Jimmy Harmon, chief of the criminal division of the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, was standing in a courtroom packed with journalists and onlookers during a Tuesday afternoon bond hearing in Richard Glossip’s case, when he announced that the state would be calling a couple of witnesses.
The announcement was unexpected; the state hadn’t notified Glossip’s attorneys that they planned to put anyone on the stand. When Harmon said his first witness’s name — Malissa West — the confusion appeared to deepen. No one, not Glossip, his attorneys, or supporters in the gallery, seemed to know who this woman was.
After West introduced herself as the “resident communications specialist” at the Oklahoma County Detention Center, in charge of monitoring outgoing phone calls placed from the jail, it became clear that Harmon intended to introduce into evidence a recording of a call between Glossip and someone on the outside. Glossip glanced at his wife Lea, sitting in the front row. He looked confused and a bit nervous and shrugged, signaling he had no idea what this was about.
Corbin Brewster, one of Glossip’s defense attorneys, objected. They hadn’t heard the recording in question and wanted a chance to listen to it. Judge Heather Coyle agreed, and the lawyers filed out of the courtroom.
It was the second time in as many weeks that Glossip was back in Coyle’s Oklahoma County courtroom after the U.S. Supreme overturned his conviction for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese, who was killed at the rundown motel he owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death but insisted Glossip had put him up to it. Prosecutors said that Glossip orchestrated the killing to cover up the fact that he’d been embezzling money from the motel, offering to split with Sneed any cash Van Treese had on him at the time of his death. Although the evidence to support the theory was thin, two different juries found Glossip guilty and sentenced him to death.
Glossip faced nine execution dates and was served three last meals before the court ruled in February that his case had been tainted by false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. The hard-won victory was due in no small part to Harmon’s own boss, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who took unprecedented steps to prevent Glossip’s execution and fought alongside his attorneys to have the conviction tossed — only to announce in early June that he intended to try Glossip for murder a third time.
Among the spectators in the eighth-floor courtroom were members of the Van Treese family, who sat in the front row. Until Harmon sought to introduce the recorded call, the hearing had been going as expected. Brewster had laid out the reasons why Coyle should release Glossip from jail pending a third trial for first-degree murder: Glossip didn’t have any meaningful criminal history before being sent to death row, is not a flight risk, and has a wealth of individuals ready to support him after release — including Lea, friends, and religious leaders, and at least one current Republican state lawmaker.
But the most important reason why Coyle should grant bond, Brewster said, was that there is no reliable evidence that Glossip is guilty of murder. In order to keep Glossip in jail, Brewster pointed out, Coyle would have to find that the state was likely to win a third conviction — something Drummond had repeatedly acknowledged would be hard to do.
In the decades since Glossip was sent to death row, explosive revelations have cast serious doubt on the state’s theory of the case — including the revelation that the state destroyed a key box of evidence prior to Glossip’s 2004 retrial. A slew of new witnesses have also come forward to challenge the state’s portrayal of Sneed as wholly under Glossip’s control, describing Sneed as violent, unpredictable, and entirely capable of killing on his own. Many of these revelations are contained in a series of reports by the private law firm Reed Smith, which investigated the case at the behest of a bipartisan group of Oklahoma lawmakers. The investigation revealed that Sneed repeatedly tried to recant his testimony implicating Glossip and unearthed records debunking Glossip’s supposed financial motive for wanting to kill Van Treese. The new evidence largely dismantled the state’s case and thoroughly discredited Sneed — the state’s “one indispensable witness,” as Drummond himself had previously argued.
If there was any anticipation that the mysterious phone call might introduce some new evidence against Glossip, it was quickly dispelled when the lawyers returned to the courtroom. Harmon’s co-counsel, Senior Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Hinsperger, placed a laptop on the witness stand. Coyle leaned forward and craned her neck to listen to the recording, which was almost impossible to hear from the gallery. It was a clip of a conversation between Glossip and a woman identified as an anti-death penalty activist. “I haven’t seen my family in a long time,” Glossip told her.
As it turned out, this was the point of playing the call — an attempted “gotcha” moment to challenge Brewster’s assertion that Glossip had a support structure outside prison. It didn’t appear to land as Harmon intended. “Would it be a surprise to anyone that Richard Glossip may be estranged from family members after serving 28 years incarcerated?” Brewster asked.
Harmon moved on to his second witness: “The state calls Richard Glossip,” he announced. Glossip’s lawyers immediately asked to approach the bench. Glossip looked confused. “Wait, what — me?” he asked, looking at Lea. Before the judge, Brewster and co-counsel Andrea Miller argued that calling Glossip to testify was improper for a variety of legal reasons. Coyle agreed.
With that, Harmon moved to the podium to argue his case for keeping Glossip in jail.
Harmon questioned Glossip’s roots in Oklahoma, saying he had hoped to ask Glossip about this on the stand. “I think the evidence, as the court could hopefully hear through that phone call, is that Mr. Glossip has no ties to his biological family,” Harmon said. “All of Mr. Glossip’s family ties center around one person. And that’s his current spouse. And I don’t mean to diminish that,” he said, before questioning the sincerity of their bond. He suggested that Glossip was engaged in flirtatious conversations with other women and brought up allegations by Glossip’s ex-wife that he had used her over the course of their relationship. In fact, Harmon spent much of his time at the podium summarizing old affidavits by her and another woman who claimed Glossip manipulated them into giving him money.
“I do have a couple questions,” Coyle told Harmon. In order to deny bond, she had to have “clear and convincing evidence” that Glossip was likely to be found guilty. “If you would please expand on the facts that support that for my consideration.” In other words, she was asking Harmon for some concrete proof that Glossip is a murderer.
