Just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion granting Richard Glossip a new trial, his attorney Don Knight started receiving an avalanche of texts. “My phone blew up, my email blew up,” Knight said. By the time he spoke to his client on the phone, Glossip had already heard the news. His wife Lea had read the opinion to him over the phone: The court had ruled that Oklahoma City prosecutors failed to correct the false testimony of their star witness against Glossip and that his conviction and death sentence could not stand. “Because the prosecution violated its obligations,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court’s majority, “we reverse the judgment below and remand the case for a new trial.”

The opinion was a stinging rebuke to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which has repeatedly rejected Glossip’s appeals despite mounting evidence of his innocence in the 1997 murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese. The ruling is also a major victory for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who had previously taken the extraordinary step of asking the OCCA to vacate Glossip’s conviction after he concluded that it had been fatally tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, it is a momentous victory for Glossip, who has been scheduled for execution nine times and has been served three last meals, as well as for Knight who has spent the last decade fighting to free his client.

Glossip’s case will ultimately be sent back to Oklahoma City where the elected district attorney will have to decide whether Glossip should be retried. If she declines to do so, Glossip could soon walk out of prison.

“Today was a victory for justice and fairness in our judicial system,” Knight said in a statement. “Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”

Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to die for the murder of Van Treese inside a seedy Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. No physical evidence linked Glossip, the motel’s live-in manager, to the crime. The case against him was based almost entirely on the testimony of a 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed, who admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death but insisted it was Glossip’s idea. In exchange for testifying against Glossip, Sneed escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to life without parole.

At trial, prosecutors portrayed Sneed — a chronic drug user prone to unpredictable bouts of violence — as a hapless follower who acted under Glossip’s complete control. “It’s as if Justin Sneed was a Rottweiler puppy … and Richard Glossip was the dog trainer,” prosecutors argued to Glossip’s jury in 2004. “No matter how you slice it, no matter how you parse it, the person that says ‘sic ’em’ is the person that makes the decision.”

In 2022, the state began releasing to Glossip’s attorneys boxes of previously undisclosed case documents revealing that Sneed gave false statements at Glossip’s second trial — and that prosecutors were aware of his misstatements yet failed to correct his testimony. In other words, jurors condemned Glossip to die based on the testimony of a known liar.

While he was in jail, Sneed had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium to manage it. However, when he testified against Glossip, Sneed denied ever seeing a psychiatrist and said he had no idea why he’d been given lithium. 

The records included notes from a meeting between Sneed and prosecutor Connie Smothermon that took place not long before Glossip’s 2004 retrial. In the notes, Smothermon wrote the name of a doctor — “Dr. Trumpet?” — and a reference to the powerful mood stabilizing drug lithium — “on lithium?”

As Glossip’s lawyers later argued to the Oklahoma court, “Trumpet” was clearly a reference to Lawrence Trombka, the lone psychiatrist working in the Oklahoma City jail at the time Sneed was incarcerated there, and thus the only person authorized to diagnose Sneed’s disorder and to prescribe lithium. The notes made clear that Sneed had, at best, misrepresented the situation under oath, when he testified that while in jail he had a cold and asked for Sudafed, but that “somehow they ended up giving me lithium for some reason. I don’t know why,” he said. “I never seen no psychiatrist or anything.”

“So you don’t know why they gave you that?” Smothermon asked.

“No,” Sneed replied.

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This exchange was at the heart of Drummond’s 2023 motion to vacate Glossip’s conviction. “There is no dispute that Sneed was the state’s key witness at the second trial. If Sneed had accurately disclosed that he had seen a psychiatrist, then the defense would have likely learned … the true reason for Sneed’s lithium prescription,” Drummond wrote in a motion to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. “With this information plus Sneed’s history of drug addiction, the state believes that a qualified defense attorney likely could have attacked Sneed’s ability to properly recall key facts at the second trial.”

In its ruling, the Supreme Court majority agreed. The entire case against Glossip rested on Sneed’s testimony, Sotomayor wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossip’s guilt of capital murder, the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s credibility was necessarily determinative here,” Sotomayor wrote. “Besides Sneed, no other witness and no physical evidence established that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese’s murder. Thus, the jury could convict Glossip only if it believed Sneed.” And Sneed’s credibility as a witness would have been undermined if the jury had been aware of the truth. Glossip’s prosecutors had failed to correct Sneed’s misleading testimony as they were constitutionally required to do, the court ruled. “A prosecutor’s midtrial revelation that Sneed lied on the stand would have significantly undercut” his account, Sotomayor wrote.

