Sister Helen Prejean Demands End to Death Penalty as Supreme Court Tosses Glossip Murder Conviction

We look at a rare victory for a death row prisoner before the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, three conservative justices joined with the three liberals to overturn the murder conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip, who has spent nearly 30 years on Oklahoma death row and had exhausted all other appeals to stay his execution. The justices said Glossip was entitled to a new trial after errors in his original prosecution. Glossip’s conviction stems from the 1997 murder of his former boss, who was killed by another man who accused Glossip of masterminding the killing. 

Glossip has always maintained his innocence, and even Oklahoma Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond has said Glossip did not get a fair trial. We speak with Glossip’s spiritual adviser, Sister Helen Prejean, renowned anti-death penalty activist, who says the case has brought together a remarkable coalition to fight for justice and helped to highlight the problems with capital punishment. “We don’t need this thing,” says Prejean. “It’s time to shut it down.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We look now at a rare victory for a death row prisoner before the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, three of the court’s conservative justices joined with the three liberals to throw out the conviction and death sentence of Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for nearly three decades after being convicted as the mastermind behind the 1997 murder-for-hire of his former employer, a motel owner.

Glossip’s appeal was actually supported by Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who said he didn’t receive a fair trial. Drummond’s formal “confession of error” and request for a new trial was rejected by Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court found long-suppressed evidence had undermined the case. And Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the majority opinion, quote, “Glossip is entitled to a new trial.”

Richard Glossip has faced execution nine times, has eaten three last meals. Someone who’s been with him through much of that is his spiritual adviser, Sister Helen Prejean, one of the world’s most well-known anti-death penalty crusaders. She’s the author of the best-selling book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty and, most recently, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.

Sister Helen, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you lay out how you believe this happened?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Well, I’ll take it from the beginning. Early January 2015, I get a phone call, and it was from this man Richard Glossip. And he goes, “Sister Helen, I apologize. I didn’t ask your permission, but I think Oklahoma is going to kill me, and I put you down to be with me. I’m sorry. I didn’t ask your permission.” And that’s how we began. So I talked to him.

Then I began — I looked into his case. I had heard a little bit before. Got into bed, bolted awake at 2:00 in the morning, going, “I can’t just be with a man and accompany him to death.” I had enough experience with innocent people on death row that I decided I’d go visit him. And right away, from what I had heard of the case, we set up a press conference.

In the beginning, you are up against every odd. What chance did we have? But everything in the case depended on this man, Justin Sneed, who had already admitted that he had killed Barry Van Treese, this motel owner. And then, later, you find out that the investigators, the detectives are feeding to him, “But wasn’t Richard Glossip behind him, the whole murder?” And so, then they went after Richard as the mastermind.

Ten years later now — this is with lawyers working, trying to get the evidence of what happened — they clearly exposed — it was the last box of evidence. They kept this box of evidence from them that showed that the prosecutor knew that Justin Sneed was unreliable, had a bipolar disorder, and kept that from the jury. And if the jury had known that, it would have impeached his credibility. He was the lying meth addict. But they kept it. And it’s called Napue. When a prosecutor is aware that a lie is being told, they have a duty to correct that to the jury. And they didn’t. And they got the evidence in that last box of evidence. It showed that the prosecutor knew and lied.

And on that basis, Sotomayor based the case, saying that’s against due process. They knew the lie that he was telling, and they hid it from the jury. And that’s what saved him. This is 10 years later. This is every court in Oklahoma, you know, upholding it. It’s so hard to go after these prosecutors, because they have immunity, and they are seldom censored. I mean, look, almost 30 years Richard has lost his freedom, and he came close to death three times.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sister Helen, what about the significance of several conservatives on the Supreme Court joining with the liberal justices on this?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Oh, yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, not to mention an attorney general of this Republican conservative state, Gentner Drummond, who hopes to run for governor. And he did a brave, courageous, moral act, because he could see that Richard really did not get a fair trial. And he spoke out. And then, when the defense lawyers filed with the Supreme Court, he entered into it, saying, “I’m the attorney general of the state.” And he’s had huge backlash for that. And he stands out. It’s such a rare thing in this country that politicians of a certain ideological stance are willing to make moral decisions.

The legislators in the state also, all of them are Republicans, all of them pro-death penalty. Don Knight is the shining hero, this lawyer. And he went duck hunting with the lieutenant governor, and then he met people in the Legislature. Then Joe Berlinger did a fantastic two-part documentary, Killing Richard Glossip, which is out there. And the legislators could see the documentary, and then they met Richard in that personal meeting. And then they began to assemble the facts, and they stood up. Amazing. I had never heard of it before, that this kind of coalition of people willing to make the right moral decision and standing up happened. It’s an amazing story.

And it just highlights what’s so terribly wrong with the death penalty, especially in the killing states, the Deep South killing states. Oklahoma had had all these executions. And we in Louisiana are facing that now. We have a governor who’s installing gas. The veterinarians’ association two days ago had a press conference with little puppies and cats with a sign around their necks saying “Don’t gas humans,” because they don’t use gassing even for euthanasia of animals, because it’s cruel. And here we’ve got a governor is going gung-ho to kill as many people as he can with gas.

So, Richard Glossip, God bless him, I believe he’s going to be a free man. But look at it. Look at that whole system. The way the Supreme Court set up the death penalty and its administration, it gives this huge discretionary power to prosecutors to seek death or not, then for governors to initiate deaths if they feel they’re not happening fast enough. And that’s the state we’re in. But we’re working.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sister? Sister? I —

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: The more you educate the people — go ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sister, I wanted to ask you also — we’ve been covering a lot the first weeks of the Trump administration. At the end of Trump’s first term in office, he carried out 13 executions, more than any other president in modern history. What are your thoughts on his executive order to pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: That’s that huge discretionary power I was talking about that the Supreme Court allowed. He lined up 13 people to kill, and then he went and killed them, with Bill Barr as his attorney general. And there’s almost nothing to stop it, except what you’re doing in Democracy Now!, what I do with books, and getting to the people to educate them. I mean, we don’t need to kill these people in Louisiana. We haven’t had an execution in 17 years, one consensual one. The fire has gone out of this. I know the guards at Angola. And how you can involve good people in taking a fellow human being and rendering him defenseless and killing him, it’s not fair to them, either. We don’t need this thing. It’s time to shut it down. And take my state, Louisiana, and take Oklahoma. Look at the millions they spend every year in their budget to keep the death penalty in place. It’s the most expensive way, that in Louisiana, it’s $13 million 600 above what it would cost for a person just to be in prison for life.

AMY GOODMAN: Sister Helen Prejean, we thank you so much for being with us, one of the world’s most well-known anti-death penalty activists, spiritual adviser to Richard Glossip. The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that he will get a new trial. And to see our extremely rare interview with a death row prisoner earlier this week, Keith LaMar, in Youngstown, Ohio, in supermax, scheduled to die at the beginning of 2027, also professing his innocence, go to democracynow.org.

Source: democracynow.org, Staff, February 26, 2025

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

— Oscar Wilde