Richard Glossip Set to Be Executed in Oklahoma Amid Innocence Claims — ProPublica

In the parking zone outdoors the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, I stood on my toes in a throng of reporters, straining to hear demise row inmate Richard Glossip’s phrases by way of the speaker of a telephone his pal held aloft.

It was 3:45 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2015, and Glossip ought to have been useless by now from a cocktail of deadly medicine pumped into his physique.

I joined reporters, Glossip’s household and supporters outdoors the jail in McAlester that day — a heat and breezy afternoon — because the condemned man was in a position to make a telephone name from contained in the maximum-security facility’s demise row. Glossip appeared relieved to be alive however, understandably, questioned why. He’d exhausted his final attraction and eaten his final meal: fish and chips, a Wendy’s Baconator burger and a strawberry shake.

He discovered his life was spared due to a technicality: One of the three medicine Oklahoma officers procured for the execution was the fallacious one.

“That’s just crazy,” Glossip mentioned over his pal’s telephone.

It was the third time the state of Oklahoma had tried to execute Glossip and the most recent lapse in a macabre historical past of failure in its demise penalty equipment. As a journalist who lined Oklahoma’s jail system and demise row for 25 years, I reported on a lot of these breakdowns.

Seven years later, the state stays intent on executing Glossip, scheduling its fourth try for Sept. 22 regardless of persistent claims that the 59-year-old is harmless and allegations that prosecutors ordered the destruction of important proof in the 1997 murder-for-hire case that resulted in his demise sentence.

Glossip’s claims of innocence have drawn an unusually bipartisan array of supporters, together with 28 Republican state lawmakers, most of whom assist the demise penalty. The legislators commissioned an exhaustive overview that lately turned up new information about prosecutors’ alleged function in destroying proof and monetary information bringing into query Glossip’s motive in the case. The lawmakers have referred to as on the governor to order an unbiased overview of Glossip’s case and for a state appeals courtroom to conduct a listening to to study the brand new proof.

Calls to halt his scheduled execution come at a time of nationwide reckoning over the demise penalty. The Supreme Court’s rulings on the difficulty — together with a 6-3 decision in May barring condemned prisoners from searching for federal courtroom overview for ineffective counsel in some instances — are more and more at odds with public sentiment in many states. Meanwhile, the tempo of latest demise sentences and executions carried out nationally is on observe to hit a document low for the eighth yr in a row, even with the reopening of courts shuttered through the pandemic, in accordance to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Oklahoma is amongst a small variety of states that routinely perform the demise penalty which might be bucking that development, and it’s on tempo to outdo all of them regardless of its grotesque historical past of failures.

The state lately set execution dates for Glossip and 24 different inmates, including several with psychological sickness, mind harm and claims of innocence. They’re scheduled to die at a quick clip — about one every month by way of December 2024 — a price that might eclipse the variety of executions by all states mixed since 2020.

Many observers, together with those that assist the demise penalty, doubt the state’s capability to perform executions in a constitutional method, even for these inmates whose guilt remains unchallenged. If the previous is any decide, they’re most likely proper.

In greater than 20 years masking Oklahoma’s demise row, listed below are a couple of of the occasions I wrote about, together with some that I witnessed:

• In 2014, I heard one inmate say simply earlier than he was executed: “Malcom Scott and De’Marchoe Carpenter are innocent.” The inmate had testified years earlier that the 2 males took half in a killing with him. They had been later exonerated, however solely after spending greater than 20 years in jail.
• When the state wanted to switch to a new lethal drug in 2014, an lawyer for Oklahoma’s jail system later said that he seemed for a alternative by looking for information about deadly medicine on the web.
• Just a few months later, I used to be among the many media witnesses who watched Clayton Lockett writhe, moan, discuss and take a look at to rise up from the execution desk for 3 minutes after the medicine had been administered and he had been declared unconscious. The jail was utilizing a brand new, unproven drug that some experts said wouldn’t anesthetize an inmate because the painful second and third medicine had been administered. Prison officers closed the blinds and after about 20 minutes informed us to depart the demise chamber. Lockett died 43 minutes after the execution started.
• My reporting companion, Cary Aspinwall, and I later reported that the warden referred to as the execution a “bloody mess” and that the physician had improperly inserted the IV into Lockett, complaining about getting blood on his jacket.
• State officers used the wrong third drug to execute Charles Warner lower than a yr later in January 2015 however didn’t make that public. They had been poised to use the wrong drug again in Glossip’s third scheduled execution earlier than then-Gov. Mary Fallin halted it on the final minute.
• A grand jury report blasted state officers’ actions as “inexcusable,” discovering that Fallin’s high lawyer wished to proceed utilizing the inaccurate drug anyway. The state’s personal lawyer normal mentioned some officers had been “careless, cavalier and in some circumstances dismissive of established procedures that were intended to guard against the very mistakes that occurred.”

After a six yr hiatus, Oklahoma executed John Marion Grant in October. Multiple witnesses mentioned Grant convulsed and vomited through the course of. Now, the state is getting ready to execute Glossip amid doubts about his guilt.

