Oklahoma Attorney General Moves to Vacate the Murder Conviction of Richard Glossip

On April 6, 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate Richard Glossip’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence and to remand the case to the District Court for fur­ther pro­ceed­ings. He cit­ed the U.S. Supreme Court’s admo­ni­tion that the prosecutor’s inter­est is ​“not that it shall win a case, but that jus­tice shall be done.”

Regarding his motion to the court, Drummond said: ​“After thor­ough and seri­ous delib­er­a­tion, I have con­clud­ed that I can­not stand behind the mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Richard Glossip. This is not to say I believe he is inno­cent. However, it is crit­i­cal that Oklahomans have absolute faith that the death penal­ty is admin­is­tered fair­ly and with cer­tain­ty. 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.”

The state’s action fol­lows the release of the results of an inves­ti­ga­tion into Glossip’s case by inde­pen­dent coun­sel Rex Duncan, who was appoint­ed by Drummond in January. ​“The state’s mur­der case against Glossip was not par­tic­u­lar­ly strong and would have been, in my view, weak­er if full dis­cov­ery had been pro­vid­ed,” con­clud­ed Duncan. ​“Given the pas­sage of 26 years, death of wit­ness­es, destruc­tion and loss of evi­dence, and 2023 evi­den­tiary dis­clo­sures, it is, in my view, less tenable today.”

On death-row for 25 years, Glossip has long main­tained his inno­cence. He has received three reprieves from Governor Kevin Stitt, the lat­est in November 2022, and was the sub­ject of anoth­er inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tioncon­duct­ed by the law firm of Reed Smith, com­mis­sioned by a bipar­ti­san group of 35 state leg­is­la­tors. Glossip’s exe­cu­tion date was most recent­ly post­poned from February 16 to May 18, mark­ing his ninth exe­cu­tion date. Drummond is ask­ing that the lat­est exe­cu­tion date be postponed.

Don Knight, attor­ney for Glossip, told The Intercept that his client was ​“ecsta­t­ic” when hear­ing the news. ​“It was like this moment washed over his face where he rec­og­nized that after all these years and after every­thing he’s been through, he was final­ly get­ting some­one to lis­ten to him,” Knight explained.

If the appel­late court revers­es Glossip’s con­vic­tion, he could be sub­ject to a re-tri­al, which would be his third in this case. Glossip was also part of a chal­lenge brought to the U.S. Supreme Court regard­ing the drugs used in Oklahoma’s lethal injec­tion process. The Court denied this chal­lenge in a 5 – 4 opin­ion in 2015.