Supreme Court grants Richard Glossip new trial in capital case

This article was updated on Feb. 25 at 1:57 p.m.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Richard Glossip, who is on death row in Oklahoma for his role in the 1997 murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese, should get a new trial. In a decision by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the majority agreed that prosecutors violated their obligation to correct false testimony, and that the jury might not have sentenced him to death if the testimony had been corrected.

Prosecutors have never contended that Glossip himself killed Van Treese, who owned the Oklahoma City motel where he worked. Justin Sneed, who worked as a handyman at the motel, confessed to murdering Van Treese, but testified that Glossip paid him to do so. In exchange for his testimony, Sneed was spared the death penalty.  

Glossip has maintained that he had no part in the murder.

In 2023, Glossip returned to state court in another effort to set aside his conviction and sentence. He contended that the state had recently given him for the first time files indicating that prosecutors knew, but failed to tell either Glossip or his lawyers, that Sneed had been prescribed lithium for bipolar disorder after his arrest and had lied about it. Prosecutors allowed Sneed to testify falsely that he had never been treated by a psychiatrist and that he had been accidentally prescribed the drug for a cold.

After two different independent reports questioned the validity of Glossips conviction and death sentence, the states attorney general, Gentner Drummond, joined Glossips request for the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the states highest court for criminal cases, to set aside his conviction, as well as his plea for clemency from the states Pardon and Parole Board.

Both requests were unsuccessful. But the Supreme Court agreed to put Glossips execution on hold and to take up his case.

In a 29-page opinion, the justices on Tuesday reversed the state courts ruling and sent Glossips case back for a new trial.

Under the Supreme Courts 1959 ruling in Napue v. Illinois, Sotomayor explained, prosecutors violate the Constitution when they knowingly obtain a conviction using false evidence either by soliciting false testimony or allowing false testimony to stand without correcting it. When that happens, she continued, the defendant is entitled to a new trial if there is a reasonable chance that the false testimony could have affected the jurys decision.

In this case, Sotomayor reasoned, Sneeds testimony was false, but prosecutors knowingly failed to correct it. Sneed was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and received lithium while at the local sheriffs department, and a psychiatrist testified both that he was the only health-care provider who could have prescribed the lithium and that lithium is only used to treat psychiatric conditions. The evidence likewise establishes, she added, that the prosecutors knew Sneeds statements were false as he testified to them.

And if prosecutors had corrected Sneeds testimony, Sotomayor wrote, there is reason to believe it would have made a difference. Because Sneeds testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossips guilt of capital murder, Sotomayor observed, the jury could only convict him if it found Sneed credible which it would have been less likely to do if prosecutors corrected Sneed. As a result, Sotomayor concluded, Glossip is entitled to a new trial.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Sotomayor continued, based its conclusion that Glossip was not entitled to a new trial on a mistaken interpretation of Napue. Although the state court believed that prosecutors had not violated Napue because Glossips lawyers knew or should have known that Sneed was taking lithium, Sotomayor emphasized, Sneeds false testimony concerned the reasons for his lithium prescription which Glossips lawyers did not know rather than the mere fact that he had taken it.

Similarly, although the state court held that Sneeds testimony was not clearly false because Sneed may have been in denial about his mental health issues, Sotomayor added, Sneeds beliefs are beyond the point. What matters is that his testimony was false and a prosecutor knowingly let it stand nonetheless.

Sotomayor brushed aside an issue that the court had instructed both sides (as well as a friend of the court appointed to defend the state courts ruling) to address: Whether the Supreme Court had the power to review the state courts decision at all. Christopher Michel, the Washington lawyer and former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts appointed by the justices, had argued that it did not because the state courts holding that Glossips claims were barred under the state law governing post-conviction procedures was the kind of pure state-law ground that the U.S. Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to consider.

But the state court applied the state law, Sotomayor noted, only after it rejected Drummonds concession that the prosecutors failure to correct Sneeds false testimony violated Napue. Because that conclusion rested exclusively on federal law, Sotomayor concluded, its decision to apply the state post-conviction law did as well, and therefore the court had the power to review the state courts ruling.  

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Barrett agreed with the majority that the court had the power to review Glossips case. But she believed that the Supreme Court went too far when it ordered the state court to set aside Glossips conviction and required a new trial. Although she agreed with the majority that the state court had misapplied Napue, she would have simply sent the case back to allow it to make findings about the significance of some of the evidence on which the majority relied to conclude that prosecutors failed to correct false testimony by Sneed.

Pointing in particular to notes taken by one of the prosecutors during an interview with Sneed, she suggested that the notes are hardly clear, and there are competing explanations of what they mean.  When the record in a case can be interpreted in several different ways, she argued, the Supreme Court should not be in the business of choosing between those interpretations.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Samuel Alito and, in part, by Barrett. In his view, the Supreme Court lacks the power to override the denials of relief by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and the states pardon and parole board. Instead, Thomas lamented, the Supreme Court stretches the law at every turn to rule in Glossips favor. Tuesdays ruling, he concluded, distorts our jurisdiction, imagines a constitutional violation where none occurred, and abandons basic principles governing the disposition of state-court appeals.

Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case, presumably because he was involved in earlier iterations of the proceedings while a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which includes Oklahoma.

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.