US Supreme Court Orders Delay of Upcoming Execution of Death Row Prisoner Richard Glossip

By The Vanguard Staff

WASHINGTON, DC – Less that two weeks from a May 18 execution date, Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip Friday received another reprieve—his ninth—when the U.S. Supreme Court put on hold the execution, according to CNN.

Glossip had the support of the Oklahoma Attorney’s General Office, which asked for his May 18 execution to be set aside, and the “emergency hold on his execution will stay in place while the justices consider his request that they formally take up his case,” said CNN.

There were no dissents from Friday’s order, although Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in Friday’s ruling that overturned the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeal declining Glossip’s request that his execution be halted, CNN noted.

The defense repeatedly has said Glossip is not guilty of a 1998 murder for ordering the killing of his boss, although the admitted killer, who originally implicated Glossip, has asked to recant his testimony.

CNN reported, “In their filings with the US Supreme Court, Glossip’s attorneys argued that – in addition to the obviously irreparable harm he would suffer if the execution moves forward – Oklahoma ‘will also suffer harm from its Department of Corrections executing a person whom the State has concluded should never have been convicted of murder, let alone sentenced to die, in the first place.’ 

“A review launched by Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general found that prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence to Glossip that they were obligated to produce and that the evidence showed that the prosecutors’ key witness – the supposed accomplice of Glossip’s who committed the murder – had given false testimony,” CNN added.

CNN noted Glossip’s case was at SCOTUS before, including in a “major challenge the justices heard in 2015 that he and other death row inmates brought to the lethal injection protocol used in executions.” 

The court rejected the inmates’ claims the lethal drugs, “which had come under scrutiny after several botched executions, violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment,” CNN said.

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