Last week, the Oklahoma law firm Reed Smith released a third supplemental report on its investigation into the case of Richard Glossip. He was sentenced to death for his alleged role in the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of the Oklahoma motel Glossip managed. The actual killer was Justin Sneed, a motel maintenance worker who admitted to beating Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. But Sneed claimed Glossip was the mastermind of the murder and had offered him $10,000 to kill Van Treese. Sneed was sentenced to life without parole. Glossip has always maintained his innocence.
The report set off a new wave of legal wrangling in what was already a highly complex case.
It details what the law firm calls “two significant developments” that have occurred since their previous report, which “bolster” their earlier assertions that Glossip’s “2004 trial 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.”
The new report includes details of an interview the lawyers conducted with Sneed, “in which Sneed confirmed having had multiple discussions about ‘recanting’ his testimony with several people over an 11-year period. This newly obtained evidence establishes not only a pattern of Sneed discussing ‘recanting’ to individuals he trusts at various times spanning over a decade but also conduct by the State before and during Glossip’s retrial that reveals its concerns over Sneed’s reliability and credibility.”
The second development came from what the Reed Smith team discovered in the DA’s case file, which was recently released to the defense. They found evidence that the state violated sequestration rules during Glossip’s retrial by providing Sneed, shortly before he testified, “information regarding testimony given by other witnesses.
“It appears that at least one purpose for providing this information to Sneed was so he could conform his testimony to match that of the other witnesses,” said Reed Smith partner Stan Perry, a member of the investigative team.
These latest revelations compelled state Rep. Justin Humphrey to call for an investigation into the Oklahoma County DA’s office and for Glossip to file a challenge with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals arguing that a prosecutor at his 2004 retrial convinced a witness to change his testimony to bolster the prosecution’s case.
Glossip, now 59, was scheduled to be killed by Oklahoma last Thursday. But Gov. Kevin Stitt stayed his execution until December 8 to allow time for the CCA to address a request by 61 Oklahoma lawmakers — more than a third of the state assembly — including Republican death penalty supporters, to the CCA for an evidentiary hearing for Glossip.
That request came after Reed Smith released its initial report in June, after being asked by an ad hoc committee of lawmakers to investigate Glossip’s case independently.
On August 9, Reed Smith released a supplemental report providing “additional information that further supports our findings, including that no reasonable jury hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first-degree murder.”
Glossip filed a clemency plea on August 12, and Stitt issued his stay four days later. This is the fourth time Glossip’s execution has been stayed.
