3 days ago
Oklahoma says it will retry death-row inmate, after US Supreme Court tossed conviction
June 9 (Reuters) - Four months after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip's murder conviction and granted him a new trial, Oklahoma's attorney general said on Monday that he will retry him and seek a life sentence.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who supported Glossip's appeal to the Supreme Court of his conviction for commissioning a murder for hire, said that he will not pursue the death penalty for Glossip, who had argued on appeal that prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence during his original trial.
Drummond said he was not seeking the death penalty this time because the man who admitted to killing the victim in the murder-for-hire plot is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
'While it was clear to me and to the U.S. Supreme Court that Mr. Glossip did not receive a fair trial, I have never proclaimed his innocence,' Drummond, a Republican, said in a statement announcing his office's decision.
A spokesperson for Drummond's office said they did not have a date for the trial, but that Glossip's next court date is June 17.
Don Knight, an attorney for Glossip, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Drummond's office reexamined the case after 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 had acted improperly.
Glossip, now 62, was originally convicted of commissioning a murder and sentenced to death for the killing of Barry Van Treese, owner of the Best Budget Inn motel in Oklahoma City where Glossip was a manager. He has spent 27 years in prison.
All parties agree Van Treese was fatally beaten with a baseball bat by maintenance worker Justin Sneed, who eventually became the star witness for the prosecution. Sneed, who was a methamphetamine addict, 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.
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 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 said 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.
