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By Madi W and Audrey S.
OKLAHOMA CITY – Gentner Drummond, Oklahoma Attorney General, filed a brief Wednesday to advocate for death row inmate Richard Glossip’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari (meaning that after a case is tried in lower courts, a higher court reviews the case).
According to a press release from the Attorney General’s Oklahoma office, the brief arrives amid revelations of false testimony by the key witness from the prosecution, causing Drummond to claim that Glossip’s 1997 conviction for the murder of Barry Van Treese ought to be vacated.
Glossip had been initially charged with accessory to murder in 1997 after the murder of his boss, Barry Van Treese. A co-worker of Glossip had confessed to beating Van Treese to death in an Oklahoma City motel room.
The AG added that, as a portion of the plea agreement to avoid the death penalty, the co-worker alleged that Glossip had offered to pay him for the murder.
Glossip was then charged and eventually convicted of first-degree murder in 1998. The co-worker, who acted as the main and most crucial witness for the prosecution, was convicted and received a sentence of life without possibility of parole.
The AG explained that while Oklahoma admitted fault in an admission of error in the trial, Glossip’s application for post-conviction relief had been rejected in April by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA). The ruling encouraged Glossip to ask for the matter to be reviewed by the Supreme Court, which has now given Glossip a temporary stay of execution.
“The OCCA’s decision cannot be reconciled with the Court’s precedents, the record in this case, or bedrock principles,” states the AG brief.
Even after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals established ineffective assistance of counsel (which violates a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel) and subsequently overturned Glossip’s conviction, in a 2004 retrial, he was once again found guilty by the jury and sentenced to death, the AG statement notes.
After taking office as Attorney General in January 2023, Drummond said he discovered misconduct by prosecution and found that Glossip’s defense team did not have access to evidence that prosecution had access to after review by independent counsel (which was assigned to maintain impartiality in the case).
“After careful consideration – including a thorough review by an independent counsel – the State came to the conclusion that …ensuring that justice is done in this case requires a retrial. The State therefore acted consistent with ‘[t]he public trust reposed in the law enforcement officers of the Government’ and ‘confess[ed] error’ in light of the State’s reasoned judgment that ‘a miscarriage of justice’ of the highest order ‘may result from [its] remaining silent.’”
After further review of this evidence, it was determined that the coworker’s prior testimony was false due to his undisclosed psychiatric condition that required an undisclosed lithium prescription by a psychiatrist, said the AG statement.
“The conviction in this case was obtained through false testimony that the prosecution elicited but failed to correct from the most indispensable witness at Glossip’s second trial—indeed, from the person who actually delivered the fatal blows to the victim and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors to avoid facing the death penalty himself,” the AG’s brief stated.
The AG adds that, in its April ruling, the OCCA claimed that the discoveries regarding the star witness’s psychiatric competency would have not affected jurors’ decisions but the State disputes this claim.
“With this information, plus [the co-worker’s] history of drug addiction, the State believes that a qualified defense attorney likely could have attacked … [the co-worker’s] ability to properly recall key facts at the second trial and provide a viable alternative theory of the case that did not involve Glossip,” reads the brief.
“At the very least, there is a reasonable probability that evidence casting doubt on a centerpiece of the State’s theory would have been enough to persuade a juror to reject the death penalty,” the AG wrote.
