Richard Glossip, a man scheduled to be executed on Wednesday despite the fact that the evidence against him has eroded since his conviction, will not die today under an order issued by Oklahoma’s highest criminal court. The unexpected order grants Glossip a 2-week stay of execution just three hours before he was scheduled to be killed.
Glossip was convicted of murder in 1998 despite no physical evidence against him. He was convicted largely on the basis of testimony by Justin Sneed, who claims that Glossip enlisted him in order to kill their mutual boss. According to an affidavit signed by a fellow inmate, Sneed has since bragged about setting up Glossip in order to save his own life. In a recorded conversation with a detective, Sneed bargained to reduce his own sentence in return for fingering Glossip.
The order granting the stay is brief and gives little insight into how this case will ultimately be resolved. In it, the court explains that “due to Glossip’s last minute filing, and in order for this Court to give fair consideration to the materials included with his subsequent application for post-conviction relief, we hereby GRANT an emergency stay of execution for two weeks.” As a legal matter, Glossip faces an uphill battle — court decisions overturning convictions because of insufficient evidence to support the conviction are rare. Nevertheless, the fact that the state’s highest criminal court was willing to grant a stay despite the heavy legal burden Glossip must carry suggests that they may have concerns about his case.