to actually consider the testimony of Mr. Sneed in making this bond determination, it could have called him as a witness at the hearing,' Glossip's lawyers wrote. 'Its failure to do [so], and to instead ask the court to rely on thoroughly discredited testimony, speaks volumes as to their confidence in Sneed's credibility today.'