Oklahoma Attorney General Will Not Seek Death Penalty Against Richard Glossip in Retrial

On June 9, 2025, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced that his office will retry death row pris­on­er Richard Glossip but will not seek the death penal­ty. AG Drummond’s deci­sion to retry Mr. Glossip fol­lows the February 2025 United States Supreme Court rul­ing in Glossip v. Oklahoma, in which the high Court threw out Mr. Glossip’s 2004 con­vic­tion and ordered a new tri­al because pros­e­cu­tors allowed a key wit­ness to lie in court and with­held cru­cial infor­ma­tion about the same wit­ness. Mr. Glossip had pre­vi­ous­ly had nine exe­cu­tion war­rants and came with­in an hour of being exe­cut­ed. AG Drummond had sup­port­ed Mr. Glossip’s request for a new tri­al at the Supreme Court and admit­ted that Mr. Glossip’s due process rights had been vio­lat­ed, but he has stead­fast­ly refused to sup­port Mr. Glossip’s innocence claims.

In explain­ing the deci­sion not to seek the death penal­ty, the AG’s office not­ed that the man who admit­ted to actu­al­ly mur­der­ing Barry Van Treese with a base­ball bat, Justin Sneed, is serv­ing a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. In a state­ment released fol­low­ing the sta­tus hear­ing, AG Drummond said, ​“While it was clear to me and to the U.S. Supreme Court that Mr. Glossip did not receive a fair tri­al, I have nev­er pro­claimed his inno­cence.” He explained that after a review of the mer­its of the case, his office believes there is suf­fi­cient evi­dence to secure a mur­der con­vic­tion. AG Drummond also assert­ed that ​“Unlike past pros­e­cu­tors who allowed a key wit­ness to lie on the stand, my office will make sure Mr. Glossip receives a fair tri­al based on hard facts, sol­id evi­dence and truth­ful tes­ti­mo­ny.” His office will seek a life sen­tence for Mr. Glossip, who has already spent 27 years in prison.

Mr. Glossip has always 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 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. 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, at tri­al, Mr. Sneed lied about being treat­ed for a men­tal health con­di­tion, includ­ing that he was tak­ing lithi­um for bipo­lar dis­or­der. In the opin­ion, Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote 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.” Justice Sotomayor added that ​“such a rev­e­la­tion would be sig­nif­i­cant in any case and was espe­cial­ly so here where Sneed was already ​‘nobody’s idea of a strong witness.’” 

An inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by the law firm Reed Smith pre­vi­ous­ly found that Mr. Sneed dis­cussed recant­i­ng his tes­ti­mo­ny over the course of a decade, both before and after Mr. Glossip’s 2004 con­vic­tion. A hand­writ­ten note from Mr. Sneed to his attor­neys, states, ​“Do I have the choice of recant­i­ng at any time dur­ing my life?” An addi­tion­al hand­writ­ten note indi­cates that Mr. Sneed believed his tes­ti­mo­ny to be ​“a mis­take.” These notes were nev­er giv­en to Mr. Glossip’s defense coun­sel. Reed Smith’s inves­ti­ga­tion also includ­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion of con­ver­sa­tions between Mr. Sneed and Reed Smith lawyers in which he admit­ted he talked with his moth­er and daugh­ter about recant­i­ng his tes­ti­mo­ny, some­thing he previously denied.