Court delays execution of Oklahoma inmate amid questions on guilt

May 5 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court on Friday blocked the execution of an Oklahoma death row inmate amid renewed doubts about his guilt.

The inmate, Richard Glossip, was scheduled to be executed on May 18 after being convicted of arranging the murder of his boss at the Oklahoma City motel where he worked ini 1998. However, even the Oklahoma attorney general has questioned his guilt.

Glossip has been behind bars for 26 years and has been scheduled to be executed nine times.

The court's action Friday puts an emergency hold on his execution while justices decide if they want to take his case.

Glossip's lawyers have contended that testimony provided by Justin Sneed, who carried out the murder in 1998, can not be relied on. Sneed testified that Glossip had hired him to kill motel owner Barry Van Treese.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond ordered an investigation that found that Sneed had been treated for a serious psychiatric condition. It also found that prosecutors failed to disclose other evidence they were required to produce.

After an Oklahoma appeals court upheld his death sentence in March, Glossip's attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court, along with Drummond.

"Absent this court's intervention, an execution will move forward under circumstances where the Attorney General has already confessed error -- a result that would be unthinkable," Drummond wrote.

Glossip's case made it to the high court in 2015, when he and others argued that the lethal injection drugs used violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The court rejected their claims.