Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has filed a motion with the state Court of Criminal Appeals to postpone Richard Glossip’s May 18 execution to August 2024, the Oklahoman reports.
This is the second time this year and the ninth time since Glossip was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Barry Van Treese that his execution has been postponed. According to the Oklahoman, Drummond stated that the delay will provide the former prosecutor he appointed to investigate Glossip’s case time to complete his review.
Glossip, now 59, was sentenced to death in 1997, convicted of engineering the murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of a motel where Glossip worked. The actual killer was Justin Sneed, a motel maintenance worker who admitted to beating Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. But Sneed claimed Glossip was the mastermind of the murder and had offered him $10,000 to kill Van Treese. Sneed was sentenced to life without parole. Glossip has always maintained his innocence.
A separate investigation conducted by the law firm Reed Smith, at the request of Oklahoma legislators, released a report last June, concluding that “Glossip’s“ 2004 trial cannot be relied on to support a murder-for-hire conviction. Nor can it provide a basis for the government to take the life of Richard E. Glossip.” That report was followed by five supplemental accounts, which Reed Smith states “uncovered several new findings that bolster this assertion.” The most recent report, which contains the findings from an examination of evidence that the district attorney’s office had previously withheld, has reinforced Reed Smith’s position. “As we have concluded before, we believe that no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first-degree murder, and this new information further demonstrates that,” the law firm states.
