CREATORS: Richard Glossip's Twisted Journey Through America's Courts

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 8, 2025

Richard Glossip's twisted journey through the criminal justice system is both amazing and horrifying. Glossip, a condemned prisoner on Oklahoma's death row, was served his last meal three different times while sitting in a cell next to the death chamber.

On two separate occasions, cases bearing his name made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Today, Glossip is no longer on death row where he spent the better part of 27 years. He is awaiting a new trial after his latest visit to the Supreme Court resulted in his conviction being overturned.

Glossip received the death sentence after being convicted for the 1997 killing of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in what prosecutors alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme. Justin Sneed admitted robbing Van Treese and beating him to death with a baseball bat but testified that Glossip promised to pay him $10,000 for the brutal murder. Sneed was the state's key witness against Glossip and was sentenced to life in prison.

Glossip has always maintained his innocence and refused to accept a plea deal. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to death. He appealed. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction indicating the case was "extremely weak." He was tried a second time in which he was again convicted and sentenced to death.

While on death row he was scheduled for execution nine separate times. After a botched execution in 2014, a group of death row inmates, including Glossip, led by my inmate Charles Warner, challenged Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol that consisted, in part, the drug midazolam.

Glossip became the lead petitioner after a lurid chain of events beginning with the group of inmates petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13, 2015. Two days later, while the court was considering the petition, Warner was executed. A week later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The Court then stayed the surviving petitioners' executions and adopted Glossip's name as the lead petitioner.

Glossip v. Gross was argued before the high court on April 29, 2015. Justice Samuel Alito found the prisoners "failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment."

Glossip stayed on death row and came precariously close to being executed on several occasions. While he waited, an independent investigation revealed that the prosecutors in his case deliberately destroyed key evidence, and potentially exculpatory evidence was never made available to Glossip. Despite the new revelations about prosecutorial misconduct, Glossip unsuccessfully sought post-conviction relief.

Then Glossip got his second chance before the Supreme Court. This past February, Glossip v. Oklahoma, the high court overturned his conviction finding "(T)he State allowed Sneed to testify falsely at Glossip's trial that he had never seen a psychiatrist. The newly disclosed evidence confirms that the State knew Sneed's testimony was false and did nothing to correct it."

Glossip's odyssey is not over yet. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who took the unusual step of asking the high court for a new trial, told the Associated Press he will request that Glossip remain in prison until prosecutors decide whether to retry him.

Drummond, said he plans to consult Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna, about whether to try Glossip again and whether to seek the death penalty, a lesser penalty of life in prison, or pursue lesser charges, like accessory to murder after the fact.

Behenna has previously said she would not consider the death penalty in the case, and Drummond recently agreed that while certain murder-for-hire cases can qualify for the death penalty, he doesn't believe the facts in Glossip's case justify the death penalty.

Glossip may yet be convicted a third time. However, he has spent nearly three decades trying to prove his innocence. He'll now get his chance.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

To visit Creators CLICK HERE