Oklahoma Attorney General Accused in New Court Filings of Reneging on Plea Agreement in Richard Glossip’s Case

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond is fac­ing accu­sa­tions that he broke a writ­ten agree­ment that would have freed for­mer death row pris­on­er Richard Glossip from prison more than two years ago, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments filed in mid-July 2025. 

The rev­e­la­tion cen­ters on email exchanges from April 2023, where AG Drummond, in a thread with Don Knight, coun­sel for Mr. Glossip, agreed to a plea deal that would have result­ed in Mr. Glossip’s imme­di­ate release after more than two decades on death row. AG Drummond has reversed course and is now seek­ing anoth­er first-degree mur­der con­vic­tion against Mr. Glossip.

In an April 1, 2023, email, Mr. Knight out­lined terms of an agree­ment regard­ing Mr. Glossip’s resen­tenc­ing with AG Drummond. At that time, Mr. Glossip had a pend­ing motion in front of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) ask­ing the court to over­turn his con­vic­tion. 

Once Mr. Glossip’s con­vic­tion was vacat­ed, as both par­ties antic­i­pat­ed, the state would file a sin­gle charge of being an acces­so­ry after the fact. AG Drummond, in reply to Mr. Knight’s pro­posed plea deal, said, ​“We are in agree­ment.” 

The deal would have giv­en Mr. Glossip a 45-year sen­tence with cred­it for time served and good behav­ior, mak­ing him imme­di­ate­ly eli­gi­ble for release, as his sen­tence would have been com­plet­ed in 2016.

Just days after the email exchange, the OCCA denied Mr. Glossip’s motion to over­turn his con­vic­tion. AG Drummond took the unprece­dent­ed step of sup­port­ing Mr. Glossip’s clemen­cy bid and lat­er joined defense coun­sel in ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to inter­vene in his case. 

In February 2025, the Court ruled in Mr. Glossip’s favor and threw out his 2004 con­vic­tion for arrang­ing the mur­der of Barry Von Treese and ordered a new tri­al because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. Despite his pre­vi­ous agree­ment, AG Drummond announced in June 2025 that the state would again pros­e­cute Mr. Glossip for first-degree mur­der but would not seek the death penal­ty. 

At a bond hear­ing, the state pre­sent­ed no new evi­dence in sup­port of its retri­al of Mr. Glossip and AG Drummond’s office acknowl­edged that key evi­dence has been destroyed and that the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the state’s key wit­ness, Justin Sneed — who admit­ted to killing Mr. Van Treese but claimed Mr. Glossip orches­trat­ed it — has been damaged.

Counsel for Mr. Glossip has now asked District Judge Heather Coyle to enforce the orig­i­nal 2023 agree­ment, describ­ing it as a bind­ing con­tract. They argue that all con­di­tions for the deal have been met, as Mr. Glossip’s con­vic­tion has been over­turned and returned to Oklahoma County, but AG Drummond has ​“refused to com­plete his end of the bar­gain.” 

Mr. Glossip’s attor­neys empha­size that noth­ing has changed regard­ing the state’s case against their client that would inval­i­date the agree­ment. In fil­ings, they not­ed that AG Drummond has pub­licly stat­ed that ​“a hand­shake is my word, and my word is my bond.”

In response to defense counsel’s fil­ing, AG Drummond’s office filed a motion argu­ing that par­ties nev­er final­ized a plea agree­ment. The fil­ing notes that the agree­ment was based sole­ly on whether the OCCA would grant Mr. Glossip’s relief, and it did not do so. ​“Because no final set­tle­ment agree­ment has been reached in this case, the State can­not be com­pelled to agree to the terms pro­posed by the defen­dant,” explained the filing.

Mr. Glossip has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in the 1997 ​“mur­der-for-hire” of Barry Van Treese, his boss at an Oklahoma City motel. Justin Sneed, a cowork­er of Mr. Glossip’s, con­fessed to killing Mr. Van Treese but tes­ti­fied at tri­al that Mr. Glossip had paid him to do so and helped cov­er up the killing. 

Mr. Sneed was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole for his involve­ment in the mur­der. Mr. Glossip was first sen­tenced to death in 1998, and this con­vic­tion was over­turned in 2001. In 2004, the state again pur­sued a death sen­tence, and a jury agreed. 

According to the 2025 Supreme Court deci­sion, pros­e­cu­tors knew that Mr. Sneed lied at tri­al about being treat­ed for a men­tal health con­di­tion, and did not dis­close that he was tak­ing lithi­um for bipo­lar dis­or­der. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the major­i­ty that ​“had the pros­e­cu­tion cor­rect­ed Sneed on the stand, his cred­i­bil­i­ty plain­ly would have suf­fered. The cor­rec­tion would have revealed to the jury not just that Sneed was untrust­wor­thy (as ami­cus point out, the jury already knew he lied to the police), but also that Sneed was will­ing to lie to them under oath.”

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Haley Bedard, July 17, 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