 |
| Richard Glossip |
Richard Glossip, 52, will be the next Oklahoma inmate to be executed under the state lethal injection protocol approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Court of Criminal Appeals set Glossip's execution date for September 15, 2016.
Glossip will be put to death for his role in the brutal murder of Barry Van Treese in 1997.
Late last year, Ali Meyer traveled to McAlester to talk with Glossip about his case, his execution and his claims of innocence.
"I'm prepared for whatever happens, but it's not easy," Glossip said behind a wall of thick glass and metal bars. "It's like you're in a tomb, just waiting to die so they can finish it off. You hardly get any contact, and the contact you have is with guards. It's hard; harder than people think it is. People think we've got it easy down here. It's not true."
Richard Eugene Glossip has been on Oklahoma's death row for 17 years.
"The dying part doesn't bother me. Everybody dies, but I want people to know I didn't kill this man (Barry Van Treese). I didn't participate or plan or anything to do with this crime. I want people to know that it's not just for me that I'm speaking out. It's for other people on death row around this country who are innocent and are going to be executed for something they didn't do. It's not right that it's happening. We're in a country where that should never happen."
Richard Glossip was convicted of murder-for-hire in the 1997 death of Barry Van Treese.
"They offered me a life sentence at my 2nd trial. I turned it down because I'm not going to stand there and admit to something that I didn't do. Even though my attorneys said I was an idiot for turning it down because I could end up back on death row. I prefer death row than to tell somebody I committed a crime I didn't do." Glossip said. "I understand people want the death penalty, especially in the state of Oklahoma because of the crimes that are committed. I understand that even though I don't believe in it. But, one thing you should be absolutely sure about is that you're not about to kill an innocent man."
Glossip's co-worker, Justin Sneed, confessed to the murder of Barry Van Treese. Sneed testified against Glossip in exchange for his life. Sneed is now serving a life sentence.
"I wake up and look at these walls and think, 'How the hell am I here?' I think about it, try to figure out what went wrong. I just can't figure it out. It's a scary thing."
The State of Oklahoma will use the controversial execution drug Midazolam to put Richard Glossip to death.
"It just really doesn't make any sense to me what's going on. They're just in such a hurry to kill."
Last year, the State of Oklahoma spent 5 months revamping the death chamber to carry out executions.
"You're crammed in this box and every day you think about dying. You know they're putting these cells up there to stick you in. I think that's when it got even scarier the day they started construction because then you know they're going through all this stuff to make sure they kill somebody. That's a scary thing to think about."
Source: KFOR news, July 7, 2015
WHAT HAPPENED IN ROOM 102 - Oklahoma Prepares to Execute Richard Glossip
On June 29, the very day the United States Supreme Court upheld Oklahoma's
lethal injection protocol in
Glossip v. Gross, signaling to the state that it
could resume executions, State Attorney General Scott Pruitt wasted no time.
His office sent a request to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals asking that
death warrants be signed for the next 3 men in line for the gurney - the same 3
men whose challenge had made it all the way to Washington. "The above inmates
have exhausted all regular state and federal appeals," the attorney general
wrote, respectfully urging the Court to schedule their executions. On
Wednesday, July 8, the Court complied, setting 3 dates for the fall.
Richard Glossip is 1st in line to die, on September 16. As the lead plaintiff
in the case before the Supreme Court, his name became synonymous with the legal
fight over midazolam, a drug linked to a number of botched executions, but
which the Court decided is constitutional for carrying out lethal injections.
Glossip, who spoke to The Intercept hours after the ruling, did not have time
to dwell on the decision. Even if the Court had ruled in his favor, he pointed
out, Oklahoma remained determined to execute him and has provided itself with a
range of options for doing so - most recently, adding nitrogen gas to the mix.
With a new execution date looming, "I'm trying to stop them from killing me by
any method," Glossip said, "because of the fact that I'm innocent."
