Category: Oklahoma

Richard Glossip interview


Glossip is interviewed after his release from prison

June 2026

After fac­ing nine exe­cu­tion dates, and being giv­en three last meals, Richard Glossip was released on bail on May 14, 2026 and set foot out­side of prison walls for the first time in near­ly three decades. In an inter­view with The Intercept, Mr. Glossip dis­cuss­es adjust­ing phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly to his new life as he awaits a pos­si­ble retri­al for the 1997 crime that sent him to death row, despite his long­stand­ing claims of inno­cence. Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai ordered his release on a $500,000 bond, stat­ing ​“The Court hopes that a new tri­al, free of error, will pro­vide all inter­est­ed par­ties, and the cit­i­zens of Oklahoma, the clo­sure they deserve.”

“I tried nev­er to let myself become insti­tu­tion­al­ized… But I mean it’s hard. You go through all these hor­ri­ble things and all these dif­fer­ent dates … and last meals and every­thing. And then it doesn’t look like this day will ever get here. But you always hope that it will“.

Mr. Glossip said of the wide­spread atten­tion on his case, ​“It’s over­whelm­ing but it’s amaz­ing at the same time.” Since his release, he has been able to reunite with his wife Lea, with whom he first cor­re­spond­ed and lat­er mar­ried while in prison. In a con­ver­sa­tion with The Intercept, Mr. Glossip described ini­tial­ly hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty sleep­ing with­out the con­stant noise of prison, eat­ing at a neigh­bor­hood Italian restau­rant with his wife, and going food shop­ping. He also dis­cussed feel­ing sup­port­ed by his com­mu­ni­ty in Oklahoma. He recount­ed sev­er­al sto­ries of being rec­og­nized, includ­ing by a bar­ber who refused pay­ment for his hair­cut, telling Mr. Glossip it was ​“an hon­or” to cut his hair.

“Once you’re out here and you see all the things that was tak­en away from you — and all the times they almost took every­thing away from me, my life and every­thing — you see all of it now… And it kind of still makes me angry at times because none of this should have ever hap­pened. And this should have nev­er been tak­en from me in the first place”.

Mr. Glossip is now await­ing a pos­si­ble retri­al for his alleged involve­ment in the 1997 ​“mur­der-for-hire” of Barry Van Trees, his boss at an Oklahoma City Motel. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who pre­vi­ous­ly con­fessed error in the pros­e­cu­tions that end­ed in Mr. Glossip’s death sen­tence, announced that his office will not seek the death penal­ty in his new tri­al. The Supreme Court vacat­ed Mr. Glossip’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in February 2025, find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors allowed a key wit­ness to lie in court and with­held cru­cial infor­ma­tion from the defense about the same wit­ness. AG Drummond, who sup­port­ed Mr. Glossip’s appeal to the United States Supreme Court, now says “…my office will make sure Mr. Glossip receives a fair tri­al based on hard facts, sol­id evi­dence and truthful testimony.” 

They’ll make the right deci­sions. I know they will. I wouldn’t be out here today if they wasn’t… So I’m just going to let them han­dle it. … I’m just gonna enjoy life.

This text is from the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty

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Good news from Oklahoma


Richard Glossip released after nearly three decades on death row

May 20

We are pleased to report the release on bail of Richard Glossip for whom we have campaigned for many years. His case is a long and tortuous one and he has been served ‘last meals’ on three occasions. He has been on death row for 27 years. In the endless series of trials and appeals it seems to be clear that the prosecution case was always weak. The crime was the murder of Barry van Treese in 1997 and Glossip was alleged to be the killer.

The prosecution allowed its key witness, Justin Sneed, to provide false testimony about his mental health and medical treatment. The new evidence showed that Sneed was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium, facts that were withheld from the defence. At trial, Sneed falsely claimed he was never treated by a psychiatrist and received lithium mistakenly. This falsehood was material because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence implicating Glossip, and impeachment of his credibility could have influenced the jury’s decision. The prosecution had prior knowledge of Sneed’s mental health treatment and still failed to correct the misstatement when it was made to the jury.

