Oklahoma Pushes Back Clemency Hearings, Changing Execution Timelines

Oklahoma has pushed back the clemen­cy hear­ings of two men on death row, John Hanson and Richard Glossip (pic­tured). Glossip’s exe­cu­tion date was also moved back, and Hanson’s exe­cu­tion date will like­ly have to be changed. Both men were sched­uled to have clemen­cy hear­ings on Nov. 9, 2022, and to be exe­cut­ed before the end of the year, as part of Oklahoma’s planned spree of 25 exe­cu­tions sched­uled between August 2022 and December 2024. The state’s deci­sion to exe­cute so many peo­ple in a short peri­od meant that it set a tight sched­ule for clemen­cy hear­ings and exe­cu­tions, and it remains unclear how these changes will affect the sched­ule of executions.

John Hanson was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on December 15. However, Hanson is cur­rent­ly in cus­tody at a fed­er­al prison, which has refused to trans­fer him to Oklahoma cus­tody for the clemen­cy hear­ing or the exe­cu­tion. The Federal Bureau of Prisons denied the trans­fer on the basis that it would not be in the public’s best inter­est. As of November 21, 2022, the state has not set a new clemen­cy hear­ing date or exe­cu­tion date for Hanson.

Richard Glossip was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on December 8, after his ear­li­er exe­cu­tion date in September was stayed by Governor Kevin Stitt. His clemen­cy hear­ing was pushed back after Stitt issued a sec­ond 60-day reprieve for Glossip’s December exe­cu­tion date on November 2^nd. Stitt issued the reprieve so that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) could com­plete its review of Glossip’s peti­tion for a hear­ing on new evi­dence of his inno­cence. The OCCA denied two peti­tions from Glossip on November 10 and 17. 

In response to the OCCA’s November 17 denial, Glossip’s attor­ney, Don Knight, issued a state­ment, say­ing, ​“The only thing we asked for in our two peti­tions was a fair hear­ing on our new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence that the jury nev­er heard. We are extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that instead of giv­ing us this oppor­tu­ni­ty, the Court improp­er­ly assumed the role of factfind­er, and closed off our oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin to right this trag­ic wrong. But our fight to free this inno­cent man will nev­er end. It is now clear that the District Attorney’s office has been with­hold­ing excul­pa­to­ry infor­ma­tion from the Glossip defense team ever since the tri­al, and we know there is still more infor­ma­tion they have not shown us. What are the author­i­ties so afraid of? It is crit­i­cal that a full review of all the evi­dence be con­duct­ed before the State of Oklahoma makes the irrev­o­ca­ble mis­take of exe­cut­ing an innocent man.” 

Glossip was sen­tenced to death after he was impli­cat­ed in a mur­der for hire in 1997 and has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence for the past twen­ty-five years, argu­ing that the state’s case against him was flawed because it pri­mar­i­ly relied on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the man who actu­al­ly com­mit­ted the mur­der, Justin Sneed; that the state worked with Sneed to feed him tes­ti­mo­ny and pre­vent him from recant­i­ng; and that the state sub­se­quent­ly with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence from Glossip’s team. Glossip claims that after Sneed was arrest­ed for killing the vic­tim, Barry Van Treese, he false­ly impli­cat­ed Glossip to avoid the death penalty himself. 

In the peti­tions, Glossip raised claims that he was fac­tu­al­ly inno­cent and had new evi­dence to prove it, includ­ing new affi­davits impeach­ing Sneed’s reli­a­bil­i­ty and call­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny into ques­tion. This includ­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from some­one who was incar­cer­at­ed with Sneed who recalled him ask­ing them to pre­tend they had over­heard Glossip con­fess to the mur­ders, and to come for­ward as an infor­mant. Sneed ulti­mate­ly agreed to a plea deal with the state, where he exchanged his tes­ti­mo­ny against Glossip for life in prison, rather than a death sen­tence. Glossip’s team also pre­sent­ed a note between Sneed’s attor­ney and the pros­e­cu­tor, which they claimed demon­strat­ed that the pros­e­cu­tion fed Sneed infor­ma­tion for his tes­ti­mo­ny, and evi­dence that Sneed had talked about recant­i­ng his tes­ti­mo­ny mul­ti­ple times over the years, a claim which Sneed had previously denied.

Another claim Glossip raised dur­ing his hear­ing was that the state’s bad faith destruc­tion of evi­dence vio­lat­ed his right to due process. The prosecution’s the­o­ry of Glossip’s motive was that he was embez­zling from Van Treese, because Glossip man­aged a motel owned by Van Treese. Glossip was orig­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1998, but his con­vic­tion was over­turned in 2001 due to inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, and he was retried in 2004. While he was still appeal­ing his 1998 con­vic­tion, the prosecutor’s office ordered the destruc­tion of Van Treese’s finan­cial records, which were being held in evi­dence, against their offi­cial pol­i­cy to pre­serve evi­dence in cap­i­tal cas­es. Glossip claims that this evi­dence was poten­tial­ly excul­pa­to­ry because it could answer the ques­tion of whether any­one was embez­zling from Van Treese, which was nev­er directly proven.

Glossip also raised claims about the inef­fi­ca­cy of his own counsel’s inves­ti­ga­tion in his 2004 retri­al, as they failed to con­duct inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions into many aspects of the case, and that the state’s inves­ti­ga­tion failed to meet the demands of due process. 

Rather than con­sid­er the mer­its of these claims, the OCCA by and large dis­missed them on the basis that Glossip’s argu­ments were pro­ce­du­ral­ly barred because he has or could have pre­sent­ed these argu­ments before this point. It did acknowl­edge that it can side­step pro­ce­dur­al bars when claims of fac­tu­al inno­cence are pre­sent­ed but stat­ed that Glossip’s claim does not neces­si­tate such a step. In the November 17 denial, the court wrote, ​“None of his claims con­vince this Court that the alleged errors have result­ed in a mis­car­riage of jus­tice or con­sti­tute a sub­stan­tial vio­la­tion of a con­sti­tu­tion­al or statutory right.”

The OCCA did not find Glossip’s argu­ments con­vinc­ing, but there has been a great deal of inter­est from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in Glossip’s case. Oklahoma state leg­is­la­tors formed a bipar­ti­san Ad-Hoc Legislative Committee, which urged the Oklahoma Governor and Pardon and Parole Board to launch new inves­ti­ga­tions into Glossip’s case. When those offices did not, the Legislative Committee request­ed that Reed Smith, LLP, an inde­pen­dent law firm, inves­ti­gate Glossip’s case. The inde­pen­dent investigation’s final report is over 300 pages and deter­mined that ​“fun­da­men­tal con­cerns and new infor­ma­tion revealed by this inves­ti­ga­tion cast grave doubt as to the integri­ty of Glossip’s mur­der con­vic­tion and death sentence.” 

Glossip’s team released a state­ment that they will con­tin­ue to fight to get a full review of all the evi­dence in Glossip’s case. Richard Glossip’s new exe­cu­tion date is February 16, 2023.