Supreme Court Invites Former Clerk to Argue for Death Penalty

The US Supreme Court invited a lawyer who clerked for the chief justice to argue in support of executing an Oklahoma man on death row who’s fighting his conviction.

Christopher Michel, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and former attorney in the Solicitor General’s Office, was asked in an order Friday to step into the rare death penalty appeal the court agreed to hear.

The case is unique because Oklahoma is supporting death row inmate Richard Glossip, who says prosecutors suppressed evidence in order to convict him of a murder-for-hire plot in 1997.

“While the State previously opposed relief for Glossip, it has concluded, based on careful review of new information that recently came to light relating to prosecutorial misconduct at Glossip’s trial and cumulative error, that Glossip’s conviction and capital sentence cannot stand,” the Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and state Solicitor General Garry Gaskins told the court in July.

In situations where there isn’t an opposing party in a case, the court often asks attorneys who have clerked for the court to step in. Michel clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He now co-chairs Quinn Emanuel’s national appellate practice.

The case is Glossip v. Oklahoma, U.S., No. 22-7466, 1/26/24.