The death penalty takes center stage on Wednesday as the case of death row inmate Richard Glossip returns to the Supreme Court, this time with his supporters calling for a new trial.
Glossip has been a high-profile case for decades, ever since he was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder-for-hire of his boss, hotel owner Barry Van Treese. According to the state, Glossip's alleged co-conspirator, teen maintenance worker Justin Sneed, bludgeoned Van Treese to death with a baseball bat in room 102 of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City. Despite being the one who wielded the weapon, Sneed received a life sentence without parole, while Glossip remains on death row.
However, Glossip has narrowly escaped execution nine times since his sentencing, having had his last meal (fish and chips, Wendy's bacon cheeseburger, strawberry shake, and pizza) three times. His near-death experiences have been part luck and part the tireless efforts of his many supporters. In 2014, at the request of anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, attorney Don Knight took on Glossip's case pro bono. In 2015, Glossip's execution was delayed due to a case before the U.S. Supreme Court known as Glossip v. Gross, which focused on the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014, who regained consciousness during a lethal injection.
After the Supreme Court ruled against Glossip and his co-defendants, he was scheduled to die in September 2015. The next stay came from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals just three hours before his scheduled execution, this time for examination. Knight's petition for exoneration requested another hearing. His execution date was pushed back to later that month, but once the state realized they had the wrong drug for the execution (potassium acetate—used to de-ice airplane wings instead of potassium chloride), the death penalty process in Oklahoma was halted for the next six years to reassess protocols.
New protocols were announced in March 2020, but they did not change significantly, according to an attorney who supports inmates in their fight to change the execution process. Specifically, the procedure still involves midazolam, a drug that inmates and their advocates claim does not effectively render inmates unconscious, leading to a painful death.
When executions resumed in 2021, Glossip was given a new date in September 2022. This date has been rescheduled several times as his supporters continue to fight for him. In February 2022, 30 attorneys from the Reed Smith law firm began an independent investigation into Glossip's case at the request of 35 Oklahoma lawmakers, including 29 Republicans, which allegedly uncovered numerous potential issues. The report claimed that prosecutors had evidence of Sneed being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in prison, which was not disclosed to the defense. Sneed was also reported to be on lithium. The report alleges that this diagnosis, along with lithium treatment, could render Sneed an unreliable witness.
Glossip has had two trials, after which his attorney Wayne Forkner admitted he was unprepared for a murder case. 'I received a lot of criticism for representing Richard Glossip. I sucked at it, you know,' he said in a documentary. 'I was terrible at it.' Glossip's second trial was equally poor, as his attorneys failed to present Sneed's confession tape as evidence. (Many supporters claim the video shows authorities coercing the teenager into implicating Glossip.)
In light of these discovered errors, the state requested the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to order a new trial for Glossip. The state court denied Glossip's relief, but after much debate, the Supreme Court granted him a stay and agreed to hear his case in May 2023.
'Today feels like another answered prayer, Richard and I are deeply grateful for this opportunity and for everyone who worked hard to get us to this point,' Glossip's wife Leah told Rolling Stone at the time. 'We continue to rely on our faith.'
In the coming months, attorneys for Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Glossip will compete against Attorney General Christopher Michel over whether the 61-year-old man truly deserves a new trial. Drummond, a Republican who generally supports the death penalty, told the court that Glossip's case has 'serious instances of prosecutorial misconduct.' However, not everyone stands by Glossip—including prosecutors from seven states and the Van Treese family, who have always demanded Glossip's execution.
'For all these years, our family has suffered all kinds of pain as a result of Barry's death,' said his sister Alana Melito in a statement to the Tulsa World. 'The Van Treese family knows for certain that Oklahoma has given the opportunity for justice in this case. ... We have the right as a family and as citizens of the United States to expect justice to be served.'
A decision in this case is likely to be announced next summer. In the meantime, as Glossip told Rolling Stone in 2021, he is just trying to stay positive: 'Often, people come here and lie on their beds and say, 'You know what? I'm done.' ... And I try to encourage people that there is always hope. Look at me, I've survived three executions.'
The death penalty remains a hot topic as the country heads toward another presidential election where the Republican candidate rallies for a return of the death penalty, while the Democratic ticket has removed all mention of the issue from their platform. In Oklahoma alone, three men were executed in 2024, the latest being Emmanuel Littlejohn, who was recommended for clemency by the state parole board for his role in a 1992 murder and robbery. Nevertheless, he was executed on September 26. Littlejohn was one of five men killed over a span of seven days last month—including Marcellus Williams, who was also recommended for clemency.