Oklahoma | Richard Glossip has new trial set for a 1997 killing of motel owner

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A new murder trial has been set for a former Oklahoma death row inmate who was on the brink of being executed multiple times during the three decades he spent in prison for the 1997 killing of his former boss.

The Supreme Court overturned Richard Glossip’s conviction in 2025, and a state judge released the man on bond last month.

His attorneys had asked the same judge to consider whether there is enough evidence to retry him, but after a hearing Tuesday, the judge ruled that a new trial would start Sept. 28.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond had pledged to retry Glossip for first-degree murder, but is not pursuing the death penalty again.

“We are pleased with the ruling,” a spokesperson, Leslie Berger, said in an email.

Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, declined to comment.

Glossip had been sentenced to death for the January 1997 killing in Oklahoma City of motel owner Barry Van Treese, his former boss. Van Treese was beaten with a baseball bat in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme.

Prosecutors accused Glossip of setting up Van Treese’s murder, and a co-defendant, Justin Sneed, agreed to testify against Glossip to avoid the death penalty himself. Sneed was the only witness linking Glossip directly to the crime.

But the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors allowed Sneed to give testimony about his mental health history that they knew was false, and said it violated Glossip’s constitutional right to a fair trial. Drummond agreed that Glossip should get a new trial.

Glossip has maintained his innocence and has drawn support from Kim Kardashian and other prominent figures. Van Treese’s family had asked the Supreme Court to leave Glossip’s conviction and sentence intact.

During Glossip’s time on death row, Oklahoma courts set nine different execution dates for him. He came so close to being put to death that he ate three separate last meals.

Each time, he was spared because of questions about Oklahoma’s planned procedures for lethal injection. In 2015, he was even held in a cell next to Oklahoma’s execution chamber, waiting to be strapped to a gurney and die by lethal injection, when the state’s governor put executions on hold to review its execution protocols.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, June 24, 2026

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

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