Supreme Court to Reconsider Execution Oklahoma No Longer Backs

The US Supreme Court, in a rare move, will consider claims from an Oklahoma death row inmate who says prosecutors suppressed evidence to obtain his conviction in a murder-for-hire.

The conservative-led court, which denies virtually all execution appeals, agreed on Monday to review Richard Glossip’s conviction that even the state’s top attorney says he can no longer stand behind.

Oklahoma has set nine execution dates for Glossip since he was convicted in 1997 of plotting to murder his former boss, Barry Van Tresse, who was beaten to death. Glossip says he’s innocent.

One of those dates was set aside by the justices in 2015 while the Supreme Court considered Glossip’s challenge to the lethal injection drugs the state planned to use following a series of botched executions. A 5-4 court ruled against him in Glossip v. Gross.

The current challenge attacks the conviction. At the heart of the dispute is the testimony of Justin Sneed, who says Glossip hired him to murder Van Treese. Sneed, who was sentenced to life in prison, was crucial to Glossip’s conviction.

But documents handed over by the state years later show that Sneed said he wanted to recant his testimony, was heavily coached by the prosecution to make his story match the evidence, and lied about seeing a psychiatrist, according to Glossip’s petitions for review.

Suppressed evidence and other errors during trial led state Attorney General Gentner Drummond to urge the courts without success to undo Glossip’s conviction.

The “injustice of allowing a capital sentence to be carried out where the conviction was occasioned by the government’s own admitted failings would be nigh unfathomable,” the state said in its response supporting Glossip.

The case is Glossip v. Oklahoma, U.S., No. 22-7466.