The Supreme Court revisited the bizarre Oklahoma death penalty case of Richard Glossip Wednesday, but gave little indication of how they would rule on a matter in which the Sooner State’s attorney general and the defendant are on the same side.
All three liberals on the bench as well as conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared sympathetic toward Glossip, 61, during oral arguments, while conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas seemed skeptical and the other two justices who will decide the case did little to tip their hand.
Glossip was convicted in 1998 of ordering the murder of his boss, Barry Van Treese. The verdict was thrown out by Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals in 2001, only to be reaffirmed in 2004 following a second trial.
Despite new evidence being uncovered since, the Court of Criminal Appeals has steadfastly rejected Glossip’s pleas for a new trial.
After Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond took office in 2023, he reviewed the state’s death row cases, and concluded that Glossip did not receive a fair trial either of the first two times he came before a jury.
“Attorney General Drummond did not confess error here lightly,” ex-US solicitor general Paul Clement told the high court. “That confession demanded respectful consideration … instead the [lower] court invoked procedural bars and essentially treated the confession of error as unfounded.”
Because neither side wanted to defend the lower court ruling, the Supreme Court tapped Christopher Michel, a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts, to argue the other side.
“This court should … dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction, leaving petitioner [Glossip] free to pursue state law clemency or other available relief,” Michel argued before being grilled by the liberal justices.
All parties agree that motel maintenance man Justin Sneed beat Van Treese, the owner, to death with a baseball bat on Jan. 7, 1997. At issue is whether Glossip paid Sneed $10,000 to commit the crime — as Sneed testified at trial.
The evidence discovered in 2015 included a psychiatric evaluation from six months after the murder in which Sneed made no reference to Glossip being involved in the killing and a witness statement that Sneed had admitted to lying in court about Glossip’s guilt and laughed about it.
“Your one witness has been exposed as a liar,” Justice Elena Kagan pressed Michel at one point, referring to Sneed.
“…If he’s lying, if he’s trying to cover up something about his own behavior, I’m going to take that into account in deciding whether when he accuses the defendant, he’s telling the truth,” she later added.
Michael countered that there was not enough evidence that Sneed had given false testimony to throw out the guilty verdict.
In 2022, the state uncovered further evidence that prosecutors were wary of Sneed’s credibility but kept their doubts to themselves
“Sneed lied to the jury about his history of psychiatric treatment, including the fact that a prison psychiatrist prescribed lithium to treat his previously undiagnosed bipolar disorder,” noted another former US solicitor general, Seth Waxman, who defended Glossip alongside Clement. “The prosecution suppressed that evidence and then failed to correct Mr. Sneed’s perjured denial.”
Kavanaugh pressed both sides about whether the trial outcome could have been different if the jury had been privy to Sneed’s lie.
“I do want to underscore there is lots of other evidence in the case against [Glossip] that doesn’t relate to Sneed, including his motive, including his possession of cash,” Michel contended. “I think, most importantly, his elaborate 24-hour cover-up.”
This is the second time the Supreme Court has heard a case related to Glossip.
In 2015, the Supreme Court reviewed a plea from Glossip and others on death row against the use of midazolam, a lethal drug used for capital punishment, that the plaintiffs argued was cruel and unusual punishment.
The high court ruled 5-4 against the inmates.
That same year, Glossip was hours away from execution only for then-Gov. Mary Fallin to issue a stay after officials discovered an issue with the lethal drug.
Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from oral arguments Wednesday, having dealt with the case previously as a lower court judge.
Glossip v. Oklahoma comes amid a sharp downturn in the use of the death penalty within the US. In 1996, two years before Glossip’s conviction, there were 315 death sentences issued, but by 2022 that plummeted to 20, per data from the DC-based Death Penalty Information Center.
Only 13 states have carried out executions within the past decade, according to the organization.