When it comes to Glossip’s case, the question on the minds of many in Oklahoma City these days — and certainly inside Coyle’s courtroom on Tuesday — is: What on earth is Genter Drummond doing?
Until recently, there was every reason to believe that Glossip’s case would be resolved sooner rather than later. One potential scenario was that Glossip would agree to plead guilty to a lesser crime — specifically, of being an accessory to Van Treese’s murder. This is what Glossip was originally charged with in 1997, and arguably the only charge that ever had any basis in fact. On the night that he bludgeoned Van Treese, Sneed told Glossip that he’d killed the motel owner. Glossip didn’t immediately share this information with the police, he later told them, because he didn’t believe Sneed. In a 2023 letter asking the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to spare Glossip’s life, Drummond wrote, “as supported by unimpeachable evidence, I believe that Mr. Glossip is guilty of accessory after the fact.”
Over the last two years, Drummond had gone out of his way to spare Glossip’s life. Upon assuming office in 2023, after the release of the Reed Smith report, he announced that he was launching his own independent investigation into Glossip’s case. Several months later, Drummond concluded that Glossip’s conviction was rooted in prosecutorial misconduct and false testimony by Sneed and asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn it. When the court refused, Drummond, alongside Glossip’s defense team, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, emphasizing the myriad problems with the case and arguing that “no evidence outside of Sneed’s saying so tied Glossip to the murder’s commission.” After oral arguments last fall, the justices ultimately sided with Drummond.
Drummond, who is running for governor, made the rounds in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, boasting about his victory and publicly acknowledging that Glossip “didn’t murder the victim” in the case. This month, however, Drummond suddenly changed his tune. “My office thoroughly reviewed the merits of the case against Richard Glossip and concluded that sufficient evidence exists to secure a murder conviction,” he said in a press release announcing the decision to retry Glossip.
But in a written motion and in front of Coyle, the state offered little more than old talking points about Glossip’s behavior after the crime, while pointing out that Sneed has never actually taken back his testimony. “Contrary to the defendant’s insinuations, Sneed has never recanted his testimony recounting how the defendant solicited him to murder Barry Van Treese, split the nearly $4,000 in case they stole from the victim’s vehicle, and then attempted to conceal the fact of the murder,” Drummond wrote in the motion. “In fact, to this day Sneed stands by his testimony.”
In truth, Sneed’s own daughter told the state in 2014 that her dad wanted to recant his testimony. In a letter addressed to the pardon and parole board, she wrote that “for a couple of years now my father has been talking to me about recanting his original testimony,” but that he feared the consequences if he did so. Eight years later, the Reed Smith investigation found corroborating evidence. In a pair of letters Sneed wrote to his attorney about recanting his testimony; the attorney discouraged him, however, suggesting that if he did he would face the death penalty. Sneed, who is now 47, remains in prison serving a life sentence.
Drummond also relies on a piece of circumstantial evidence that has long been used against Glossip: At the time of his arrest, Glossip was carrying about $1,700 — which was roughly half of the cash the state alleged that Van Treese had on the night he was killed. “Homicide detectives took note of the defendant’s possession of a large sum of cash not only because it appeared to correspond to half the value of the stolen cash, but also because the defendant was not known to have large quantities of money on him,” Drummond wrote.
Glossip has repeatedly explained that this money was a combination of funds from his paycheck, savings, and the proceeds from several items he’d sold. He planned to use the money to hire a lawyer. (Glossip was arrested as he exited the office of an Oklahoma City attorney.)
More importantly, recent investigations have discredited the state’s theory that Glossip had a financial motive to want Van Treese dead. Forensic accountants who reviewed the case determined not only that there was no evidence of embezzlement, but also that the motel funds on hand the night Van Treese was murdered would have been closer to $2,000 — roughly the amount of money in Sneed’s possession. Notably, the cash Sneed had was covered in blood; Glossip’s money was not.
As the hearing came to a close, it seemed increasingly clear that Coyle would not be issuing an immediate ruling. In light of Drummond’s previous stance, she wanted Harmon to lay out exactly what evidence would support a first-degree murder charge and justify keeping Glossip in jail.
“We have a plethora of evidence, actually,” he said. But rather than present anything new, Harmon urged Coyle to look at the transcripts of Glossip’s 1997 preliminary hearing and his two trials for the proof she needed.
In his closing argument, Brewster reemphasized Drummond’s many statements arguing that the case against Glossip was fatally flawed. “I don’t know how the state can come in this courtroom and say, ‘The evidence is great,’” he said, “when they’re [on] the record before the U.S. Supreme Court saying the exact opposite.”
“I don’t know how the state can come in this courtroom and say, ‘The evidence is great,’ when they’re [on] the record before the U.S. Supreme Court saying the exact opposite.”
The state had “completely failed” to show that it was likely to win a new murder conviction against Glossip, Brewster said. While it isn’t unusual for judges to deny bond in first-degree murder cases, Brewster pointed out that this was not a typical case. “It would be an absolute travesty not to grant this man a bond.”
Nevertheless, Coyle told the lawyers that she needed time to read the trial transcripts. Glossip sat at the defense table shackled at the waist and ankles as the lawyers conferred at the bench with Coyle to compare schedules and work out next steps. Coyle said she would make a decision about Glossip’s bond request by July 23. Surrounded by armed sheriff’s deputies, Glossip was led out of the courtroom, loaded into an elevator, and taken back to jail.
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