A newly unearthed letter suggests the primary witness against Glossip (and the actual killer) had regrets and made a “mistake.”
Dozens of state lawmakers in Oklahoma (several of whom support the death penalty) are urging the state to consider new evidence that might clear death row inmate Richard Glossip, who has been scheduled to be executed on September 22.
In a letter dated August 4, 61 state legislators urged Attorney General John O'Connor to join a request by Glossip for a new evidentiary hearing to look over some of the information compiled by national law firm Reed Smith that purports to show Glossip's possible innocence.
Glossip is on death row for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese. Glossip did not actually kill Van Treese himself. Rather he was convicted for allegedly masterminding a plan for Justin Sneed (who was 19 at the time) to kill Van Treese.
Van Treese owned the hotel in Oklahoma City where the two men worked; Glossip was the manager and Sneed a maintenance man. Sneed claimed that Glossip pressured him and offered him money in return for the deed.
Glossip would ultimately be convicted twice—the 1st conviction being tossed in 2001—and sent to death row almost entirely on Sneed's claims. For his part, Sneed was spared the death sentence, accepted a plea deal, and sent to prison for life for beating Van Treese to death with a baseball bat.
Glossip was scheduled for execution in 2015, but he was spared when prison officials realized they had received an incorrect drug for the cocktail they use to execute inmates. The governor ordered a stay on all executions until officials could figure out what happened. Executions in the state were paused until just last year.
In June, after successfully fighting off a constitutional challenge to the state's execution methods, O'Connor began the process of rescheduling dozens of executions for the inmates sitting on death row. Glossip is second on the list, and the rescheduling has prompted a new push for a chance to prove his innocence.
Reed Smith released a lengthy report and summary in July laying out some of the problems with the case. The report shows that police investigating the murder immediately suspected Glossip and when interrogating Sneed repeatedly brought up Glossip's name and essentially pushed Sneed to point the finger back at Glossip. Jurors were not played the interrogation tape at either of Glossip's two trials. Other problems with the case have been highlighted in depth over the past decade.
This week, Reed Smith released an update that shows a letter Sneed allegedly sent from prison in 2007, following Glossip's second trial, to Gina K. Walker, the public defender who handled his case. In the letter, Sneed says he's planning to contact the attorneys with the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System (OIDS) who represented Glossip in the second trial. "I think you know were [sic] I'm going," Sneed wrote, "It was a mistake reliving this." He asks Walker to write back.
Walker (who died in 2020) wrote him back acknowledging that "some things are bothering [him]." She says she knows OIDS lawyers attempted to talk to him on Glossip's behalf and says that had Sneed refused a plea deal, he would be on death row himself. She is unsympathetic to Glossip's situation, saying, "Mr. Glossip has had 2 opportunities to save himself and refused to do so both times," meaning that Glossip had refused plea offers of his own and insisted on a right to a trial to prove his innocence. She concludes, "I hope he has not or his lawyers have not tried to make you feel responsible for the outcome of his case and his decisions."
Of course, Walker's job here is to defend her client and discourage Sneed from making decisions against his own interest. And the fact that Sneed is not on death row himself is likely attributable to his acceptance of the plea deal. But the tone of both Sneed's letter and Walker's response should clearly cast doubt on the circumstances of Van Treese's murder.
This newly revealed letter has prompted Oklahoma state Rep. Kevin McDugle (R–Broken Arrow) to push harder for a new hearing on the evidence against Glossip.
"In 2014, there were statements circulating that Sneed's daughter said Sneed wanted to recant, but she never came forward. With this letter written by Sneed, we have compelling new evidence that strongly supports what we heard. That Sneed wanted to recant his statement implicating Richard Glossip and his attorney shut him down," said McDugle in a prepared statement. "Given that the state's case rests entirely upon Sneed's testimony implicating Glossip, it is imperative that the court remand the case for a hearing before Richard is scheduled to be executed on September 22."
Prosecutors in O'Connor's office have been resisting this push and urging Oklahoma's courts to reject the hearing as a delaying tactic.
Source: reason.com, Staff, August 12, 2022
Handwritten letter casts doubt on key testimony in Oklahoma death row case
Self-confessed killer Justin Sneed gave only implicating evidence at Richard Glossip’s trial, later writing ‘things are eating at me’
Richard Glossip, who was sentenced to death in 2004 and is due to die by execution in 6 weeks’ time.
A handwritten letter has come to light casting doubt on the critical testimony of a self-confessed murderer who provided the only implicating evidence at the trial of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate in Oklahoma who is to be executed in 6 weeks’ time.
The letter was written in 2007 by Justin Sneed, a motel handyman who by his own admittance bludgeoned to death Barry Van Treese, the owner of a Best Budget, a decade earlier. Sneed’s testimony that Glossip, the manager of the motel, had put him up to the murder with a promise of $10,000 was central to the state’s case – with no other forensic or corroborating evidence to back it up.
In their letter, the 61 legislators ask the attorney general to call for a hearing to consider new evidence that has been uncovered in the case.
As a result, Glossip was sentenced to death in his second capital trial in 2004. By contrast Sneed, the killer, was given life without parole.
In the handwritten letter, Sneed writes to his own defense lawyer 3 years later expressing deep anxiety about the case and his role in it. “There are a lot of things right now that are eating at me,” he begins.
“Somethings I need to clean up,” he goes on. Then he writes: “I think you know were (sic) I’m going it was a mistake reliving this.”
The letter was uncovered recently by Reed Smith, an international law firm that was asked by Oklahoma state lawmakers to carry out an independent investigation into the Glossip case. In recent days, concern that the state might be about to kill an innocent man has reached fever pitch, with 61 legislators – most of them pro-death penalty Republicans – pleading with the state’s attorney general to hold a special hearing to consider the new evidence.
In its 343-page report, released in June, the law firm revealed that prosecutors had intentionally destroyed crucial evidence before trial in a gross violation of due process. The review concluded that “no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first-degree murder”.
Sneed’s newly uncovered letter, contained in a supplemental report released by Reed Smith on Thursday, raises further disturbing questions. What precisely was “eating at” him, and what did he want to “clean up”? Most importantly, what did he mean by “it was a mistake”?
Yet Gina Walker, Sneed’s lawyer from the Oklahoma county public defender’s office, to whom he wrote the letter, did not raise any of these questions with him. Instead Walker, who died in 2020, effectively closed down the conversation.
“I can tell by the tone of your letter that some things are bothering you,” she wrote back to Sneed in August 2007. “I know that it was very hard for you to testify at the 2nd trial.”
She went on to accuse Glossip’s defense lawyers of trying to talk Sneed out of testifying, saying that went “totally against your best interests to the benefit of their client. Had you refused [to testify], you would most likely be on death row right now.”
She added: “I hope [Glossip] has not or his lawyers have not tried to make you feel responsible for the outcome of his case”.
Kevin McDugle, a Republican representative in the Oklahoma legislature who has led the call for a pause in the approaching execution, said the letter amounted to compelling new evidence. It strongly suggested, he said, that “Sneed wanted to recant his statement implicating Richard Glossip, and his attorney shut him down”.
Source: theguardian.com, Staff, August 12, 2022
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
