Oklahoma Attorney General Accused in New Court Filings of Reneging on Plea Agreement in Richard Glossip’s Case

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond is fac­ing accu­sa­tions that he broke a writ­ten agree­ment that would have freed for­mer death row pris­on­er Richard Glossip from prison more than two years ago, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments filed in mid-July 2025. The rev­e­la­tion cen­ters on email exchanges from April 2023, where AG Drummond, in a thread with Don Knight, coun­sel for Mr. Glossip, agreed to a plea deal that would have result­ed in Mr. Glossip’s imme­di­ate release after more than two decades on death row. AG Drummond has reversed course and is now seek­ing anoth­er first-degree mur­der con­vic­tion against Mr. Glossip.

In an April 1, 2023, email, Mr. Knight out­lined terms of an agree­ment regard­ing Mr. Glossip’s resen­tenc­ing with AG Drummond. At that time, Mr. Glossip had a pend­ing motion in front of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) ask­ing the court to over­turn his con­vic­tion. Once Mr. Glossip’s con­vic­tion was vacat­ed, as both par­ties antic­i­pat­ed, the state would file a sin­gle charge of being an acces­so­ry after the fact. AG Drummond, in reply to Mr. Knight’s pro­posed plea deal, said, ​“We are in agree­ment.” The deal would have giv­en Mr. Glossip a 45-year sen­tence with cred­it for time served and good behav­ior, mak­ing him imme­di­ate­ly eli­gi­ble for release, as his sen­tence would have been com­plet­ed in 2016.

Just days after the email exchange, the OCCA denied Mr. Glossip’s motion to over­turn his con­vic­tion. AG Drummond took the unprece­dent­ed step of sup­port­ing Mr. Glossip’s clemen­cy bid and lat­er joined defense coun­sel in ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to inter­vene in his case. In February 2025, the Court ruled in Mr. Glossip’s favor and threw out his 2004 con­vic­tion for arrang­ing the mur­der of Barry Von Treese and ordered a new tri­al because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. Despite his pre­vi­ous agree­ment, AG Drummond announced in June 2025 that the state would again pros­e­cute Mr. Glossip for first-degree mur­der but would not seek the death penal­ty. At a bond hear­ing, the state pre­sent­ed no new evi­dence in sup­port of its retri­al of Mr. Glossip and AG Drummond’s office acknowl­edged that key evi­dence has been destroyed and that the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the state’s key wit­ness, Justin Sneed — who admit­ted to killing Mr. Van Treese but claimed Mr. Glossip orches­trat­ed it — has been damaged.

Counsel for Mr. Glossip has now asked District Judge Heather Coyle to enforce the orig­i­nal 2023 agree­ment, describ­ing it as a bind­ing con­tract. They argue that all con­di­tions for the deal have been met, as Mr. Glossip’s con­vic­tion has been over­turned and returned to Oklahoma County, but AG Drummond has ​“refused to com­plete his end of the bar­gain.” Mr. Glossip’s attor­neys empha­size that noth­ing has changed regard­ing the state’s case against their client that would inval­i­date the agree­ment. In fil­ings, they not­ed that AG Drummond has pub­licly stat­ed that ​“a hand­shake is my word, and my word is my bond.”

In response to defense counsel’s fil­ing, AG Drummond’s office filed a motion argu­ing that par­ties nev­er final­ized a plea agree­ment. The fil­ing notes that the agree­ment was based sole­ly on whether the OCCA would grant Mr. Glossip’s relief, and it did not do so. ​“Because no final set­tle­ment agree­ment has been reached in this case, the State can­not be com­pelled to agree to the terms pro­posed by the defen­dant,” explained the filing.

Mr. Glossip has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in the 1997 ​“mur­der-for-hire” of Barry Van Treese, his boss at an Oklahoma City motel. Justin Sneed, a cowork­er of Mr. Glossip’s, con­fessed to killing Mr. Van Treese but tes­ti­fied at tri­al that Mr. Glossip had paid him to do so and helped cov­er up the killing. Mr. Sneed was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole for his involve­ment in the mur­der. Mr. Glossip was first sen­tenced to death in 1998, and this con­vic­tion was over­turned in 2001. In 2004, the state again pur­sued a death sen­tence, and a jury agreed. According to the 2025 Supreme Court deci­sion, pros­e­cu­tors knew that Mr. Sneed lied at tri­al about being treat­ed for a men­tal health con­di­tion, and did not dis­close that he was tak­ing lithi­um for bipo­lar dis­or­der. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the major­i­ty that ​“had the pros­e­cu­tion cor­rect­ed Sneed on the stand, his cred­i­bil­i­ty plain­ly would have suf­fered. The cor­rec­tion would have revealed to the jury not just that Sneed was untrust­wor­thy (as ami­cus point out, the jury already knew he lied to the police), but also that Sneed was will­ing to lie to them under oath.”