But the court did not stop there, noting that the violation was part of a constellation of prosecutorial misconduct. “Additional conduct by the prosecution further undermines confidence in the verdict,” Sotomayor wrote. The state had destroyed key evidence before Glossip’s retrial and had hidden evidence that Sneed sought to recant his testimony implicating Glossip in the crime. She also pointed to an attempt by state prosecutors to have Sneed revise his testimony about the murder to better conform to their theory of the crime.

The full-throated court victory came as a surprise to many close to the case, who had speculated after the court heard oral arguments last October that it would likely send the case back for an evidentiary hearing. In a partial dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett argued that this would have been the more appropriate action, while agreeing that prosecutors had violated Glossip’s constitutional rights. But the majority ultimately decided this was not necessary. “Because ample evidence supports the attorney general’s confession of error in this Court, there also is no need to remand for further evidentiary proceedings at the OCCA.” 

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Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the majority, writing his own opinion, which was joined by Justice Samuel Alito. In Thomas’s view Sneed’s testimony was “patently immaterial” to the outcome of Glossip’s trial. He also endorsed the OCCA’s absurd opinion that Sneed’s testimony was not “clearly false” because he “was more than likely in denial of his mental health disorders” — even though there was nothing in the record to support that assertion. The majority flatly rejected the idea. “Sneed’s beliefs are beside the point,” Sotomayor wrote. “What matters is that his testimony was false and a prosecutor knowingly let it stand nonetheless.”

At a press conference following the ruling, Drummond, who is running for Oklahoma governor, reiterated his support for the death penalty, emphasizing that he has attended all eight executions carried out since he took office. Drummond told reporters that when he became attorney general he reviewed all of the state’s death penalty convictions “and one stood out.” The “mission” of his office is to “seek justice, not to defend the prosecution,” he said, which is why he sought to have Glossip’s conviction overturned. 

Drummond said he was “pleased the high court has validated my grave concerns with how this prosecution was handled, and I am thankful we now have a fresh opportunity to see that justice is done.”

Now, Glossip’s case will be returned to Oklahoma City where the current district attorney, Vicki Behenna, will review the evidence and decide whether to try Glossip for a third time. If she decides against doing so, Glossip would ultimately be released from prison. During his press conference, Drummond said he has conferred with Behenna and that the two plan to “review the evidence with fresh eyes.” 

Twenty-eight years after the murder, and with no evidence aside from Sneed’s highly questionable account of the crime, it is hard to see how prosecutors could move forward with another trial. One potential resolution to the case is that they offer Glossip a deal to plead guilty to a lesser crime — specifically, of being an accessory-after-the-fact to Van Treese’s murder. This is arguably the only charge that ever had any basis in fact — and is what Glossip was originally charged with in 1997. 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 what Sneed was saying. 

For now, Knight is preparing Glossip for whatever comes next. Knight credited his colleague, paralegal Meri Ellzey, for being an instrumental part of his decade-long fight to free Glossip, and he sounded cautiously optimistic that his client’s long ordeal will finally end. 

“I’m still a one-step-at-a-time kind of guy,” Knight said. “I understand where I am right now, and I realize that, you know, I’m not to the finish line, but, by God, I can see it now.”

The post After Nine Execution Dates and Three Last Meals, Richard Glossip May Soon Walk Free appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

Attorney General Pam Bondi issued last week several memos to all Department of Justice employees including one with the subject: “Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions.” It detailed exactly how her agency will put into practice an executive order to restart federal executions that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office.

The memo denounced the pause on federal executions under former President Joe Biden and claimed DOJ officials had neglected their jobs by upholding a moratorium on federal executions in place since 2021, which halted a killing spree launched by Trump in his first term. “The Department’s political leadership disregarded these important responsibilities and supplanted the will of the people with their own personal beliefs,” the memo read. 

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While there is no evidence that the death penalty achieves its purported goal to deter crime, the Trump administration wants the federal government to direct substantial resources and dollars to carrying out more executions, more quickly. Through its executive actions and policy memos, the administration is also stating something that criminal justice and human rights advocates have long said: that conditions in many federal detention facilities are inhumane, and Trump wants to keep them that way.

In the January 20 executive order, Trump directed his attorney general to evaluate the conditions of confinement for the 37 people commuted from federal death row at the end of Biden’s term and “take all lawful and appropriate action to ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.” 

The message is a direction to the federal government to use conditions of confinement as additional punishment — which is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, according to Miriam Gohara, a clinical professor of law at Yale University and a former federal public defender. 

On top of that, it suggests that inhumane conditions in federal detention are the administration’s goal. 

