(Trends Wide) — After 26 years behind bars, nine execution dates, three last meals, and two independent investigations that raised serious questions about his sentence, Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip faces what could be the last days of his life. his life.
“I think it’s easier for me than anyone else because I’ve done it so many times,” Glossip told Trends Wide on Thursday, two weeks before he was scheduled to be executed for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese. a crime in which he maintains he was not involved.
“I don’t want people to take it lightly,” he said. “I want people to see how serious this is and the damage it can do to people. But at the same time, I’ve been one of those people whose faith is so strong that it can get me through anything.”
Glossip, 60, is hopeful that his life will be spared so that he and his wife, Lea, can continue to build a future together, perhaps outside the walls of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. They got married last year, their life together so far has been limited to visits and phone calls.
Richard Glossip, sentenced to death for a crime he says he did not commit, has faced nine death penalty schedules.
Similarly, a growing group of supporters that includes not only his wife and attorneys, but also Kim Kardashian, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, and a bipartisan group of 62 Oklahoma legislators are hoping to save his life, and they point to countless questions about his guilt and the process that landed him on death row.
“There has never been an execution in the history of this country where the state and the defense agreed that the defendant did not get a fair trial,” state Rep. Kevin McDugle said Thursday, as lawmakers and faith leaders called on Gov. Kevin Stitt to issue a third 60-day stay to give the courts time to review Glossip’s case. “Oklahoma can’t become first.” Stitt, McDugle and the attorney general are Republicans.
Lea Glossip, left, wife of death row inmate Richard Glossip, listens with sister Helen Prejean, right, who opposes the death penalty, during a news conference Thursday, May 4, in Oklahoma City. (Credit: Sue Ogrocki/AP)
Despite his optimism, Glossip is faced each day with reminders that he may soon enter the death chamber. Next Thursday, he said, he will be transferred to “death watch,” where he will spend a week in solitary confinement under constant supervision in a cell where the lights will remain on at all times. Recently, he and Lea filled out paperwork about his funeral, what he’ll have for his last meal, and who wants him to witness his execution.
If things don’t go his way, Glossip is clear about what he wants his legacy to be: “I want to make sure that what happened to me doesn’t happen again to anyone else.”
Oklahoma State Representative Kevin McDugle speaks during a news conference calling on the state to halt the execution of death row inmate Richard Glossip. (Credit: Sue Ogrocki/AP)
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Two investigations raise doubts about conviction
Van Treese, a husband, 54, and father of seven children, was murdered on January 7, 1997, beaten to death with a baseball bat in an Oklahoma City motel room owned by a young man. , 19 years old, called Justin Sneed.
Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese, but at trial, prosecutors described the murder as a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Glossip. Sneed got a deal to avoid the death penalty: plead guilty and testify against Glossip, then 35, whose criminal record included a single traffic ticket, according to his lawyers.
Glossip was found guilty and sentenced to death in June 1998, though it was overturned on appeal due to ineffective counsel. He but he was retried in 2004 and again found guilty and sentenced to death.
The years since then have seen numerous questions raised about Glossip’s conviction.
An independent review revealed “the state’s intentional destruction of evidence before trial and an inadequate police investigation” as well as contamination of Sneed’s testimony, according to the Reed Smith law firm, which was commissioned by the legislature to examine the case. case and issued its conclusions in a 343-page report last year.
An amendment to the report includes recently unearthed letters written by Sneed in prison, including one to his lawyer asking if he would recant his testimony.
The Oklahoma County Public Defender’s Office, responsible for Sneed’s attorney at the time, has declined to comment on this case.
Ultimately, Reed Smith concluded “that no reasonable jury hearing the entire file would have convicted Richard Glossip of premeditated murder,” said Stan Perry, a partner at the firm.
A second independent inquiry, commissioned by Drummond, cited “multiple and cumulative errors” and concluded that Glossip’s conviction should be overturned and he should be granted a new trial. That prompted the attorney general’s office to file a motion to vacate Glossip’s conviction, but last month the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 5-0 to deny the request for another appeal.
Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, where Richard Glossip will be executed, pictured in 2015. (Credit: Nick Oxford/Reuters/File)
Capital punishment cases are often subject to years of appeals, and many end up before the United States Supreme Court. But wrongful convictions do happen: There have been 191 exonerations of people on death row since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
“There are so many exonerations in this country, so many people were quickly convicted, so many lives were taken,” Glossip told Trends Wide on Thursday. “Why is it so hard for people to think that someone is really innocent?”
Glossip’s death sentence “is a grave injustice”
Last week, the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles refused to recommend clemency despite unprecedented support from the attorney general, who in an unusual move attended the hearing to defend Glossip, saying it would be “a grave injustice.” ” for the execution to go ahead.
Drummond believes Glossip is guilty of at least accessory to murder after the fact, he told the parole board, and likely murder. But he doesn’t believe the evidence proves Glossip’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, he said, and the person who actually killed Van Treese is in prison for the rest of his life.
Van Treese’s family was the only one to ask the board to deny clemency, and his widow likened the process to a wound that has healed, only the scab has come off over and over again.
“Our hope today is that justice is served for our beloved Barry,” Donna Van Treese said, “and that they take our statements into consideration and know… that we don’t feel fairly represented today.”
The Board listens to the family of Barry Van Treese at the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles clemency hearing for Richard Glossip, Wednesday, April 26, 2023. (Credit: Doug Hoke/The Oklahoman/AP)
The Board, which has five members, voted 2-2, resulting in a no. The fifth member had recused himself because his wife was a prosecutor in one of Glossip’s two state trials.
Court battles are ongoing
Stitt can’t grant clemency without the board’s recommendation, but the governor could issue a temporary pardon, a step he has already taken twice. Stitt said last week that he did not plan to issue a third pardon.
“We wanted to let the court system work,” Governor Stitt said last Friday, “so unless the courts act or new evidence is brought before the courts, we are going to follow the law.”
Without the governor’s intervention, Glossip’s best chance to save himself is in court.
His lawyers have asked the Oklahoma County District Court to throw out last week’s clemency hearing because the parole board was missing its fifth member. While they agree that the challenge was appropriate, they argue that an incomplete board violated the Oklahoma Constitution.
The lawyers also petitioned the US Supreme Court for a stay of execution to review two motions for certiorari (from two lower courts), including one filed Thursday backed by Drummond, saying Glossip’s conviction “is a grave miscarriage of justice and executing him would be an unthinkable and irreversible travesty.”
Meanwhile, Glossip zeroes in on Lea and hopes to check items off her wish list.
“I have never been on a plane… So they want to put me on a plane and take me somewhere,” he said. “And I’ve never seen the ocean, so we want to go do that.”
“There are a lot of silly little things that other people would probably miss, that I think we all take for granted,” he said. “And I’m here to tell everyone, never put off what you need to do… Do it now, because no one promised tomorrow.”
— Trends Wide’s Holly Yan and Emma Tucker contributed to this report.