One of the GOP lawmakers calling on the state to overview Glossip’s case, regardless of a protracted historical past of supporting the demise penalty, mentioned he’ll advocate to finish capital punishment in Oklahoma if Glossip is executed.

“I’m 99% sure that he is not guilty sitting on death row,” state Rep. Kevin McDugle mentioned in an interview with ProfessionalPublica. “My stance is not anti-death penalty at all. My stance will be (different) if they put Richard to death, because that means our process in Oklahoma is flawed.”

In a sharply worded dissent in a case difficult Oklahoma’s selection of execution medicine, then-Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the demise penalty was not constitutional. Among his causes, Breyer cited research displaying demise penalty crimes have a disproportionately excessive exoneration price.

In reality, courts have reversed verdicts or exonerated prisoners due to prosecutorial misconduct in 11 demise sentences in the same county where Glossip was convicted, in accordance to a study released last month by the Death Penalty Information Center. Another 11 from that county, house to the state Capitol, had been put to demise utilizing testimony from a disgraced police chemist, the research discovered.

Though Glossip’s latest appeals have been unsuccessful, a state courtroom decide and a federal decide have famous in appellate rulings the comparatively skinny nature of the proof in opposition to him. “Unlike many cases in which the death penalty has been imposed, the evidence of petitioner’s guilt was not overwhelming,” the federal decide wrote.

In a letter last year to Gov. Kevin Stitt, McDugle joined greater than 30 state lawmakers, almost all Republicans, in asking him to appoint an unbiased physique to overview Glossip’s case and study what they are saying is compelling proof he’s harmless.

“Many of those who have signed this letter support the death penalty but, as such, we have a moral obligation to make sure the State of Oklahoma never executes a person for a crime he did not commit,” the letter states. “Mr. Glossip’s case gives us pause, because it appears the police investigation was not conducted in a manner that gives us confidence that we know the truth.”

Glossip was convicted of homicide in the 1997 killing of Barry Van Treese, who owned the Oklahoma City funds motel the place Glossip labored. Justin Sneed, a upkeep man with a violent document, beat Van Treese to demise with a baseball bat and testified Glossip paid him to perform the killing. Prosecutors alleged that Glossip feared he can be fired as a result of Van Treese had found he was embezzling from the motel.

In change for his plea and testimony in opposition to Glossip, Sneed obtained life in jail.

After Stitt didn’t order a brand new investigation into Glossip’s case, the lawmakers commissioned a review by a law firm. The pro-bono report, launched final month, relies on a overview of 12,000 paperwork, 36 witness interviews, seven juror interviews and different proof.

It concludes that Glossip’s 2004 conviction “cannot be relied on to support a murder-for-hire conviction. Nor can it provide a basis for the government to take the life of Richard E. Glossip.”

Glossip’s attorneys have filed a movement searching for a brand new listening to on the premise of precise innocence, together with witnesses they are saying had been by no means referred to as in earlier hearings. The movement additionally seeks a listening to to look into who ordered a field of key proof destroyed, claims of ineffective help of counsel, due course of violations and testing indicating that Glossip is intellectually disabled.

They are additionally searching for paperwork from the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office associated to the destruction of proof in addition to a videotape from a gasoline station close to the crime scene they are saying was by no means handed over.

The regulation agency’s report quotes an Oklahoma City police officer and a former assistant district lawyer speaking concerning the proof destruction, which included information that might have established whether or not Glossip embezzled cash from the motel, as alleged by prosecutors.

Such claims frustrate the present district lawyer, David Prater, a chatty, accessible official I’ve interviewed many instances over time about Oklahoma’s justice system.

Prater, who was not in workplace on the time the proof was destroyed, mentioned Glossip’s execution ought to proceed as scheduled and referred to as the allegation that his workplace ordered the destruction “an outright lie.”

“There is no documentation as to that,” he mentioned. “The DA’s office does not order the destruction of evidence in cases like that.”

Glossip and his lawyer, Don Knight, declined interview requests. Knight mentioned in a written assertion supplied to ProfessionalPublica that the execution needs to be delayed whereas the state appeals courtroom evaluations new information turned up in the report.

“Richard Glossip has been through three tortuous execution dates already. It does not serve justice to set a fourth execution date for an innocent man before all this new evidence can be fully considered in a court of law,” the assertion mentioned.

“Public reaction to this new evidence makes clear that Oklahomans, even those who support the death penalty, do not want to see an innocent man executed.”

Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death-penalty activist who was portrayed in “Dead Man Walking,” mentioned she plans to be on the jail to assist Glossip in September, as she was on his three prior execution dates. (Glossip referred to as Prejean earlier than his first scheduled execution and requested if she would function one among his chosen witnesses, as she had for six condemned males in different states.)

But Prejean predicts that day gained’t come and says she plans to work feverishly to draw consideration to his case and win a reprieve.

Sounding extra like a publicity strategist than a nun, Prejean mentioned the neatest strategy includes letting the “conservative pro-death-penalty legislators” make the case for Glossip slightly than movie star activists who’ve supported Glossip and different condemned inmates.

“I know I have to do everything I know how to do to save the life of this man,” she mentioned, including: “When it looks like everything is signed, sealed and delivered what do you do? You go to the public and you raise questions.”