Supreme Court orders new trial for Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip

A fractured Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a new trial for Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip, whose appeal drew national attention and support from the state’s conservative attorney general, in light of allegations that the state withheld evidence related to its main witness.

The ruling is a major win for Glossip, whose 1998 conviction for arranging the murder of Barry Van Treese a year earlier has been called into question by him and, critically, the state attorney general after new evidence emerged in recent years.

The ruling represents an extraordinary twist in the legal saga surrounding Glossip, who has been scheduled for execution nine times and has eaten his last meal three times only to have his execution stayed.

“We conclude that the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority.

At the center of the appeal are notes taken by prosecutors involved in Glossip’s trial about Justin Sneed, the man who killed Van Treese with a baseball bat in a hotel. Even though both sides agree Sneed actually killed Van Treese, Glossip was charged with orchestrating the murder.

Glossip’s conviction rested on Sneed’s testimony, but years after Glossip’s conviction, the state disclosed evidence that Sneed was treated for a serious psychiatric condition. The notes indicate that prosecutors knew about Sneed’s diagnosis and treatment at the time of Glossip’s trial and, according to Glossip’s supporters, hid that information from his defense.

“Had the prosecution corrected Sneed on the stand, his credibility plainly would have suffered. That correction would have revealed to the jury not just that Sneed was untrustworthy (as amicus points out, the jury already knew he repeatedly lied to the police), but also that Sneed was willing to lie to them under oath,” Sotomayor wrote. “Such a revelation would be significant in any case, and was especially so here where Sneed was already ‘nobody’s idea of a strong witness.’”

Five justices sided with Glossip on ordering a new trial. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett would have sent the case back to a lower court for further consideration.

Thomas, writing in a dissent joined by Alito, argued the court’s decision “imagines a constitutional violation where none occurred, and abandons basic principles governing” how federal courts review state court decisions.

During oral arguments in October, several members of the court seemed puzzled by the scant record surrounding the notes, including liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said at one point, “It’s my understanding that there’s never been a court determination of any of these facts,” and Alito, who described the notes “as cryptic.”

The Glossip case is arguably the highest-profile death penalty case to reach the court in years, and it drew two of the most experienced Supreme Court lawyers in the nation. Seth Waxman, a former solicitor general, had argued on Glossip’s behalf. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican who supports sparing Glossip, was represented by Paul Clement, also a former solicitor general.

Even though Drummond called for a new trial, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma upheld Glossip’s sentence, ruling that the evidence at issue wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the case and that Glossip’s attorneys knew Sneed was taking lithium.

But Glossip’s attorneys argued that had prosecutors disclosed the lithium treatment and corrected lies Sneed told on the witness stand during the trial about his medical history, it would have cast “serious doubt on his credibility” as the state’s star witness.

Source: CNN, Devan Cole and John Fritze, February 25, 2025

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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