OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has asked the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate the conviction of death row inmate Richard Glossip and remand the case back to district court.
Drummond made the requestion in a motion filed on April 6.
“The State has reached the difficult conclusion that justice requires setting aside Glossip’s conviction and remanding the case to the district court,” Drummond’s motion said. “After thorough and serious deliberation, I have concluded that I cannot stand behind the murder conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip.”
Drummond said the notion was not an indication that be believed Glossip to be innocent. “However, it is critical that Oklahomans have absolute faith that the death penalty is administered fairly and with certainty,” he said. “Considering everything I know about this case I do not believe that justice is served by executing a man based on the testimony of a compromised witness.”
Glossip has been on death row for almost 25 years. He was charged with being an accessory to the murder of Barry Van Treese. And while Justin Sneed, a coworker of Glossip’s, confessed to beating Van Treese to death, Sneed made a plea agreement with the prosecution to testify against Glossip. Sneed testified Glossip offered to pay him for the killing. Sneed received a life without parole sentence while Glossip was sentenced to death.
Glossip’s conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals and he was convicted and sentenced to death for a second time in a retrial in 2004.
Drummond said concerns about the case let him to request access to a box of materials in the case known as Box 8. Those materials, which the state withheld from Glossip’s defense team, were reviewed by an independent council and formed the basis for the state’s motion to vacate Glossip’s conviction.
The independent council review, conducted by Sand Springs attorney Rex Duncan, concluded that the information contained in Box 8 should have been turned over to Glossip’s defense team. Because the information was withheld, prosecutors violated at least two court precedents and the Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct.
Duncan said the material proved there was false testimony of the state’s star witness and a violation of the court-ordered Rule of Sequestration of Witnesses.
Duncan, a former state lawmaker, said the was an advocate for the death penalty in the ‘worst of the worst’ cases. “However, I believe the numerous trial and appellate defects throughout the history of this can be remedied only by remand for a new trial,” he wrote. “Such remand is, in my view, required. In my view, further advocacy in support of the case’s current posture does not serve the interests of justice; instead, it rewards the defects and errors in the process. I my view, a new trial is necessary to restore integrity to the process herein. Given Box 8 revelations, a dispassionate review of this case cannot reach a different conclusion.”