Correcting this false testimony would likely have changed the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s reliability. The prosecution is alleged to excluded exculpatory evidence, interfered with witness testimony, and allowed destruction of key physical evidence. Given these cumulative errors and their impact on the fairness of the trial, Glossip is entitled to a new trial. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ rejection of the attorney general’s confession of error was based on a misapplication of federal law.

Free for now

Richard Glossip walked out of an Oklahoma County jail Thursday with his wife, free on bond for the first time since his 1997 arrest, after a judge set his release terms ahead of a retrial the U.S. Supreme Court ordered last year. As Hannah Ziegler reported for the New York Times, Judge Natalie Mai set Glossip’s bond at $500,000, requiring an electronic monitoring device and prohibiting contact with witnesses or travel outside Oklahoma. A group of supporters helped raise the bond money.

Glossip was convicted in 1998 and again in 2004 of arranging the murder of his employer, Barry Van Treese, through motel handyman Justin Sneed. The state set execution dates for him nine times. Two independent investigations later found that critical evidence had been withheld and that Sneed’s testimony, the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case, was faulty.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who had previously asked the Supreme Court to throw out Glossip’s conviction, said he would retry the case but would not again seek the death penalty. Glossip’s attorney Donald Knight said the bond ruling was unexpected and marked a step forward after what he called a decades-long nightmare.

Judge Mai wrote that a new trial free of error would give all parties and Oklahoma citizens the closure they deserve. Knight said the court’s decision had rejected the state’s claim of a strong case for guilt. Glossip told reporters outside the jail Thursday that it was overwhelming but amazing.

The point here is that the case was weak and there are serious doubts about his guilt. Had he been executed in one of the three previous occasions there would be no coming back. It could not be undone.

Sources: MSN, Oklahoma Watch, The Oklahoman. Picture NBC.

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New trial for Richard Glossip


Death row inmate of 27 years to receive new trial

June 2025

Richard Glossip has been on death row in Oklahoma for 27 years and has been on the verge of execution nine times. His case went to the Supreme Court who found that a key witness had lied and that prosecutors had withheld information. The decision was vacated and Oklahoma’s Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, has ordered a new trial which is promised to be fair. He made clear however that he was not proclaiming his innocence.

The case illustrates a problem with the justice system if evidence which may cast a different light on a case is withheld by the police or prosecutors particularly evidence which is exculpatory. No one would pretend the UK system of justice is perfect but the system of discovery which demands that the defence team has access to relevant evidence before the trial, has been a key development in recent years. Too often in US trials by contrast, lack of this information or candour by the prosecutors has been a factor.

Richard Glossip (pictured, theintercept.com) may by now have been executed. At one planned execution it was discovered that the lethal drugs to be used did not match execution protocols which led to a suspension of executions in the state for seven years.

Glossip’s case is a clear example why capital punishment should not be used by a state. Simply put, mistakes cannot be rectified. Amnesty is against capital punishment in all circumstances. The US is the only state on the American continent to retain it. There is little evidence that it is effective. It brutalises the state. It is incredibly expensive. And as has been shown in the Glossip case, if false evidence was used to secure a conviction, then the mistake cannot be put right. In the USA around 130 people on death row have been found to be innocent since 1973. The country joins some reprehensible regimes such as China, Iran, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia which use the penalty against huge numbers of its citizens – in the case of China an unknown number since it is a state secret but it is believed to be thousands.

Sources: Death Penalty Information Center; NBC News; The Attorney General’s office; AP News; The Oklahoman.

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Richard Glossip case: latest


US Supreme Court rules that prosecutors violated ethical responsibilities

February 2025

The case of Richard Glossip in Oklahoma raises a number of interesting issues concerning the death penalty in the USA and in this case, the state of Oklahoma. In a 5-3 decision in Glossip v. Oklahoma issued on 25 February, the Supreme Court judges ruled that the prosecutors had ‘violated their duty to correct false testimony’. The prosecutors had also ‘suppressed material evidence concerning their star witness, Justin Sneed’ who actually committed the murder.

