Supreme Court To Hear Oklahoma AG's Plea To Not Have To Kill Richard Glossip
Supreme Court To Hear Oklahoma AG's Plea To Not Have To Kill Richard Glossip
Yes, it's weird.
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear Glossip vs. Oklahoma and to decide whether or not the very obviously innocent Richard Glossip should get a new trial. The case is being brought by state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican who earlier this year made an official “confession of error” on behalf of the state in order to get Glossip’s conviction vacated.
Glossip is a former motel manager who faces the death penalty for having “hired” the motel’s 19-year-old itinerant meth-head maintenance man Justin Sneed to kill the motel’s owner, Barry Van Treese. The only evidence against him is Sneed’s testimony, which he gave in order to avoid going to death row himself. There is actual video of the cops telling him that if he says that Glossip hired him to do it he can avoid the death penalty.
The story they went with is that Glossip told Sneed, who had a criminal history and a habit of robbing hotel rooms (and keeping all of that money for himself), that if he killed and robbed Van Treese that they could split his money, and that Sneed went to go do that but didn’t actually mean to kill Van Treese and but ended up doing so by accident.
Despite the 343-page report detailing the issues with Glossip’s prosecution and conviction, Drummond’s confession of error was rejected by the state parole board, the state’s highest criminal court, and by Republican Governor Kevin Stitt. The United States Supreme Court’s conservative justices are his very last hope.
The new evidence Drummond is bringing is that, during Glossip’s 2004 trial, Sneed testified that he had “never seen no psychiatrist or anything” and that he was given lithium after asking for Sudafed for a cold.
“When I was arrested,” Sneed testified, “I asked for some Sudafed because I had a cold, but then shortly after that somehow they ended up giving me lithium for some reason.”
I will be the first to tell you that jails are very bad about getting people their correct medication, but giving someone lithium for a cold is a bit of a stretch.
The new evidence, however, shows that Sneed did actually see Dr. Lawrence Trombka, an Oklahoma County jail psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium for him.
Prosecutors in the case had access to interviews with Sneed, in which he discussed seeing “Doctor Trumpet,” which they failed to turn over to the prosecution.
From Glossip v. Oklahoma:
That testimony is roughly consistent with what Sneed told a psychologist, Dr. Edith King, Ph.D., during a competency exam in July 1997, where he claimed to be on lithium “after his tooth was pulled” and “denied any psychiatric treatment in his history.” But it is wholly inconsistent with the fact, known to the prosecution and withheld from the defense, that Sneed had been treated by a psychiatrist in 1997—and he was not administered lithium for a cold or a toothache, but to treat a serious psychiatric condition that, combined with his known and extensive illicit drug use, would have had a material impact on the jury’s view of his credibility (not to mention his memory recall or potential paranoia).
The OCCA nevertheless concluded that Sneed’s testimony was not false on the puzzling theory that Sneed simply may have been in denial. But denial tends to produce falsehoods, not accuracy, and those falsehoods do not become truthful just because the speaker refuses to accept reality. Even if Sneed was sufficiently in the grip of denial to believe his false testimony, that would not excuse the admission of testimony the prosecutors knew to be false (or the withholding of evidence from the defense tending to show it to be false).
Yes, this is the guy who provided literally all of the evidence that sent Glossip to death row. Even Sneed’s own daughter believes that he lied and that Glossip is innocent.
Drummond isn’t exactly an anti-death-penalty crusader, mind you. A not-insignificant part of his argument is the fact that executing someone so obviously innocent, in a situation where the state admits they screwed up, will undermine the death penalty.
“Public confidence in the death penalty requires the highest standard of reliability, so it is appropriate that the U.S. Supreme Court will review this case,” he said in a statement.
This is all very idealistic of Drummond — especially since the Supreme Court has previously found that proof of “actual innocence” is not a good enough reason to not kill them. This conservative court has also not been especially amenable to the petitions of death row prisoners.
However, they’re more likely to at least consider Drummond’s petition, given his confession of error, as they did in the case of Texas’s Areli Escobar, in which the Travis County District Attorney José Garza made a confession of error. So there is some hope.
PREVIOUSLY:
Capital punishment is stupid. There's really no basis for it but retribution, and "deterrence" is not an effective argument in its favor. Anyone can understand the emotional appeal of "cutting evildoers down in the midst of their sins," but capital punishment isn't that at all. It usually takes place DECADES after the offense, and there is often considerable doubt that the prosecutors have convicted the right person. Arguably, some criminals deserve to be put to death for their violent, vicious acts against others, but it simply can't be done consonant with maintaining basic human decency and turning the state into a "tinkerer with the machinery of death." In this instance, it's even worse. They already tried to kill this man, and they failed. Trying twice is a cruel abomination.
Why doesn't Mr. Glossip just declare he is running for president and has Total Immunity (C) (TM)?
No one can touch you then.