Oklahoma Lawmaker Calls for Investigation of Prosecutor for Deliberately Withholding Evidence of Innocence in Richard Glossip Retrial

An Oklahoma state rep­re­sen­ta­tive has called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into the prac­tices of the Oklahoma County District Attorney​’s office fol­low­ing addi­tion­al rev­e­la­tions that coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors delib­er­ate­ly with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and man­u­fac­tured false tes­ti­mo­ny to secure a con­vic­tion and death sen­tence against Richard Glossip in his 2004 retrial.

At a news con­fer­ence on September 22, 2022, the fourth date Oklahoma had set to exe­cute Glossip, State Representative Justin Humphrey (R – Lane, pic­tured) called the prosecution’s con­duct in the case ​“extreme­ly uneth­i­cal.” ​“This is unac­cept­able,” Humphrey said. ​“You’re look­ing at tak­ing a person’s life, which makes you no bet­ter than a mur­der­er. … I want to call for an investigation.” 

Humphrey, who describes him­self as ​“a strong pro­po­nent” of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, said that he ini­tial­ly ​“was very reluc­tant” to become involved in Glossip’s case. ​“Now I’m at the point we’re inves­ti­gat­ing the wrong peo­ple,” Humphrey said. ​“I don’t think that we should just let this go. … This is unac­cept­able. … Why would you do that? Why would you manufacture evidence?”

The news con­fer­ence was held in con­nec­tion with sup­ple­men­tal peti­tion filed by Glossip’s lawyers in the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals pre­sent­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion that Oklahoma County pros­e­cu­tors had with­held evi­dence that Justin Sneed, their lead wit­ness in the case, had want­ed to recant his tes­ti­mo­ny impli­cat­ing Glossip in the 1997 mur­der of motel own­er Barry Van Treese, but that Sneed feared doing so would jeop­ar­dize a plea deal that had spared him the death penal­ty for the mur­der. The pros­e­cu­tion files, which defense coun­sel were able to view for the first time on September 1, 2022, con­tained notes regard­ing a series of meet­ings between tri­al pros­e­cu­tor Connie Pope, Sneed, and his lawyer Gina Walker con­cern­ing this issue.

Pope’s co-coun­sel Gary Ackley told inves­ti­ga­tors for the law firm Reed Smith — whom leg­is­la­tors retained pro bono to con­duct an inde­pen­dent review of the case — that he was nev­er told about Sneed’s desire to recant or nego­ti­ate a bet­ter deal for him­self. ​“Any pros­e­cu­tor would be con­cerned about any coop­er­at­ing wit­ness in any big case regard­ing the uncer­tain­ty of the waf­fling back and forth and the disin­gen­u­ous bad faith nature of such actions,” adding that this evi­dence clear­ly had to be dis­closed to the defense. 

The peti­tion also pre­sent­ed evi­dence long hid­den in the prosecution’s case file that Pope lied to the court, with­held evi­dence of numer­ous improp­er pre­tri­al and mid­tri­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Sneed, vio­lat­ed a wit­ness seques­tra­tion order, and man­u­fac­tured false tes­ti­mo­ny from Sneed to plug holes in the pros­e­cu­tion case that had devel­oped dur­ing the trial. 

Sneed had tes­ti­fied at Glossip’s first tri­al that Glossip had hired him to kill Van Trees and that, act­ing alone, he had beat­en Van Treese to death using only a base­ball bat. During the retri­al, med­ical tes­ti­mo­ny estab­lished that Van Treese also had been stabbed and that the dis­tinc­tive blade of a pock­etknife found under Van Treese body could have caused those wounds. When the defense final­ly obtained access to the pros­e­cu­tion file, they dis­cov­ered a mid­tri­al let­ter from Pope to Sneed’s lawyer that there ​“are a few items that have been tes­ti­fied to that I need­ed to dis­cuss with Justin,” and that “[o]ur biggest prob­lem is still the knife.” Sneed then changed his account of the mur­der to com­port with the med­ical tes­ti­mo­ny, claim­ing that he also had stabbed Van Treese, and Pope feigned sur­prise to the court when the defense accused her of a dis­cov­ery vio­la­tion for fail­ing to reveal the full scope of Sneed’s anticipated testimony.

