Supreme Court to weigh overturning Okla. death row inmate Richard Glossip's conviction

Jan. 22 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court on Monday announced it will hear arguments later this year on whether to overturn the murder conviction of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip.

Glossip, convicted of murdering his boss at an Oklahoma City motel in 1998, has come up against the possibility of being executed nine different times as his attorneys argued that he did not receive a fair trial after it was revealed that a key witness against him had an untreated psychiatric condition that was not disclosed to the court.

"We are grateful that the court is providing Richard Glossip the opportunity to argue that Oklahoma should not be permitted to kill him," Glossip's attorney, John Mills said. "We are also grateful that the state's chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Gentner Drummond agrees that Mr. Glossip did not receive a fair trial and his conviction must be reversed."

Drummond last year opened an Independent Counsel review of Glossip's murder conviction and death sentence and the Supreme Court followed by blocking an execution attempt scheduled for May.

"Public confidence in the death penalty requires the highest standard of reliability, so it is appropriate that the U.S. Supreme Court will review this case," Drummond said in a statement Monday.

Drummond's office noted that an Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Glossip's April 2023 appeal for a post-conviction relief -- a legal maneuver allowing a defendant to present new evidence after a judgment has been made -- "despite the State's extraordinary admission of error in Glossip's trial."

The Criminal Appeals Court "refused to accept the state's confession of error, instead reaching the extraordinary conclusion that Glossip's execution must go forward notwithstanding the State's determination that his conviction is unsustainable," Glossip's legal representatives said about the April 2023 court decision.

Don Knight, another attorney for Glossip, said the state attorney general's "concession of error is historically unprecedented." Knight went on to say that "two independent investigations cast grave doubts on the reliability" of Glossip's original murder conviction.

Mills noted it took 25 years for Oklahoma "to disclose that the undisputed killer and the prosecution's star witness, Justin Sneed, was lying and that it did not correct his falsehoods for the jury." The state, Mills concluded, "now agrees this failure, and the cumulative effect of other errors in the case, require a new trial" for Glossip.