WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip’s murder conviction because a key witness lied in court and prosecutors withheld information about him.
The decision, a rare victory for a death row inmate at the conservative court, means prosecutors now have to decide whether to put Glossip on trial again. The court was divided 5-3 on throwing out Glossip’s conviction, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch not participating.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court, said the prosecution “violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony.” As a result, “Glossip is entitled to a new trial,” she wrote.
Glossip, 62, was convicted of arranging the murder in 1997 of his boss at the Oklahoma City motel where they worked.
He has been on death row since 1998 and has faced imminent execution on several occasions.
“We are thankful that a clear majority of the court supports long-standing precedent that prosecutors cannot hide critical evidence from defense lawyers and cannot stand by while their witnesses knowingly lie to the jury,” Don Knight, one of Glossip’s lawyers, said in a statement.
Glossip’s latest appeal received a major boost when the state attorney general, Republican Gentner Drummond, agreed that the conviction was unsound and asked the court to rule in his favor.
The conviction relied largely on the testimony of key witness Justin Sneed, who carried out the 1997 murder. Sneed, who pleaded guilty and avoided a death sentence, testified that Glossip had hired him to kill motel owner Barry Van Treese.
The appeal revolved around claims that prosecutors withheld information about Sneed and that he gave false testimony at trial. Prosecutors knew but did not disclose at Glossip’s second trial in 2004 that Sneed had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium after his arrest.
Sneed also falsely testified that he had never seen a psychiatrist.
After an investigation, Drummond concluded that because Glossip’s conviction rested significantly on Sneed’s credibility, it should not be sustained.
The state has stopped short of agreeing with Glossip’s claim that he is innocent.
In her opinion, Sotomayor agreed with Drummond, writing that prosecutors “knew Sneed’s statements were false” when he testified.
“Because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossip’s guilt of capital murder, the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s credibility was necessarily determinative here,” she added.
Prosecutors should have corrected the record, but if they had done so, it would have undermined Sneed’s credibility, Sotomayor wrote.
“Hence, there is a reasonable likelihood that correcting Sneed’s testimony would have affected the judgment of the jury,” she added.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that rarely intervenes to prevent executions from taking place, but occasionally steps in when there has been a clear miscarriage of justice.
Despite Drummond’s findings, an Oklahoma appeals court upheld the death sentence last year, and the state’s pardon and parole board voted against granting Glossip clemency.
The original prosecutors who had worked on the case, Connie Smothermon and Gary Ackley, disputed Drummond’s account and said they had not been properly consulted during the investigation.
They wrote a letter questioning the new findings that was attached to an amicus brief filed by relatives of Van Treese that urged the court to uphold Glossip’s conviction.
“The family remains confident that when that new trial is held, the jury will return the same verdict as in the first two trials: guilty of first degree murder,” Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the Van Treese family, said in a statement.
The Supreme Court previously signaled an interest in Glossip’s case in May 2023 by stepping in to prevent him from being executed. The court also blocked Glossip’s execution in 2015 in separate litigation over the state’s lethal injection procedure.
Two conservative justices, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, said they would have ruled against Glossip.
Another, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, said she agreed with most of Sotomayor’s opinion, but would have sent the case back to Oklahoma courts instead of throwing out the conviction altogether.
The Supreme Court, Thomas wrote in a dissenting opinion, “lacks the power” to override the decisions of state courts and officials just because the attorney general switched positions.
“Instead the court stretches the law at every turn” in order to rule in Glossip’s favor, he added.