Glossip’s peti­tion stressed the excul­pa­to­ry nature of the evi­dence relat­ing to the knife. ​“If Sneed did not use the pock­etknife, then some­body else must have been inside the room, and that flat­ly con­tra­dict­ed the state’s case that rest­ed on Sneed’s account of com­mit­ting the mur­der alone,” coun­sel wrote. During the press con­fer­ence, Glossip’s lead coun­sel, Don Knight, said that the prosecutor’s delib­er­ate vio­la­tion of the seques­tra­tion order to sup­ply infor­ma­tion to Sneed ​“calls into seri­ous ques­tion the reli­a­bil­i­ty of his tes­ti­mo­ny. That infor­ma­tion was known by the pros­e­cu­tion since 2004, nev­er turned over to the defense at all. … Not only did the pros­e­cu­tion destroy evi­dence, they man­u­fac­tured evi­dence. They changed people’s tes­ti­mo­ny. They broke the rules, all to try to get a con­vic­tion against Rich Glossip on a death penal­ty case that should nev­er have been brought at all.”

No phys­i­cal evi­dence con­nects Glossip to Van Treese’s mur­der and, insist­ing on his inno­cence, he turned down a plea deal at his tri­al for a parole-eli­gi­ble life sen­tence. His con­vic­tion and death sen­tence rest­ed pri­mar­i­ly on the repeat­ed­ly chang­ing accounts of the mur­der pro­vid­ed by Sneed. Multiple wit­ness­es have since come for­ward with evi­dence that Sneed false­ly impli­cat­ed Glossip in order to avoid the death penalty.

In February 2022, a bipar­ti­san group of 35 Oklahoma leg­is­la­tors engaged pro bono attor­neys at Reed Smith to review the case. While the firm’s review was under­way, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor filed a motion with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on June 10, 2022 seek­ing exe­cu­tion dates for 25 Oklahoma death-row pris­on­ers, includ­ing Glossip. Reed Smith issued its report five days lat­er, doc­u­ment­ing that pros­e­cu­tors had destroyed key excul­pa­to­ry records in advance of Glossip’s retri­al and con­clud­ing that no rea­son­able jury pre­sent­ed with all the evi­dence would have con­vict­ed him. The firm’s con­tin­u­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the case has pro­duced even more evi­dence of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and Glossip’s like­ly inno­cence, which it released in sup­ple­men­tal reports issued on August 9, August 23, and September 20, 2022. 

In two orders issued on July 1, the court grant­ed O’Connor’s request to set the exe­cu­tion dates, sched­ul­ing Glossip’s exe­cu­tion for September 22. With his exe­cu­tion date pend­ing, Glossip filed a peti­tion in the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals seek­ing a new tri­al based on the ini­tial Reed Smith report. Governor Kevin Stitt tem­porar­i­ly stayed Glossip’s exe­cu­tion on August 16, 2022, to pro­vide the appeals court time to deter­mine whether to grant Glossip a hear­ing on his inno­cence claim and resched­uled Glossip’s exe­cu­tion for December 8, 2022.

Two-thirds of Oklahoma’s leg­is­la­tors, led by Republican State Representative Kevin McDugle, sent a let­ter to Attorney General John O’Connor urg­ing him to sup­port Glossip’s request for a new hear­ing. O’Connor declined and is con­tin­u­ing to oppose grant­i­ng Glossip an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present evi­dence to the court.

“I’m not afraid to have a hear­ing,” Knight said at the press con­fer­ence. ​“I think the state is afraid to have a hear­ing. They just want to kill this man.”