The case involved the murder in 1997 of Barry van Treese the owner of a motel. Sneed confessed to the killing and agreed a plea bargain claiming that Glossip had instructed him to carry out the murder. This saved him from execution. There are a number of factors which has made this a case attracting international attention.

There was very little corroboration evidence apart from the testimony of Sneed. Sneed’s mental state was not revealed to the defence (defense) team, nor was his untrustworthiness or that he had lied to the police. Glossip’s legal team has discovered that Sneed had discussed recanting his testimony before the original trial and since. This had not been revealed to them. Another not unusual factor is the doubtful quality of his defence counsel.

There is not doubt that Glossip has suffered much in the 27 years. He has had no less than nine execution dates and has eaten three ‘last meals’.

It is being said that this case will not have wider effects because so many elements are unusual. But it does highlight the problem of the death penalty. Had any one of the nine actually taken place, there would have been no chance of an appeal. If the criminal system has people willing to withhold evidence, then any chance of a fair trial is unlikely. It is also unwise to convict someone of the ultimate legal penalty without certainty which must mean at the very least, corroborative and trustworthy evidence. A defendant must also have first class attorneys to defend him. The testimony of an unreliable witness should be treated with great caution.

A new trial has been ordered.

Sources:

World Campaign Against the Death Penalty; BBC, The Hill.

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Harmful effects of the death penalty


The effects on those responsible for carrying out executions is often overlooked

February 2025

In discussions about executions the focus is, naturally enough, on the individual who is about to be put to death. We forget that there are many prison officers who are closely involved with those on death row, sometimes for many years, even decades. This post draws on material produced by the Death Penalty Information Center in the US for which we are grateful. The Salisbury group is focusing on the state of Oklahoma. We are grateful to group member Lesley for the work in compiling this.

Executions can cause prison staff to suf­fer psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress sim­i­lar to what vet­er­ans expe­ri­ence

after war. A 2022 NPR inves­ti­ga­tion found that cor­rec­tions offi­cers faced symp­toms such as insom­nia, night­mares, pan­ic attacks, sui­ci­dal thoughts, per­son­al­i­ty changes, and sub­stance abuse – all hall­marks or comor­bidi­ties of post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der. Of the 16 peo­ple NPR inter­viewed who par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions, none sup­port­ed the death penal­ty in their wake. Psychologists use the term ​“moral injury” to describe how com­mit­ting an act that con­tra­dicts one’s deeply held beliefs, such as caus­ing anoth­er person’s death, cre­ates a severe psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell coined the term ​“executioner stress” to describe the spe­cif­ic men­tal impact of car­ry­ing out the death penalty. 

The stress may also extend to guards who do not par­tic­i­pate in the exe­cu­tion itself, but devel­op close rela­tion­ships with death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers over the course of decades work­ing on death row. Some cor­rec­tions offi­cers have remarked that they spend more time with the peo­ple on death row than their own fam­i­lies. They may come to see the con­demned pris­on­ers as friends, or wit­ness the pris­on­ers’ men­tal or phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. In stud­ies, offi­cers have expressed con­cerns about the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty, not­ing that they had worked with many peo­ple with life sen­tences who com­mit­ted equiv­a­lent or worse crimes than the peo­ple the offi­cers helped put to death. 

“There is a part of the war­den that dies with his pris­on­er,”

The psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of per­form­ing exe­cu­tions is not a new phe­nom­e­non. Donald Cabana and Jerry Givens both con­duct­ed exe­cu­tions in the begin­ning of the mod­ern era, in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, and went on to pub­licly oppose the death penal­ty. ​“There is a part of the war­den that dies with his pris­on­er,” Mr. Cabana often said.

