Freedom for Richard Glossip value $50,000. It additionally value 29 years of his life.
The former dying row inmate convicted of murdering the proprietor of the motel he managed walked out of jail Thursday for the primary time since 1997, after 10% of his $500,000 bond was paid by celeb and prison reform advocate Kim Kardashian, her publicist told The Oklahoman.
“It’s overwhelming, but it’s amazing at the same time,” Glossip stated exterior the Oklahoma County Detention Center, his now-gray hair flapping in a stiff wind.
A decide’s order Thursday setting bond for Glossip, 63, got here after two trials, two impartial investigations, and so many enchantment paperwork and hearings that it’s troublesome to rely.
Judge Natalie Mai stated in her order {that a} 2023 assertion by Oklahoma’s lawyer normal that there was cheap doubt within the case meant she “cannot deny bail to Glossip.”
Although Glossip – who has maintained his innocence – was in a position to go away jail Thursday with an ankle monitor and obligatory curfew, his authorized case will proceed, as prosecutors vow to strive him a 3rd time for the January 7, 1997, murder of Barry Van Treese.
Here’s how Glossip acquired so far, and what’s nonetheless forward on this unresolved case.
Nine execution dates have come and gone since Glossip’s first murder conviction. Three times, Glossip has come shut sufficient to dying to be served a “last meal” earlier than his execution was delayed.
“It’s still scary, it will always be scary until they finally open this door and let me go,” Glossip instructed NCS in 2023.
One factor that has by no means been in dispute: Van Treese was not killed by Glossip. The man who wielded the baseball bat that ended the motel proprietor’s life was a upkeep employee named Justin Sneed.
That truth has been a repeated supply of frustration for Glossip’s supporters.
“We actually know who the murderer is, and yet somebody is on death row that’s not the murderer,” stated lawyer Stan Perry, who helped conduct an impartial evaluation of the case on the request of state lawmakers.
The then-19-year-old Sneed was allowed to stay on the motel by Glossip in change for his labor at a time when Van Treese seemed to be rising suspicious of his supervisor due to lacking cash, court docket data say.
Sneed testified Glossip had promised to pay him $10,000 to hold out the murder, testimony that got here as a part of a plea deal that spared Sneed’s life. Glossip acknowledged Sneed had instructed him about killing Van Treese – data he didn’t report back to police – but stated he solely discovered after it was executed.
Sneed, now 48 years outdated, is serving a life sentence with out the opportunity of parole, a deal Glossip additionally was provided but refused, saying he wouldn’t plead responsible to against the law he didn’t commit.
Sneed has by no means publicly recanted his testimony. But Glossip’s authorized staff has produced witnesses who declare Sneed exonerated Glossip in non-public conversations and a handwritten observe from jail through which he asks, “Do I have the choice of re-canting my testimony at anytime during my life, or anything like that.”
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals – the state’s highest court docket in prison instances – overturned Glossip’s authentic responsible verdict in 2001, saying the proof surrounding Sneed’s testimony “was extremely weak,” and Glossip’s protection attorneys had been “ineffective.”
A brand new trial was ordered, and in 2004 he was convicted of murder for the second time. Once once more, Glossip was sentenced to dying.
Like most dying row inmates, Glossip’s subsequent years had been stuffed with a sequence of appeals.
The debate over plans to execute him took on extra urgency in 2014, when fellow dying row inmate Clayton Lockett was put to dying in a botched deadly injection process that lasted 43 minutes and noticed the prisoner writhing on the desk. State officers initially stated he died of a coronary heart assault, though that was later contradicted by an autopsy.
Nine months later, Charles Warner – who was convicted of raping and murdering a toddler – stated “It feels like acid” and “my body is on fire” when he was being executed below the same deadly injection process, according to a journalist witness, though he didn’t present different indicators of bodily misery.
An post-mortem report confirmed officers used an incorrect drug as a part of its execution cocktail for Warner, The Oklahoman reported.
Glossip’s scheduled execution in October 2015 was stopped on the final minute by then-Gov. Mary Fallin after officers found the identical mix-up had taken place in one other cargo of deadly injection medicine.
“At first, I was angry at Justin (Sneed), but now I feel sorry for him,” Glossip told NCS shortly after Warner’s execution. “He’s afraid of how Oklahoma will kill him if he owns up to what really happened, just like I am afraid of how they’ll kill me.”
