The case against Richard Glossip fell apart. Even the state’s Republican attorney general says he should not be executed. The Supreme Court may not care.
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Glossip v. Oklahoma, a long-simmering death penalty case where the state’s Republican attorney general is urging the justices not to make his state kill a man after the prosecution’s case completely fell apart.
Last May, the Court temporarily blocked Richard Glossip’s execution, after Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond informed the Court that “the State of Oklahoma recently made the difficult decision to confess error and support vacating the conviction of Richard Glossip.”
Among other things, a committee of state lawmakers commissioned a law firm to investigate whether Glossip, who was convicted for allegedly hiring a coworker to kill his boss in 1997, received a fair trial. The firm released a 343-page report laying out many errors in the process that ended in Glossip being sentenced to die:
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All I can say is that this guy is damn lucky he’s white, because if he was a person of color, they’d be begging the Supreme Court to let them execute him. Painfully and slowly if possible.
Does he have a dog?
-Oklahoma
Deep down in the vox article, it says Glossip was not present for the murder. I live in Oklahoma and been following the story for awhile now. It’s one of those cases where they arrested the murderer, but that wasn’t enough for them. So they made a deal with the murderer to testify against Glossip like he’s a criminal mastermind. The murderer was untrustworthy, then dies in prison, and that testimony is the only solid evidence they have against Glossip. I feel so bad for Glossip.
Our criminal justice is run by criminals y’all.
I don’t understand why this is a story. The lawyers agree this was done poorly and he shouldn’t be put to death. Can’t the governor just pardon him? Why is the Supreme Court involved?
Corporate media can’t challenge power in any meaningful way and regular Americans don’t want to recognize how corrupt our system is.
Let’s say my governor pardoned this innocent man, it will cost him enormous political capital and that is not a sacrifice he’s willing to make.
Oklahoma’s highest criminal court denied the request to toss out Glossip’s execution, claiming a crucial piece of new evidence undermining his conviction “does not create a reasonable probability that the result of the proceeding would have been different.” The state parole board split 2-2 on whether to grant relief to Glossip, with one member recused because his wife helped prosecute Glossip.
Meanwhile, while Gov. Kevin Stitt ® twice postponed Glossip’s execution, he’s more recently signaled that he intends to defer to the courts’ determination of whether this man should be executed.
Remember folks, the cruelty is the point
The fact that someone actually rescued themselves for conflict of interest is quite possibly the most outstanding bit from this story.
Not necessarily. That decision still condemned him.
Twice postponed? That’s cruel and unusual right there. Mock execution is literally top of the list for torturing prisoners.
That’s most likely because the Court’s Republican-appointed majority’s death penalty decisions frequently emphasize the need for finality in court proceedings, and they generally reject the proposition that a death row inmate should be freed because they are innocent.
I don’t understand how a legal system can continue after a supreme court takes this position without the whole thing being considered a joke or sham.
What is the purpose of a justice system willing to execute innocents?
The argument is for doing it right the first time, and not setting a precedent that cases can just be challenged and challenged indefinitely and forever. Once appeals are exhausted, that’s supposed to be the end of the case. Witnesses lie or don’t come forward, science evolves, police standards change, but everything falls apart without some finality. This is the concept of legal guilt or legal innocence. That someone is factually innocent or guilty is another matter. I think factual innocence should always be a get out of jail free card. In my state relevant post-conviction laws are based on a standard of “grounds consistent with innocence.”
Another argument is that the inherent injustice of such finality is fully mitigated by the governor’s pardon, and the governor is answerable to the voters. Checks and balances.
I don’t agree with either of those.
An appeal to a higher court has to be accepted. You can/should be able to appeal because of procedural issues or new evidence. If you have neither, your appeal won’t be granted. This by itself stops endless appeals.
A justice system that says “sure, you can prove he’s innocent NOW, but AT THE TIME we made the right call so he should continue his punishment” isn’t a justice system at all.
The fact that a politician can override the justice system isn’t a solution, it’s at best problematic on its own. If the politician’s pardon is based on some just ideal (law is too harsh, punishment is too harsh, former criminal is reformed) then why don’t they make it law? If it’s not just then the pardon is unjust by definition.
I agree with you completely. I was just reciting the counter arguments as I understand them.