“The one thing that was clear from the order was that it sounded like the administration was going to try to influence placement of people, and try to do so under conditions that they called ‘monstrous’ in their order,” Gohara told The Intercept. Gohara spent over a decade representing clients sentenced to death in post-conviction litigation. 

“Certainly, if I were leading the [Bureau of Prisons] or if I were working in the BOP, I wouldn’t want to suggest that there are any monstrous conditions in my facilities,” she said.

“That suggests that they’re actually encouraging the Bureau of Prisons to maintain monstrous conditions, or that they think they’re already monstrous conditions in the BOP somewhere, and that somebody could be put there. Which again, seems like a very odd thing for the executive to be saying about one of his agencies.”

The administration’s use of language describing federal detention as “monstrous” is on par with how Trump has spoken on criminal justice from the start, said death row attorney Dale Baich. He previously led the unit of the Arizona Federal Defender’s Office that represents people sentenced to death in post-conviction proceedings. 

“I was really taken aback by the number of adjectives in the order,” Baich said. “But, you know, that’s how he campaigned, that’s how Project 2025 was drafted. We really shouldn’t be surprised.” 

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Incarcerated people and advocates for reform have long argued that conditions of incarceration across the board — from federal prisons to local jails — are inhumane and that the government has not done enough to address them. Even prior to the latest order, there are plenty of examples of detention facilities that have not taken corrective measures even under court order. 

Welcoming and embracing inhumane conditions in prisons as federal policy will make challenging those conditions even more difficult, Baich said. “It’s hard enough to challenge conditions of confinement when departments of corrections or the Bureau of Prisons is saying that it’s not unconstitutional,” he said. 

“So I just think it’s going to be a real heavy lift going forward to challenge those conditions,” Baich said. 

But challenges, he said, must continue. “What is important is to continue to pursue unconstitutional conditions of confinement and hold the government accountable.”

Bondi’s memo last week also directs Bureau of Prisons employees to work with states that allow executions to ensure they have “sufficient supplies and resources to impose the death penalty” — including lethal injection drugs — and helping to transfer federal detainees “to the appropriate authorities to carry out those sentences.” 

The order also directs the U.S. attorney general to look for opportunities to bring state capital charges against those with commuted federal death sentences and make relevant recommendations to state and local authorities, effectively finding another way to execute them. At its worst, that could look like the Department of Justice finding a way to federalize crimes in states without the death penalty — in other words, making a new constituency of suspects eligible for federal execution, Baich said. 

States that don’t have the death penalty or only rarely use it are already bracing for how, if at all, Trump’s order might affect them. On Wednesday, Trump said judicial efforts to push back on his orders amounted to a “weaponization” of the courts.

Since Trump won the presidential election, at least one Democratic governor has already taken steps to downplay the state’s history of botched executions. In late November, Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs fired an independent commissioner before they were set to publish a report on their investigation into the state’s history of botched lethal injections. A draft of the report, which was never published, concluded that death by firing squad, barred in Arizona, was the only form of execution more quick and less painful than lethal injection. Arizona’s next execution, the first in two years, is scheduled for March 19.

Capital trials are expensive and resource-intensive, and it’s an open question whether the Trump administration would provide grants or additional support to rural counties that historically don’t have the capacity to carry out capital trials or executions. In a worst-case scenario, the administration could find a way to offer money to rural counties that often can’t afford to prosecute death penalty cases. 

Trump’s Justice Department has already authorized the movement of one person to ensure their execution. On Wednesday, Bondi approved Oklahoma’s request to transfer George Hanson to the state from Louisiana for execution. Hanson was previously scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma in 2022, but Biden’s DOJ denied Oklahoma’s request to transfer him from Louisiana, where he is serving a life sentence for an unrelated conviction.

Baich called the move an “example of this newly found cooperation between DOJ and the states.”

“Mr. Hanson was never going to get out of prison,” Baich said. “Deliberate decisions by government officials have deprived Mr. Hanson of the guarantees of due process. This trampling of constitutional protections and the rush to execute are consistent with what we saw at the end of the first Trump administration where thirteen people were executed.”

The Trump administration’s focus on accelerating federal executions takes away resources from the goals it claims to prioritize, Gohara said during a briefing on the order last month. Those stated goals include things like helping victims and curbing crime — at a time of historically low national rates. 

“We now understand that the death penalty does nothing to promote public safety, and, in fact, detracts from public safety resources that actually could be used to help keep people free from crime and violence,” Gohara said. “If you’re spending money on expensive capital trials, you’re not spending money on doing things like using rape kits to clear old cases or to try to solve cold crimes.”

The post Trump Is Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: Federal Prisons Are Purposely Inhumane appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.