Eighteen years after the murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese, there is no concrete evidence to suggest Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip was involved in the crime. According to witnesses, the actual killer, Justin Sneed, has repeatedly bragged about setting his former boss up by pinning him as the mastermind behind Treese’s murder. Over time, new evidence has chipped away at the case against Glossip.
Still, after a long battle to prove his innocence and have his sentence overturned, Glossip will be executed by lethal injection Wednesday afternoon. His looming execution highlights how difficult it is to have a conviction reversed — and for a death row inmate to walk free.
“It’s very difficult to exonerate anyone who’s been wrongly convicted because the standard is much higher to reverse a conviction than to convict in the first place,” Valena Beety, deputy director of the Clinical Law Program at West Virginia University and chair of the West Virginia Innocence Project, told ThinkProgress. “To convict someone, the prosecutor has to show that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But once that conviction is in place, you’re trying to reverse that with even more substantial evidence.”
Glossip was convicted in 1998 for the murder, which took place at the motel where he and Sneed worked. Without physical evidence, prosecutors argued that Glossip enlisted Sneed to kill their boss, because he was about to be terminated for embezzling money. Sneed’s DNA was found all over the crime scene, authorities had a taped confession from him, and there was a recording of the killer striking a bargain with a detective to blame Glossip in order to reduce his sentence. But the strongest evidence in Glossip’s favor was not presented in court. Glossip lost the legal battle and was sentenced to death.
Years later, there was a ray of hope for him, when the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals overturned the conviction based on the grossly inadequate representation that Glossip received. He was granted a new trial in 2004, but once again, the defense attorneys did not introduce the interrogation tape and, similar to his first attorney, conducted a weak cross-examination. He was convicted again in 2004.
“[To] have a judge say, ‘you’re right, there’s not enough evidence to convict you,’ to have the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals say, ‘that’s true, there’s not enough evidence to convict this man’ [and] to reverse the conviction, is huge,” Beety said. “So [Glossip] already had his conviction reversed once, and then he was brought back to trial and convicted again. That alone makes me suspect of the legitimacy and weight of the conviction.”
People who are sentenced to death are technically guaranteed post-conviction representation. But their defense often falls short. Defense lawyers can’t always dedicate time and resources to build the strongest case. In many instances, the inmates wind up with defense lawyers who worked on the first trial, meaning they could end up with the same person who provided inadequate representation — like Glossip. And when appealing their decision, defendants are not allowed to introduce new evidence.
“We think of death penalty cases or murder conviction life sentences as high profile cases, but these are state cases. You really only have local prosecutors and local public defenders working on the vast majority of them,” Beety said.
Most defendants can’t afford to hire an attorney, and have to rely on public defenders who do not have the capacity to launch a thorough investigation. Even if they are granted a retrial, the defendant is out of luck unless their attorneys can produce new evidence.
“Public defenders work very hard but they’re often overworked. There’s not necessarily the level of expertise and dedication that you’d hope for in such a serious case,” Beety explained. “For example, if you had a civil case, you’d have attorneys who have been hired from law firms to do in-depth background work on it. And for criminal defense attorneys, there’s just not that time and you’re not being paid that as a public defender.”
But recently, a heightened awareness of wrongful convictions and closer scrutiny of how those convictions came about is resulting in more exonerations than ever. In 2014, there were 125, more than any other year on record. Six of the exonerees were death row inmates. More than 30 percent of the crimes that were cleared were drug crimes, and non-homicide non-sex crimes accounted for 50 percent.
Beety attributed the momentum to scientific discovery and public interest. People are increasingly familiar with the flaws in “snitch” testimonies and witness identification. How witnesses are interviewed can determine what they will say, how they remember events, and how truthful they will be. Defendants’ demographics, including their age, race and mental health status, also influence what they say or do in front of police.
Still, none of this matters for Glossip, whose case has been botched from the beginning.
A growing and far-reaching coalition of support — comprising celebrities, entrepreneurs, and legal professionals — has fought tooth and nail for an additional stay and re-trial. But Gov. Mary Fallin (R) remains unmoved, maintaining the two convictions are enough to carry out the execution. In July, soon after the Supreme Court ruled that the state’s lethal injection cocktail does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, Oklahoma scheduled three executions, including Glossip’s, to be carried out this year. A last minute stay is unlikely.