Another argument is that the inherent injustice of such finality is fully mitigated by the governor’s pardon, and the governor is answerable to the voters.
Yeah, tell that to the innocent person in death row. “The governor didn’t pardon me, and so I will be killed. Boy is he in for a troubled election campaign!”
Right, I suppose it isn’t fully mitigated if the person still dies.
Well luckily the only thing required to not do that is… Not do that.
“oh please don’t make me kill this man like the law said I have to!”
If only there were something preventing all these people from dragging him into the execution room, strapping him in, and flipping the proverbial switch… Sadly, people have no capability of independent thought or actions and as we all know, “I was just following orders” is a famously solid defense.
Huh? They are officers of the state. They can’t just “choose” to not complete very public tasks.
I hope they get this guy vacated and free, but I want people to follow the law, not choose whatever they want. What if they really wanted to kill him?
I hope the law is changed to where the death penalty is removed entirely, but that’s not now.
Not to go all “but the Nazis”…. But there was a time we hanged people for just following orders.
They absolutely can, and should, choose not to follow immoral orders. It’s the basic duty we expect of every public official.
Absolutely. I’m suggesting lawful, voted orders that people signed up for, should be followed.
For example, that lady who refused to fill out marriage licenses for gay people after she had been working for years. Like, no, you don’t just get to pick and choose.
I totally understand that this is one of those “blurry line” situations where I agree that we should err on the side of “follow the job as described” specifically to avoid the situations you described. If we didn’t have those standards, and it was just up to each individuals “moral compass”, things would suck. However, in this particular case, where the actual life of an innocent person - and here I am going to emphasise that they are innocent in the eyes of the court as well - is on the line, I absolutely support not following through, regardless of what the supreme court decides.
To wit, I support the governor pushing back with every means they have
Actually you do, you just have to accept the potential consequences.
The correct thing for Kim Davis (the woman you mentioned) to do would have been to resign. She can refuse to perform an action she objects to, but it will and did cost her her job.
Look at Nixon and the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon legally ordered his AG to fire the special prosecutor, he declined and resigned. Nixon ordered the next in line, he declined and resigned.
Those actions by Nixon had MAJOR political consequences and ultimately lead to his own resignation to avoid impeachment.
In this case, if the entirety of the organization resigned, it would send a clear message.
The problem is that justice is subjective and people have the ability to make a subjective decision. They are making a CHOICE to proceed with the execution in spite of the evidence. If there is a hell, these are the sorts that will go there.
They sure could.
They might lose their jobs over it, but they can absolutely refuse an order. They are not robots.
hhahhaha this court? prolly lickin their chops at getting to kill more humans.
now if he was a fetus, thats a whole 'nother story… we need them votes!
What is 'nother sir?
It’s just “another” but some regions of the United States either intentionally mispronunce the word, because of an accent, or culturally learned that way from others.
Yeah im part of that culture and didn’t realize I was doing that until I was an adult.
It’s notable that the state itself could just make this go away but the assholes who have this power refuse to. Notable also that the SCOTUS holds that innocence is not a reason to not be executed, it only matters that the procedures were followed properly.
This is a choice to be cruel.
Conservatism is a plague of death.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Among other things, a committee of state lawmakers commissioned a law firm to investigate whether Glossip, who was convicted for allegedly hiring a coworker to kill his boss in 1997, received a fair trial.
Instead, Glossip’s case primarily turns on a recently discovered piece of evidence which reveals that Sneed was treated for a serious mental illness that may have undermined his credibility as a witness.
As Drummond recently told the Supreme Court, Sneed’s “serious psychiatric condition that combined with his known methamphetamine use would have had an impact on his credibility and memory recall in addition to causing him to become potentially violent or suffer from paranoia.”
Given the comprehensive failures laid out in the two state-commissioned investigations into Glossip’s conviction, it’s a bit odd that the Supreme Court’s hearing is likely to focus on a single statement where Sneed briefly revealed that he’d been treated by a doctor whose name he didn’t even get right.
Prosecutors in Jones’s case claimed that he fatally beat his girlfriend’s daughter, inflicting injuries that supposedly killed her 12 hours later.
But medical examiners determined that the girl died from injuries that would have killed her much more slowly, and that they “could not possibly have been inflicted on the day prior to her death.”
The original article contains 1,538 words, the summary contains 212 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
