Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip's conviction should be overturned, new AG says

Oklahoma's new attorney general on Thursday agreed death row inmate Richard Glossip's murder conviction should be overturned.

Glossip currently is set to be executed on May 18 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester for the 1997 murder of his boss.

"The State has reached the difficult conclusion that justice requires setting aside Glossip's conviction and remanding the case to the district court," Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in a seven-page filing.

Drummond made the request after deciding the key witness, Justin Sneed, gave false testimony at a 2004 retrial about his psychiatric condition.

More: First prison wife of death row inmate Richard Glossip says he 'used me for financial gain'

Drummond made clear in the filing that he is not suggesting Glossip is innocent.

"The State continues to believe that Glossip has culpability in the murder of Barry Van Treese," he told the appeals court.

Glossip, 60, has always maintained he is innocent, and his attorneys March 27 raised a new challenge to his conviction.

That challenge came after Glossip's attorneys were given access on Jan. 27 to prosecutors' notes "in the interest of full disclosure."

More: Richard Glossip, six other Oklahoma death row inmates get new execution dates

Richard Glossip: innocence claims and a twist of fate

Glossip has become the state's most high-profile death row inmate because of the wide support for his innocence claim. Among his supporters are conservative Republican legislators.

He also is high profile because of a twist of fate. His 2015 lethal injection was called off after a doctor realized the wrong heart-stopping drug had been delivered.

The attorney general on Jan. 26 announced that he had hired a former district attorney to look into Glossip's innocence claim. Drummond said the independent counsel "concluded that Glossip's conviction and sentence should be set aside."

Glossip claimed innocence in the murder of Barry Van Treese

Glossip claims he was framed for the murder of Van Treese, an Oklahoma City motel owner. The Court of Criminal Appeals in November rejected two challenges to his conviction.

His boss was found beaten to death in Room 102 of his motel, the Best Budget Inn, on Jan. 7, 1997. Van Treese was 54 and lived in Lawton.

Sneed, a motel maintenance man, confessed to killing Van Treese with a baseball bat. He said Glossip pressured him into doing it and offered him $10,000 as payment. He testified against Glossip at two trials.

More: Oklahoma sets execution dates for 25 death row inmates through end of 2024

Glossip's attorneys claim Sneed actually killed the motel owner during a botched robbery for drug money. They claim he framed Glossip to avoid getting the death penalty himself.

They claim Sneed, a meth addict, made admissions in jail and later in prison about framing Glossip and also has talked of recanting his testimony.

In their latest challenge, Glossip's attorneys told the appeals court they had discovered after reviewing the prosecutors' notes that a jail psychiatrist had diagnosed Sneed with bipolar disorder. Glossip contends his defense attorneys could have used this crucial information at the retrial.

In his filing Thursday, the attorney general agreed a defense attorney "likely could have attacked Sneed's ability to properly recall key facts at the second trial."

Drummond told the court Sneed hid his psychiatric condition through false testimony to the jury.

Sneed testified at the retrial that he was given lithium "for some reason" after at first getting Sudafed for a cold. "I don't know why," he told jurors. "I never seen no psychiatrist or anything."

What's next for Richard Glossip?

The Court of Criminal Appeals is likely to grant the request, but that is not certain.

The court has yet to act on a request by the AG to delay the execution again — to August 2024.

Eight inmates have been executed in Oklahoma since lethal injections resumed in 2021 after a six-year moratorium.

The independent counsel, Rex Duncan, was hired in January to review the case. He was district attorney of Osage and Pawnee counties from 2011 to 2019. He was in the state House of Representatives before that for six years.

In his 19-page report, dated Monday, he wrote there was a "decades-long failure" in the case.

He specifically criticized prosecutors for "violations" and Glossip's own attorneys at the retrial for a key "failure."

He denounced the destruction of evidence after the first trial, writing it "cannot be dismissed as inconsequential or without harm to the defense."

He also wrote: "If this murder was deserving of the death penalty, I believe the wrong co-defendant is on death row."

Drummond noted these other issues in his filing Thursday. He told the court: "taken together with the incorrect testimony, they establish that Glossip's trial was unfair and unreliable."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: AG: Death row inmate Richard Glossip should have conviction overturned