Glossip has always maintained his innocence, ever since he was arrested in the
winter of 1997 for a grisly killing that authorities prosecuted as a
murder-for-hire. It is true that he himself did not kill anyone - a 19-year-old
man named Justin Sneed confessed to police that he beat the victim to death
with a baseball bat - but Glossip was identified as the "mastermind" behind the
crime. Sneed, who worked for Glossip, claimed his boss pressured him to carry
out the murder, offering him employment opportunities and several thousand
dollars in return. There was very little additional evidence to back up his
claims, but Sneed nevertheless was able to secure the state's conviction of
Glossip, saving himself from death row. Today, Sneed is serving life without
parole at a medium security prison in Lexington, Oklahoma. Meanwhile, Glossip
faces execution, while continuing to insist he had nothing to do with the
murder. Last January, he came within a day of being executed and was in the
process of saying goodbye to family when the Supreme Court granted certiorari
to his lethal injection challenge.
Glossip has some outspoken supporters, including family members, the longtime
anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, as well as his former defense
attorney, Wayne Fournerat, who was adamant in a conversation with
The Intercept
that his former client is innocent. But last October a particularly unlikely
figure came forward to plead that Oklahoma spare Glossip's life: O'Ryan Justine
Sneed - Justin Sneed's grown daughter. In a
letter to the Oklahoma Pardon and
Parole Board, she wrote that, based on her many communications with her dad,
she "strongly believe[s]" that Richard Glossip is an innocent man. "For a
couple of years now, my father has been talking to me about recanting his
original testimony," she wrote. "I feel his conscious [sic] is getting to him."
Justine Sneed's letter never reached the board. It arrived in the mail too late
for Glossip's attorneys to submit it for consideration. To date, Sneed himself
has not come forward - according to his daughter, he fears what it could mean
for his plea deal. Nor has she made any further public statements since her
letter was published. (The Intercept made numerous attempts to reach her for an
interview.) Her claims do not prove that Sneed lied, of course. But the
available records in the 18-year-old case of Richard Glossip are themselves
good reason for concern. From the police interrogation of Justin Sneed in 1997
to transcripts from Glossip's 2 trials, the picture that emerges is one of a
flimsy conviction, a case based on the word of a confessed murderer with a very
good incentive to lie, and very little else. As Oklahoma gets ready to restart
executions using its newly sanctioned lethal injection protocol, time is
running out to answer the question: Could the state be preparing to kill an
innocent man?
It was sometime after 4 a.m. on January 7, 1997, that 33-year-old Richard
Glossip woke up to the sound of pounding on the wall outside his apartment at
the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City. He lived there with his girlfriend of
five years, D-Anna Wood; she later described waking up to "scraping on the
wall." It was "kind of scary loud," she said.
Glossip had lived at the motel since 1995, when he was hired by the owner,
Barry Van Treese, a father of 5 who lived some 90 miles away and owned a second
motel in Tulsa. Van Treese happened to be visiting Oklahoma City, but he
generally relied on Glossip to run the daily operations, only dropping by a
couple times a month to pay his staff and check on the property. For managing
the Best Budget Inn, Glossip received a salary of $1,500 a month, as well as
room and board in the apartment adjacent to the motel's office. On Mondays,
which were usually slower nights, he and Wood would lock the front door to the
motel around 2 a.m. Any guest trying to check in after that hour had to ring a
buzzer to get in.
Source: The Intercept, Liliana Segura, Jordan Smith, July 10, 2015
Death Penalty foes schedule Capitol press conference for Monday morning
Opponents of the ultimate sanction have slated a press conference on Monday
morning (July 13) to present their case against execution of Richard Glossip,
now on death row at the state prison in McAlester.
Participants will include Don Knight, an attorney who believes Glossip was
wrongly convicted of procuring murder.
A press release announcing the Monday morning meeting with reporters detailed
that Knight wants help from the public as he makes the case for Glossip's
exoneration:
"There were many people at the Best Budget Inn during the early morning hours
of January 7, 1997 who may have knowledge of the crime, or who may have
interacted with individuals who were there at the time. Mr. Knight will be
asking these, and other, members of the public to come forward and speak the
truth to prevent another tragedy from occurring."
