QUOTE OF THE DAY:"Drummond, the attorney general, said in a Thursday news release he “cannot stand behind the murder conviction and death sentence” of Glossip. “This is not to say I believe he is innocent. However, it is critical that Oklahomans have absolute faith that the death penalty is administered fairly and with certainty,” Drummond said. “Considering everything I know about this case, I do not believe that justice is served by executing a man based on the testimony of a compromised witness.”
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Glossip, a former motel manager, has been behind bars for 26 years. He was convicted of capital murder for ordering the killing of Van Treese. Another employee, then-19-year-old Justin Sneed, admitted to killing Van Treese with a baseball bat in Oklahoma City. But prosecutors told jurors Sneed killed Van Treese in a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Glossip. Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony against Glossip. But recently revealed evidence proves Glossip’s innocence, his defense team says. “It is now clear that it would be unconscionable for the State to move forward with Mr. Glossip’s execution when there is so much doubt surrounding his conviction,” Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, said in a statement Thursday. “We thank (Attorney) General Drummond for his courageous decision to take a deeper look at this difficult case and urge the Court of Criminal Appeals to quickly grant the Attorney General’s request and remand Mr. Glossip’s case to the trial court for further proceedings,” Knight added."
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STORY: "Death row inmate Richard Glossip’s murder conviction could be vacated after he avoided execution 3 times," by Reporters Brynn Gingras and Holly Yan, published by CNN, on April 6, 2023/
GIST: "Oklahoma’s attorney general is asking for a new trial in the case of death row inmate Richard Glossip, who has spent a quarter of a century in prison for the death of his boss in 1997.
“While the State has previously opposed relief for Glossip, it has changed its position based on a careful review of the new information that has come to light,” Attorney General Gentner F. Drummond wrote in a motion filed Thursday in an Oklahoma appeals court.
The request was made after a special counsel report released Thursday recommended Glossip’s capital murder conviction be vacated and that he be granted a new trial.
Glossip, 60, has insisted he was not involved in the killing of his boss, Barry Van Treese. He has narrowly avoided death three times, as previous execution dates ended with reprieves or stays of execution.
It’s now up to the Oklahoma Court of Appeals to decide whether to grant or deny the request for a new trial. Glossip is currently scheduled to be executed on May 18.
'When does time finally run out?' Richard Glossip 's case is getting reviewed by a special counsel
Glossip, a former motel manager, has been behind bars for 26 years. He was convicted of capital murder for ordering the killing of Van Treese.
Another employee, then-19-year-old Justin Sneed, admitted to killing Van Treese with a baseball bat in Oklahoma City. But prosecutors told jurors Sneed killed Van Treese in a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Glossip.
Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony against Glossip.
But recently revealed evidence proves Glossip’s innocence, his defense team says.
“It is now clear that it would be unconscionable for the State to move forward with Mr. Glossip’s execution when there is so much doubt surrounding his conviction,” Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, said in a statement Thursday.
“We thank (Attorney) General Drummond for his courageous decision to take a deeper look at this difficult case and urge the Court of Criminal Appeals to quickly grant the Attorney General’s request and remand Mr. Glossip’s case to the trial court for further proceedings,” Knight added.
‘Do I have the choice of recanting my testimony’
The international law firm Reed Smith spent more than 3,000 pro bono hours investigating Glossip’s case and published a 343-page report last year, commissioned by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers.
The independent investigation “revealed the state’s intentional destruction of evidence before trial and an inadequate police investigation,” Reed Smith said.
The law firm and Glossip’s attorney have since uncovered more evidence, including letters Sneed wrote in prison. The letters are part of an amendment to Reed Smith’s initial report.
In one letter to his attorney, Sneed wrote in part, “There are a lot of things right now that are eating at me. Somethings I need to clean up.”
In another letter, Sneed wrote, “Do I have the choice of recanting my testimony at any time during my life …”
In a separate letter shown to CNN, Sneed’s public defender responded to one of his letters saying, “I can tell by the tone of your letter that some things are bothering you … Had you refused (to testify against Glossip) you would most likely be on death row right now.”
The Oklahoma County public defender’s office, responsible for Sneed’s attorney at the time, has declined to comment.
“We always suspected that Justin Sneed really wanted to, at some point, tell the truth,” said Knight, Glossip’s attorney. “But from those papers, we could tell that even though he was trying to, his lawyer at the time was telling him, ‘Don’t do it.’”
Drummond, the attorney general, said in a Thursday news release he “cannot stand behind the murder conviction and death sentence” of Glossip.
“This is not to say I believe he is innocent. However, it is critical that Oklahomans have absolute faith that the death penalty is administered fairly and with certainty,” Drummond said. “Considering everything I know about this case, I do not believe that justice is served by executing a man based on the testimony of a compromised witness.”
3 last meals and expecting to die again and again
Glossip has been on the verge of execution three times before, even being served three separate last meals, Knighttold CNN earlier this year.
He was first convicted of capital murder and sentenced in 1998, but that was overturned in 2001 because of ineffective defense counsel.
He was convicted again in 2004 and again sentenced to death. That year, Glossip was more than an hour past his execution time when the governor issued a stay based on the constitutionality of the state’s execution protocols.
Glossip’s decades on death row have been punctuated by a spate of reprieves and stays of execution.
In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Glossip said he’s still anxious as each execution date nears.
“It’s still scary, it will always be scary until they finally open this door and let me go, or remove this from over my head completely, so I don’t have to worry about, ‘Are they going to kill me next month? Or the month after that? When does time finally run out?’”
The entire story can be read at:
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NOTA BENE: (Staff Writer Nolan Clay: The Oklahoman; April 6, 2023);
"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. 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."
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NOTA BENE (2):
Reed Smith's 343-page report on the Richard Glossip case - DocumentCloud
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23743249-reed-smiths-343-page-report-on-the-richard-glossip-case
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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