Oklahoma AG orders independent counsel to review Glossip death penalty case

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond says an independent counsel will perform a comprehensive review of Richard Glossip’s murder conviction and death sentence.

Glossip has been on death-row for 25 years for the murder of Barry Van Treese.

The case goes back to 1997, when Glossip and Justin Sneed were convicted of killing Glossip’s boss and owner of the Best Budget Inn, Barry Van Treese.

Although Sneed confessed to beating and killing Van Treese with a bat, Sneed testified that Glossip hired him to kill Van Treese.

In exchange for his testimony, Sneed was given a life sentence. Glossip was sentenced to death.

Over the years, Glossip has had his execution date delayed seven times.

Now, Drummond says former prosecutor Rex Duncan will review ‘all aspects of the investigation, trial, sentencing and appeals process’.

“As my office will represent the State at the clemency hearing, it is my responsibility to ensure that we are appropriately responding to all evidence that has been presented through Mr. Glossip’s conviction and incarceration,” Drummond said. “Circumstances surrounding this case necessitate a thorough review. While I am confident in our judicial system, that does not allow me to ignore evidence. This review helps ensure that justice is served, both to the Van Treese family and the accused.”

Drummond spoke personally with various members of the Van Treese family before making this decision.

“I always will remain focused on the families of victims, who have suffered unimaginable loss and await justice for their loved ones,” he said.

“We are thankful to Attorney General Drummond for his wise decision to appoint an independent counsel to conduct a comprehensive review of Richard Glossip’s case. From the beginning of our work on this case, all we have asked for is a fair review of all the evidence. The new evidence we have uncovered since 2015 shows conclusively, as the first independent investigation by Reed Smith found, that no reasonable juror who viewed all the evidence would find Mr. Glossip guilty of murder for hire. We are confident that this new investigation will reach the same conclusion. Richard Glossip is innocent of this crime. We look forward to fully cooperating with Rex Duncan so that he can complete his work as expeditiously as possible, and the State can begin to right this terrible wrong.” — Don Knight, attorney for Richard Glossip

Independent Counsel Rex Duncan is a Colonel (retired) in the Oklahoma Army National Guard and served as District Attorney of Osage and Pawnee Counties from 2011 to 2019. Prior to that time, he represented House District 35 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

Source: kfor.com, K. Douglas, January 26, 2023

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Boston Marathon bomber’s appeal of death sentence marked by delays and secrecy

As the city marks the 12th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sits on federal death row for admittingly detonating bombs at the finish line that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Yet, his fate remains uncertain after a decade of legal wrangling, as his lawyers continue to challenge his death sentence. The federal judge who presided over his 2015 trial was ordered by an appeals court in March 2024 to investigate defense claims that two jurors were biased and should have been stricken from the panel. If he finds they were, then Tsarnaev is entitled to a new trial over whether he should be sentenced to life in prison or death, according to the appeals court.

Singapore executes man for 2017 murder of pregnant wife and daughter

Teo Ghim Heng, who strangled his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter in 2017 before burning their bodies, was executed on 16 April 2025 after exhausting all legal avenues. His clemency pleas were rejected and his conviction upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2022. Teo Ghim Heng, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and their four-year-old daughter in 2017, was executed on 16 April 2025. The Singapore Prison Service confirmed that Teo’s death sentence was carried out at Changi Prison Complex. In a news release on the same day, the police stated: “He was accorded full due process under the law, and was represented by legal counsel both at the trial and at the appeal. His petitions to the President for clemency were unsuccessful.”

USA | They were on federal death row. Now they may go to a supermax prison.

A group of federal prisoners filed a lawsuit this week accusing the Trump administration of seeking to move them to a supermax prison to face tougher conditions as punishment for having their death sentences commuted by President Joe Biden. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life in prison without parole. After his inauguration, Trump ordered that the former death row prisoners be housed “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”

USA | Who are the death row executioners? Disgraced doctors, suspended nurses and drunk drivers

These are just the US executioners we know. But they are a chilling indication of the executioners we don’t know Being an executioner is not the sort of job that gets posted in a local wanted ad. Kids don’t dream about being an executioner when they grow up, and people don’t go to school for it. So how does one become a death row executioner in the US, and who are the people doing it? This was the question I couldn’t help but ask when I began a book project on lethal injection back in 2018. I’m a death penalty researcher, and I was trying to figure out why states are so breathtakingly bad at a procedure that we use on cats and dogs every day. Part of the riddle was who is performing these executions.

Indonesia | British grandmother who has spent 12 years on death row hugs grandchildren for first time as they visit Bali prison

Lindsay Sandiford, 68, reportedly shared 'cuddles and kisses' with her loved ones for the first time in years A British grandmother who has been stuck on death row in Bali for more than a decade has been reunited with her loved ones for the first time in years. Lindsay Sandiford has been locked up in Indonesia's notorious Kerobokan Prison since 2013 after being found guilty of trying to smuggle £1.6million of cocaine into the country.

Indiana Supreme Court sets May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie

The condemned man has exhausted his appeals but is likely to seek a clemency plea. Indiana Supreme Court justices on Tuesday set a May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie, who was convicted in 2002 for killing a law enforcement officer from Beech Grove. The high court’s decision followed a series of exhausted appeals previously filed by Ritchie and his legal team. The inmate’s request for post-conviction relief was denied in Tuesday’s 13-page order, penned by Chief Justice Loretta Rush, although she disagreed with the decision in her opinion.

Louisiana to seek death penalty for child killer despite Biden’s commutation

CATAHOULA PARISH, La. — While a federal death row sentence has been reclassified by former President Joe Biden to life without parole, the State of Louisiana still seeks the death penalty for a man convicted of the kidnapping, torturing and murdering a child in Catahoula Parish. According to a statement by the Seventh Judicial District of Louisiana District Attorney Bradley Burget, on Monday, a Catahoula Parish Grand Jury indicted Thomas Steven Sanders for the first-degree murder of 12-year-old Lexis Kaye Roberts in 2010.

Texas executes Moises Mendoza

Moises Sandoval Mendoza receives lethal injection in Huntsville for death of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson A Texas man convicted of fatally strangling and stabbing a young mother more than 20 years ago was executed on Wednesday evening. Moises Sandoval Mendoza received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 6.40pm, authorities said. He was condemned for the March 2004 killing of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

In Alabama, a Volunteer to Die

James Osgood has been executed by the State of Alabama. Read an eyewitness account. There were no protestors today on the side of Highway 21 in Atmore, Alabama, outside Holman Correctional Facility where the state would soon begin its execution of James Osgood. Instead, under a cloudy spring sky, a few guard trucks were parked at the prison’s first gate, lonely in the grassy plains. Before, at the state’s previous killings, protestors have often flanked the roadside nearest those trucks, their dissenting bodies one of the few signals in the landscape of the death about to occur inside the prison’s gates.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog