Richard Glossip

Richard Glossip’s case has been in the limelight for more than two decades now. His ‘alleged crime dates back to January 7, 1997. Richard Glossip, together with Justin Sneed worked for Barry Van Tresse, a motel owner. On the fateful day, Justin Sneed murdered Van Tresse with a baseball bat. His fingerprints were found at the blood-tainted crime site and on the victim’s vehicle. During interrogation, Sneed confessed to killing Van Tresse for cash. On the basis of his statement, Sneed was handed death penalty but someone advised him that if he identified someone else as the planner of the crime, he could change his death sentence to life imprisonment.

In order to avoid death row, Justin Sneed gave a statement in which he confirmed that it was Glossip who had hired him to murder Van Treese. Despite a lack of corroborating forensic evidence, Glossip was sentenced to death. Glossip’s case attained a lot of limelight as despite having no evidence against him, Glossip has been charged of a heinous crime on the testimony of one man – Justin Sneed the murderer.

Richard Glossip’s case is unique in more ways than one. He was not just convicted of murder and a given a death sentence on the testimony of the murderer himself but he is also the only convict at Oklahoma State Penitentiary to have no previous history of felony charges against him. On September 2015, Glossip’s attorney filed papers in which two new witness affidavits were inducted. While according to one, Sneed told him that he had lied about Glossip’s involvement in the case to evade death sentence the latter claimed that through his conversation with Sneed it seemed that Sneed acted alone. After the original trial was labelled as the one being ‘deeply flawed’, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals decided to vote so as to have an execution or not. An evidentiary hearing was held in which Glossip was given a chance to prove his allegations that Sneed had recanted from his original statement. Failing to prove, on September 28, 2015, he was voted against by 3-2. He was scheduled for an execution by lethal injection.

On September 30, 2015, when Glossip was having his last meal before the intended execution, Justice Stephen Breyer granted a stay in execution. Glossip by then had millions of supporters on his side who pleaded for a stay order. ‘The Oklahoman’ newspaper also advocated against the execution and pleaded that the state was about to execute a man whose guilt had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Richard Glossip has also found some high profile supporters, names like Mark Ruffalo, Peter Sarsgaard, Sir Richard Branson, Susan Sarandon, Sister Helen Prejean, and Pope Francis, backing his case.

There is a controversy regarding the Oklahoma lethal injection protocol as well which led to stay order on the execution decision. As per the report, the state did not have adequate supply of execution drugs. What’s more in the previous executions, potassium acetate was used instead of potassium chloride and due to this the case has gone to Department of Corrections. An indefinite stay has been ordered for all scheduled executions.