House Democratic staff summarized the focus of Monday's event in a press
release: "A team of lawyers has volunteered to work on behalf of Mr. Richard
Glossip because he has always maintained his innocence and the evidence against
him is paper thin. Knight will discuss evidence the team is attempting to
uncover that would exonerate Richard Glossip, as no one wants an innocent man
to be executed."
Since the start, Glossip has asserted his innocence in the murder of Barry Van
Treese, owner of the hotel where he was manager.
The admitted killer is Justin Sneed, who beat Van Treese to death with a
baseball bat. Sneed said Glossip was afraid of losing his job at the Inn, and
promised to pay him $10,000 to kill their boss. Sneed testified against
Glossip, and received a life sentence without parole.
Former state Sen. Connie Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, serves as chair of the
Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (OK-CADP), the group sponsoring
Monday's press conference, slated for 10 a.m. in Room 432B, in the broadcast
media press room.
In a statement to The City Sentinel concerning capital punishment and the
scheduled execution, Johnson said:
"Once again, Oklahoma has set a date, September 16, to kill for its citizens as
punishment for the killing of one of its citizens. It's ironic that this
particular choice of punishment only applies to citizens and not law
enforcement as Oklahoma once again notoriously leads the nation - this time in
the number of deaths at the hands of law enforcement - but that's a
conversation for another article.
"The difference this time is that this particular citizen who is sentenced to
die appears to be innocent.
"The date-setting - coming on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision
upholding Oklahoma's lethal injection drug's constitutionality - while
expected, is no less disappointing.
"Our advocacy opportunity in the next eight weeks is to educate people, in
order to support Mr. Glossip's legal team in shedding new light on information
that proves his innocence; information that the criminal justice system has
refused to allow to be presented.
"There is so much wrong with this case, the system, and the penalty. If it's
wrong to kill, it's always wrong to kill."
Sister Helen Prejean, a leading foe of the death penalty, will return to
Oklahoma for Monday's event. Also scheduled to attend and participate are Sen.
Johnson, state Rep. George Young, D-Oklahoma City, and OK-CADP spokesperson
Rev. Adam Leathers.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Oklahoma's death penalty
protocols (including use of the drug midazolam), were constitutional. That
allowed the state to move forward with 3 executions, with Glossip slated to be
the 1st.
At the time, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt commented, "This marks the
8th time a court has reviewed and upheld as constitutional the lethal injection
protocol used by Oklahoma. The Court's ruling preserves the ability of the
Department of Corrections to proceed with carrying out the punishment of death.
The state appreciates the justices' thoughtful consideration of these important
issues."
Pruitt said, "The families in these three cases have waited a combined 48 years
for justice. Now that the legal issues have been settled, the state can proceed
with ensuring that justice is served for the victims of these horrible and
tragic crimes."
As Johnson hinted, the affirmation of capital punishment - rebuffing a case
brought by death row inmates - was expected in the case of
Glossip v. Gross.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, with these essential
conclusions: "First, the prisoners failed to identify a known and available
alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain, a
requirement of all Eighth Amendment method-of-execution claims. ... Second, the
District Court did not commit clear error when it found that the prisoners
failed to establish that Oklahoma's use of a massive dose of midazolam in its
execution protocol entails a substantial risk of severe pain."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the primary dissent, in which three of her
colleagues joined. She argued lawyers "presented ample evidence showing that
the State's planned use of this drug poses substantial, constitutionally
intolerable risks." She and other justices pointed, among past precedents, to
the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment to support their
dissent.
Going a step further, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote (with Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg joining) that the Court should move toward ending capital
punishment.
In support of his reasoning, Breyer observed, "Last year, in 2014, 6 death row
inmates were exonerated based on actual innocence. All had been imprisoned for
more than 30 years."
Source: The City Sentinel, July 12, 2015
