The Supreme Court made the rare decision Friday to block the execution of a death row inmate after Oklahoma‘s attorney general agreed that his life should be spared.
Richard Glossip had been slated to be put to death on May 18 despite support from Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R), who said Glossip did not receive a fair trial.
OKLAHOMA ATTORNEY GENERAL WANTS TO VACATE CONVICTION OF HIGH-PROFILE DEATH ROW INMATE
“I am very grateful to the U.S. Supreme Court for their decision to grant a stay of execution. I will continue working to ensure justice prevails in this important case,” Drummond wrote in a press release.
An Oklahoma appeals court upheld Glossip’s conviction after Drummond’s public support, and the state’s pardon and parole board deadlocked on a vote on whether to grant clemency.
The Supreme Court’s decision puts the execution on hold while it reviews the case.
Justice Neil Gorsuch took no part in the case, likely because he dealt with Glossip’s case earlier as an appeals court judge.
Glossip has maintained his innocence for decades since his initial 1998 conviction of capital murder for ordering the killing of his boss at the time.
A review spurred by Drummond found that prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to Glossip they were obligated to show and that the evidence depicted the prosecutors’ key witness, a supposed accomplice of Glossip who committed the murder, giving false testimony.
Although Oklahoma’s top prosecutor now maintains that he couldn’t stand by Glossip’s conviction, the state Court of Criminal Appeals declined Glossip’s request to have his death sentence halted.
The state would “suffer harm from its Department of Corrections executing a person whom the State has concluded should never have been convicted of murder, let alone sentenced to die, in the first place,” Glossip’s attorneys wrote in their filings to the Supreme Court.
Glossip has already been before the high court once before in a case the justices heard in 2015 that he and other death row inmates brought against the lethal injection protocol used in executions.
In that ruling, the justices ruled against the claims that the lethal drugs which were blamed for botched executions violated the 8th Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
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Glossip has been on death row for 26 years and has had nine execution dates.
His most recent petition to the high court saw his legal team recruit veteran attorney Paul Clement, who has argued numerous successful cases before the nine justices.