As Glossip’s case stretched on, the documentary “Killing Richard Glossip” raised many questions on his convictions – and the eyebrows of Republicans in Oklahoma’s authorities, together with supporters of capital punishment.
“Considering the facts we uncovered, and that there exists no physical forensic evidence or credible corroborating testimony linking Glossip to the crime, our conclusion is that no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first‐degree murder,” said the legislation agency of Reed Smith after interviewing three dozen witnesses and reviewing greater than 145,000 pages of proof.
In response, Republican state Rep. Kevin McDugle – a dying penalty supporter – stated the case pressured him to query the justice of capital punishment in his state.
“If we put Richard Glossip to death, I will fight in this state to abolish the death penalty simply because the process is not pure,” he said on the time.
More pushback got here the next 12 months, when Gentner Drummond – the state’s self-proclaimed “rule of law” Republican lawyer normal who’s now operating for governor – ordered a particular prosecutor to conduct one other investigation.
“I believe Glossip was deprived of a fair trial in which the State can have confidence in the process and result,” particular prosecutor Rex Duncan wrote in his report.
“(Drummond’s) decision to seek a stay of execution and more thoroughly examine this case may be the bravest leadership decision I’ve ever witnessed, and it was absolutely the correct legal decision,” Duncan added.
Drummond asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn the conviction, but the court docket denied the request, saying there wasn’t sufficient proof of misconduct to permit it to rethink the responsible verdict.
With the lawyer normal’s assist, the case moved to the US Supreme Court in 2024. The sufferer’s household instructed the excessive court docket they remained satisfied Glossip is responsible.
“The Court should consider the effects of further delay on Barry Van Treese’s family and bring this case to a rapid conclusion,” attorneys for the Van Treese household wrote in a submitting.
But in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court docket overturned Glossip’s conviction once more, saying prosecutors had allowed Sneed to provide false testimony about his psychological well being throughout the trial.
“Had the prosecution corrected Sneed on the stand, his credibility plainly would have suffered,” Sotomayor wrote. “That correction would have revealed to the jury not just that Sneed was untrustworthy … but also that Sneed was willing to lie to them under oath.”
As the case dragged on, Drummond took one other step to protect Glossip from execution, asking the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board for clemency and saying Glossip’s prosecution had been indefensible.
Tulsa County District Attorney Steven Kunzweiler – who took workplace in 2014, lengthy after Glossip’s convictions – attended the listening to, the place clemency was denied.
McDugle – who has since left the legislature – and present Republican Rep. Justin Humphrey say they consider Kunzweiler was working behind the scenes to foyer in opposition to clemency. They filed a lawsuit Tuesday below the state Open Records Act, demanding extra data be launched about how the DA has been concerned in efforts to cease Glossip’s launch and hold him on dying row.
“Records show that District Attorney Kunzweiler and multiple district attorneys mobilized to intervene and advocate for the execution of Richard Glossip even in the face of prosecutorial misconduct,” Humphrey stated in a statement.
Kunzweiler stated it was applicable for him to attend the clemency listening to but declined to remark on the lawsuit.
“As with any pending civil litigation case, this matter will be referred for representation through the Office of the Oklahoma Attorney General, and all inquiries should be directed to the designated counsel for any comment,” he told NCS affiliate KOKI Thursday.
Although the lawyer normal had argued for clemency for Glossip, Drummond additionally says the ultimate verdict – each at trial and the court docket of public opinion – continues to be not in.
“While it was clear to me and to the US Supreme Court that Mr. Glossip did not receive a fair trial, I have never proclaimed his innocence,” Drummond stated in a statement final 12 months. “Unlike past prosecutors who allowed a key witness to lie on the stand, my office will make sure Mr. Glossip receives a fair trial based on hard facts, solid evidence and truthful testimony.”
But the most important menace hanging over Glossip’s head for many years is not on the desk. Drummond stated this time, prosecutors won’t search the dying penalty.
The date for that trial has not but been set. Glossip’s lawyer Don Knight is satisfied the passage of time that has been his shopper’s enemy whereas sitting in a single jail cell after one other will now work in his favor.
“This was a bad case in 1997. It was a worse case in 2004. It’ll be a disaster for the state in 2027 or whenever it’s going to be tried,” Knight instructed NCS’s Jake Tapper Thursday.