CAPITAL CASE
on Might 5, 2023
at 5:00 pm
The Supreme Courtroom put the execution of Richard Glossip on maintain on Friday afternoon to provide the justices time to think about the Oklahoma man’s appeals. Glossip was scheduled to be executed on Might 18. The court docket’s temporary unsigned order got here 4 days after Oklahoma Legal professional Normal Gentner Drummond filed a extremely uncommon temporary supporting Glossip’s request to remain his execution. Drummond defined that state officers now consider that Glossip’s conviction mustn’t stand and that it might be “unthinkable” to permit his execution to go ahead – however that the Oklahoma courts nonetheless refused to dam the execution.
Glossip was sentenced to die for the 1997 homicide of Barry Van Treese, who owned the Oklahoma Metropolis motel the place Glossip labored as a supervisor. Justin Sneed, a handyman on the motel, informed jurors that Glossip paid him $10,000 to kill Van Treese. Sneed’s testimony was the one proof implicating Glossip; in change, prosecutors assured Sneed that he wouldn’t be sentenced to loss of life.
In March of this 12 months, Glossip filed a brand new petition for post-conviction reduction, looking for to put aside his conviction and sentence. He pointed to new info – primarily notes from prosecutors – that he had obtained for the primary time in January, indicating that Sneed had testified falsely about whether or not he had seen a psychiatrist. In truth, Sneed had been handled by a jail psychiatrist for bipolar dysfunction and had been prescribed lithium.
On April 3, an unbiased counsel appointed by Drummond to evaluation Glossip’s case urged the state to vacate his conviction. Rex Duncan, a former district lawyer in Oklahoma, wrote that he believed that “Glossip was disadvantaged of a good trial during which the State can believe within the course of and outcome.” There have been so many errors in that course of, Duncan harassed, each at trial and on attraction, {that a} new trial was needed.
Within the wake of Duncan’s report, Drummond joined Glossip in asking the Oklahoma Courtroom of Prison Appeals, the state’s highest court docket for legal instances, to put aside Glossip’s conviction, however that court docket rejected the request on April 20. Lower than every week later, by a vote of 2-2, the state’s Pardon and Parole Board turned down Glossip’s request for clemency, which the lawyer normal – apparently for the primary time within the state’s historical past – had additionally supported.
Glossip got here to the Supreme Courtroom final week, asking the justices to place his execution on maintain to provide them extra time to think about his appeals.
In an 11-page submitting on Might, Drummond – joined on the temporary by Paul Clement, who served because the U.S. solicitor normal through the George W. Bush administration – famous that he “doesn’t agree with every little thing Glossip has stated on this case or on this Courtroom and [he] continues to oppose” an earlier petition for evaluation, filed in January. However, Drummond continued, he was “troubled” by the state’s failure to right Sneed’s false testimony about whether or not he had seen a psychiatrist. As a result of he had “reached the tough conclusion that the conviction of Glossip was obtained with the advantage of materials misstatements to the jury by the State’s key witness,” Drummond defined, he deliberate to agree with Glossip that the court docket ought to evaluation the latest ruling by the Oklahoma Courtroom of Prison Appeals, rejecting Glossip’s request to put aside his sentence.
Friday’s order was not the primary time that the Supreme Courtroom has agreed to place Glossip’s execution on maintain. In 2015, the court docket blocked his execution in order that it may take into account a problem to Oklahoma’s lethal-injection protocol. In that case, Glossip v. Gross, the court docket ultimately rejected the problem by a vote of 5-4.
Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t take part in Friday’s order, presumably as a result of he was a part of the panel that dominated on Glossip’s lethal-injection problem whereas he was nonetheless a choose on the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the tenth Circuit.
This text was originally published at Howe on the Courtroom.