Oklahoma’s state parole board voted Wednesday not to recommend clemency for death row inmate Richard Glossip, convicted of plotting a murder, despite the rare support he received from the state’s attorney general and celebrities including Kim Kardashian.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board deadlocked with a 2-2 vote, meaning Glossip’s clemency won’t be recommended to the governor and he is scheduled to be put to death next month unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes.
Glossip, a 60-year-old former hotel manager, was found guilty of orchestrating the 1997 murder of his boss, Barry Alan Van Treese, 54, at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City. He has maintained his innocence.
What happened in the 1997 murder
Glossip was found guilty and sentenced to death for paying Justin Sneed, a 19-year-old accomplice and maintenance man, to kill Van Treese on Jan. 7, 1997.
Sneed beat Van Treese to death with a baseball bat and was sentenced to life without parole after testifying that Glossip hired him for the murder.
He said Glossip pressured him into doing it and offered him $10,000 as payment. He testified against Glossip at two trials.
Glossip maintains that Sneed actually killed the motel owner during a botched robbery for drug money.
Glossip claims Sneed incriminated him to avoid getting the death penalty, and that Sneed, a meth addict, made admissions in jail and later in prison about framing Glossip, and also has talked of recanting his testimony.
Victim’s family at odds with attorney general in unusual case
The clemency hearing was unusual in that Van Treese’s relatives found themselves arguing against both Glossip’s defense team — and the state attorney general.
Typically, victims’ families at such hearings receive the full support of prosecutors.
Instead, they listened to recently elected Attorney General Gentner Drummond join Glossip’s defense team in arguing for clemency by casting doubt on the fairness of the death row inmate’s trial and retrial.
On April 6, the attorney general asked the court to set aside the conviction and send the case back to the Oklahoma County Courthouse.
“This is so one-sided,” Alana Van Treese Mileto, Barry Van Treese’s sister, told the board.
Through tears, Donna Van Treese, the widow of Barry Van Treese, told the board about the heartache of raising children with only the memory of a loving husband and father who sang silly songs to his family, helped feed the poor and taught his kids to live a life of integrity.
They were married 18 years when Barry Van Treese was murdered.
“That’s the date my entire world shattered,” Donna Van Treese told the board.
Derek Van Treese, a son, told the board two juries found Glossip guilty and recommended the death penalty.
“I’ve spent half my life waiting for justice to be served for those responsible,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said, he’s watched his father’s murder case go from a legal matter to a political issue: “It’s been pushed from the court of law to the court of public opinion,” he said.
Glossip maintains innocence, receives support from Kim Kardashian
By live video, Glossip pleaded with the board to recommend clemency. He’s maintained his innocence and said he would never pay someone to commit murder or a crime against another person.
“I’m not a murderer and I don’t deserve to die for this,” Glossip said.
His clemency case has received national attention, and the support of celebrities.
Ahead of the clemency hearing, Kim Kardashian tweeted:
“Richard Glossip needs our help, urgently! He has been on Oklahoma’s death row for 24 years for a crime he did not commit and is now scheduled to be executed on May 18th.”
She pointed to new evidence gathered in the case.
Actress Susan Sarandon — who portrayed death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean in the 1995 movie “Dead Man Walking” — has also taken up Glossip’s cause. Prejean herself has visited Glossip in prison many times and served as his spiritual adviser. He is also the subject of the 2017 documentary “Killing Richard Glossip.”
Defense attorneys hope judges will intervene
Glossip would have needed a majority of the state parole board’s vote to recommend clemency to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. Without it, his attorneys filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking to halt the execution. They also filed a motion in state district court asking a judge to prevent his execution from being out until a full five-member clemency panel can review the case.
Wednesday’s vote was split 2-2, with one member abstaining because of a conflict of interest; his spouse is a prosecutor who was involved in Glossip’s case.
“We call on Governor Stitt to grant a reprieve of Richard Glossip’s scheduled execution on May 18, 2023 because the execution of an innocent man would be an irreversible injustice,” attorney Don Knight said in a statement.
A slew of previous court appeals have all been denied, including two challenges last November, and the state parole board unanimously denied Glossip’s past clemency request in 2014. Glossip has been previously scheduled for execution several times, including a 2015 attempt when his lethal injection was called off because the wrong heart-stopping drug had been delivered.
In March, after gaining full access to prosecutors’ notes from the case, Glossip’s attorneys raised a new challenge to his conviction and asked for a stay of his execution.
Drummond at that time asked the court to reset the execution to August 2024.
Drummond told judges Glossip should receive a new trial because Sneed gave “false testimony” to the jury at a 2004 retrial regarding his psychiatric treatment. He also argued the state withheld evidence.
On April 20, the court rejected those conclusions.
Drummond, who believes Glossip is guilty of accessory after the fact, told the board that the death penalty is “an excessive sentence” while Sneed got life in prison without parole.
“Public confidence in the death penalty requires that these cases receive the highest standard of reliability,” Drummond said in a news release. “While the State has not questioned the integrity of previous death penalty cases, the Glossip conviction is very different. I believe it would be a grave injustice to execute an individual whose trial conviction was beset by a litany of errors.”
Drummond said Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna recently instituted new guidelines under which Glossip’s case would not qualify for the death penalty in Oklahoma County.
PREVIOUSLY:Oklahoma attorney general asks for clemency for death row inmate
Glossip twice married while on death row. He married his current wife, Lea Rodger, in March 2022.
Rodger, an anti-death penalty advocate, told the board on Wednesday as her voice wavered: “Please hear me when I say I cannot lose him.”
