QUOTE OF THE DAY: "As for the prosecution’s star witness, “if the state had wanted the court to actually consider the testimony of Mr. Sneed in making this bond determination, it could have called him as a witness at the hearing,” Glossip’s lawyers wrote. “Its failure to do [so], and to instead ask the court to rely on thoroughly discredited testimony, speaks volumes as to their confidence in Sneed’s credibility today.”
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In her order, Coyle relies on witnesses who describe things Glossip did that suggest he covered up his knowledge of the crime — including that Glossip had helped Sneed put plexiglass over the broken window of the room where Van Treese was killed. Coyle cited in particular the notion that Glossip was trying to steer people away from Room 102, in an apparent attempt to ensure that Van Treese’s body would not be discovered. “Multiple witnesses support that Mr. Glossip followed through with this plan,” Coyle wrote, emphasizing her point in bold. The fact remains, however, that these accounts only look damning through the lens of Sneed’s story about Glossip being in on the murder itself. Aside from Sneed’s already discredited testimony, there is still no evidence to support this."
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STORY: "Judge swallows prosecutor's discredited arguments to keep Richard Glossip in jail," by Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith, published by The Intercept, on July 24, 2025. ("Liliana Segura is an award-winning investigative journalist covering the U.S. criminal justice system, with a longtime focus on harsh sentencing, the death penalty, and wrongful convictions. She was previously an associate editor at the Nation Magazine, where she edited a number of award-winning stories and earned a 2014 Media for a Just Society Award for her writing on prison profiteering. While at The Intercept, Segura has received the Texas Gavel Award in 2016 and the 2017 Innocence Network Journalism Award for her investigations into convictions in Arizona and Ohio. In 2019 she was honored in the Abolitionist category of the Frederick Douglass 200, a recognition given by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University."………."Jordan Smith is a state and national award-winning investigative journalist based in Kansas City, Missouri. She has covered the criminal legal system for more than 25 years and, during that time, has developed a reputation as a resourceful and dogged reporter with a talent for analyzing complex social and legal issues. She spent more than 20 years reporting in Texas where she was regarded as one of the best investigative reporters in the state. Her investigative work in wrongful conviction cases has helped to exonerate six people. A longtime staff writer for the Austin Chronicle, her work has also appeared in The Nation, the Crime Report, and the Texas Observer, among other places".)
SUB-HEADING: "Mere months ago, Glossip seemed close to exoneration. Now he’s facing a third murder trial."
GIST: "In an order that reads like it was written two decades ago, an Oklahoma County judge on Wednesday denied bond for Richard Glossip, keeping him in jail while the state prepares to try him a third time for first-degree murder.
In the 18-page document, District Judge Heather Coyle underplays the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s February ruling that overturned Glossip’s most recent conviction. The ruling instead largely adopts the state’s theory of the crime that sent Glossip to death row — while ignoring volumes of evidence that have been discovered in the intervening years.
“Having considered the record, arguments of all parties, and the exhibits submitted by the parties, the court finds that the state has sufficiently shown by clear and convincing evidence that the presumption of the defendant’s guilt of a capital offense is great,” Coyle wrote. “Accordingly, the court finds Mr. Glossip’s request for bond should be, and is hereby, denied.”
The order comes despite last week’s revelation that, in a 2023 email exchange, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond agreed to a tentative plea deal that would have allowed Glossip to walk free.
Emails Reveal Oklahoma Attorney General Agreed to Release Richard Glossip
The correspondence, first reported by The Intercept, is at the heart of a motion filed by Glossip’s defense attorneys who have asked Coyle to enforce what they describe as a legally binding agreement. The state has responded by denying that the deal was ever reached, but the judge has yet to rule on the matter.
Glossip was twice convicted of the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese inside room 102 of the rundown motel his family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death, but insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.
Murder at the Motel
Until recently, it was clear that Sneed had been discredited as a witness — including by Drummond. After taking office in 2023, Drummond ordered an independent investigation into Glossip’s case, concluding that he had lost confidence in Glossip’s conviction.
Drummond took unprecedented steps to block Glossip’s execution and to overturn his conviction, successfully arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that Sneed — the state’s once “indispensable witness” — had lied on the witness stand.
Drummond now seems determined to go forward with trying Glossip for murder a third time using the same evidence previously used to convict him. During a June bond hearing, prosecutors offered nothing new, instead asking the judge to review the transcripts from Glossip’s 1997 preliminary hearing and his 2004 trial.
That appears to have been enough for Coyle. In her order denying Glossip bond, the judge relies heavily on Sneed’s prior testimony while suggesting there are other witnesses who could bolster the state’s case against Glossip. But for the most part, these other witnesses offered nothing more than circumstantial evidence that called into question Glossip’s behavior after Van Treese’s murder.
“Discredited Testimony”
Glossip was originally charged as an accessory after the fact for initially failing to give police information about the murder. The night Van Treese was killed, Glossip said, Sneed had woken him up around 4 a.m. by knocking on the wall of his apartment, which was adjacent to the motel’s office. Standing outside with a black eye, Sneed told Glossip he had chased off some drunks who had broken a window in one of the motel rooms.
According to Glossip, he asked Sneed about his black eye, and Sneed flippantly replied, “I killed Barry.” It wasn’t until the next morning, when no one could find Van Treese, that Glossip realized Sneed might have been serious. Still, Glossip didn’t tell the cops right away; he said his girlfriend suggested waiting until they figured out what was going on.
In her order, Coyle relies on witnesses who describe things Glossip did that suggest he covered up his knowledge of the crime — including that Glossip had helped Sneed put plexiglass over the broken window of the room where Van Treese was killed.
Coyle cited in particular the notion that Glossip was trying to steer people away from Room 102, in an apparent attempt to ensure that Van Treese’s body would not be discovered. “Multiple witnesses support that Mr. Glossip followed through with this plan,” Coyle wrote, emphasizing her point in bold.
The fact remains, however, that these accounts only look damning through the lens of Sneed’s story about Glossip being in on the murder itself. Aside from Sneed’s already discredited testimony, there is still no evidence to support this.
While prosecutors have offered nothing new to support the position that Glossip is a murderer, his defense team has spent more than a decade uncovering new evidence and new witnesses that not only point to Sneed as the sole perpetrator of the crime, but also reveal that the state hid and destroyed evidence before Glossip’s 2004 retrial.
At the bond hearing and in court briefs, Glossip’s attorneys tried to offer Coyle much of this evidence — including letters Sneed wrote expressing his desire to recant his testimony against Glossip. They also said several of the witnesses the state relied on have since died — meaning the defense would have no opportunity to cross-examine them about new and previously undisclosed evidence.
While Coyle said she would consider some of the defense’s new information, her ultimate order reflects that she didn’t consider any of it — save for a single paragraph noting that the Supreme Court had overturned Glossip’s conviction.
As for the prosecution’s star witness, “if the state had wanted the court to actually consider the testimony of Mr. Sneed in making this bond determination, it could have called him as a witness at the hearing,” Glossip’s lawyers wrote. “Its failure to do [so], and to instead ask the court to rely on thoroughly discredited testimony, speaks volumes as to their confidence in Sneed’s credibility today.”
https://theintercept.com/2025/07/24/richard-glossip-bond-denied/
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
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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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