Journalist Jennifer Gonnerman researched New York’s last four exe­cu­tion­ers, who over­saw the use of the elec­tric chair from 1913 through 1963, a peri­od dur­ing which hun­dreds of peo­ple were put to death. Several of the men expe­ri­enced med­ical issues around the time of exe­cu­tions, such as migraines or faint­ing spells. One, Robert Elliot, lat­er became a promi­nent death penal­ty abo­li­tion­ist. Two of the men, John Hulbert and Dow Hover, died by suicide. 

Yet prison staff have long faced a cul­ture of silence about exe­cu­tion-relat­ed trau­ma. ​“We don’t talk about it,” said Justin Jones, direc­tor of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections from 2005 to 2013, who joined the effort to increase the time between exe­cu­tions (see Oklahoma below.)  ​“Correctional offi­cers are pub­lic ser­vants on the low­est salaries in state gov­ern­ment, and they get home at the end of the day and just absorb it.” NPR’s inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that some exe­cu­tion team mem­bers had nev­er even told their fam­i­lies they par­tic­i­pat­ed. ​“We all knew to keep it silent,” said Catarino Escobar, who worked on the exe­cu­tion squad in Nevada. Mr. Escobar was strapped to the gur­ney when he played the pris­on­er dur­ing a prac­tice ses­sion, and he grew pan­icked and became con­vinced he was going to die. NPR found that only one of the offi­cers they inter­viewed had ever received men­tal health care relat­ed to their posi­tion, and even when care was offered, it was ​“over­whelm­ing­ly option­al” and ​“many of them avoid­ed ask­ing for it so as not to seem weak.” 

Oklahoma

In this con­text, uni­fied efforts by cor­rec­tions staff to address the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of exe­cu­tions rep­re­sented a mile­stone. In March 2024 a group of nine for­mer Oklahoma cor­rec­tions offi­cials wrote a let­ter to Attorney General Gentner Drummond and, based on the detri­men­tal impact of the job and the lack of men­tal health sup­port, asked for an increase from a time of 60 to 90 days between executions. They not­ed that exe­cu­tion team mem­bers expe­ri­ence an increased risk of PTSD, sui­cide, and sub­stance abuse, and the gruelling prepa­ra­tion sched­ule puts staff mem­bers through­out the prison on edge due to ​“near-con­stant mock exe­cu­tions being con­duct­ed with­in earshot of pris­on­ers’ cells, staff offices, and vis­it­ing rooms.” With few state resources at their dis­pos­al, some employ­ees even resort­ed to talk­ing with defence men­tal health experts vis­it­ing the prison ​“about the dis­tress they are expe­ri­enc­ing due to the non­stop executions.” 

This com­pressed exe­cu­tion sched­ule also increas­es the risk of some­thing going wrong dur­ing the exe­cu­tion process because the stress cre­at­ed by each exe­cu­tion com­pounds the dif­fi­cul­ty of an already com­plex pro­ce­dure. If even a rou­tine exe­cu­tion can inflict last­ing harm on cor­rec­tions staff, the trau­mat­ic impact of a botched exe­cu­tion is expo­nen­tial­ly worse. Oklahoma has expe­ri­enced this harm on mul­ti­ple occa­sions and should not need­less­ly place its hard­work­ing cor­rec­tion­al staff at risk of anoth­er such mistake.

“Prison staff need to ‘man up'” Judge says

Judge Gary Lumpkin dismissed these concerns, telling officials that prison staff needed ‘to suck it up’ and ‘man up’.  Prison staff were report­ed­ly angered by Judge Lumpkin’s com­ments that they need­ed to ​“man up” and the sug­ges­tion that their con­cerns were not valid. ​“Anybody that thinks that exe­cut­ing some­body is no prob­lem has not been a part of the process,” said Justin ​“JJ” Humphrey, the state assem­bly chair of a crim­i­nal jus­tice and cor­rec­tions com­mit­tee and 20-year vet­er­an of the cor­rec­tions depart­ment. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals even­tu­al­ly grant­ed the exten­sion request in May. 

(Source: Death Penalty Information Centre – December 2024). Image: USA Today.

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