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Richard Glossip, Sister Helen Prejean |
"If Richard Glossip's case doesn't have enough holes to merit a 60-day stay from Gov. Mary Fallin, I don't know what does." Sister Helen Prejean
Richard E. Glossip was at the center of a major
Supreme Court case this year, arguing along with two other men on Oklahoma’s death row that the state’s choice of lethal injection drugs could cause unconstitutional suffering.
The court rejected that claim in a 5-4 decision in June, clearing the way for Oklahoma to resume executions. Mr. Glossip’s is the first; he is scheduled to die on Wednesday.
Now Mr. Glossip, 52, is again a focus of attention, this time over whether he is guilty of the arranged murder in 1997 of the owner of a run-down motel he was managing.
Mr. Glossip’s supporters call his case a striking example of a repeating pattern in American capital punishment, in which a defendant receives inadequate legal representation early on and then, many years later, only as execution nears, higher-powered lawyers and civil rights groups become involved, raising important new issues at the 11th hour, when it may be too late.
In a drumbeat of media appearances, Mr. Glossip’s supporters are calling on Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma to delay his execution for 60 days while they explore what they say is important new evidence that they released on Friday and will discuss in a news conference in Oklahoma City on Monday.
In a new report commissioned by the defense team and released on Friday, Richard A. Leo, an expert on police interrogations, said that based on transcripts of Mr. Sneed’s questioning and testimony, officers had used techniques that were known to cause false confessions — like telling him he would be the scapegoat for the murder, planting the idea that Mr. Glossip was the mastermind and pressuring Mr. Sneed to say so.
Mr. Glossip’s appeals to the state and federal
Supreme Court have been exhausted. His last hope is for Governor Fallin, a Republican, to stay his execution while his lawyers work to persuade a judge, or the state board of pardon and parole, that significant new evidence warrants a new hearing or clemency.
Source: New York Times, Erik Eckholm, September 11, 2015