Oklahoma
Oklahoma inmate gets temporary reprieve from execution
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt granted one other short-term reprieve to loss of life row inmate Richard Glossip, pushing his scheduled execution again till February 2023 in order that an appeals courtroom has extra time to contemplate his declare of innocence.
Stitt, who’s locked in a tricky reelection contest, issued an govt order on Wednesday that delays Glossip’s execution, which was scheduled for Nov. 21. Stitt’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. A clemency listening to for Glossip that was scheduled earlier than the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board subsequent week additionally will probably be delayed.
Glossip obtained the loss of life penalty for the 1997 murder-for-hire killing of his boss, motel proprietor Barry Van Treese. Prosecutors acknowledge Glossip didn’t kill Van Treese, however keep that he paid the lodge upkeep man, Justin Sneed, to do it. Sneed, who obtained a life sentence however was spared the loss of life penalty, was a key witness in two separate trials by which Glossip was convicted.
Lawyer Normal John O’Connor stated in an announcement that he respects the governor’s determination however stays assured in Glossip’s guilt.
“After 25 years, justice remains to be on maintain for Barry Van Treese and his household,” O’Connor stated. “Mr. Van Treese was in a room of the motel he owned when he was brutally murdered with a baseball bat by Justin Sneed, a person Richard Glossip employed to work on the motel and later enlisted to commit the homicide. Two completely different juries discovered Glossip responsible of homicide for rent.”
Van Treese’s brother, Ken Van Treese, didn’t instantly return a message searching for touch upon Stitt’s determination.
Glossip requested the Oklahoma Court docket of Felony Appeals for a brand new evidentiary listening to following the discharge of an impartial investigation by Houston regulation agency Reed Smith that raised new questions on his guilt. The agency’s report didn’t discover any definitive proof of Glossip’s innocence, however raised considerations about misplaced or destroyed proof and a detective asking main inquiries to Sneed to implicate Glossip within the slaying.
“The newly uncovered proof exhibits a concerted effort by the state to destroy and conceal proof that’s favorable to Wealthy, even to at the present time, and, most shockingly, to fabricate trial testimony they wanted to convict him,” Glossip’s lawyer, Don Knight, stated in an announcement. “There may be now overwhelming assist for what Reed Smith has concluded after its thorough investigation — that no affordable juror who heard all of the proof would discover him responsible.”
A bipartisan group of 62 Oklahoma legislators, led by Republican state Rep. Kevin McDugle, have signed a request {that a} new evidentiary listening to be granted.
Glossip, now 59, has lengthy maintained his innocence. He has been scheduled to be executed three separate occasions, solely to be spared shortly earlier than the sentence was set to be carried out. He was simply hours from being executed in September 2015 when jail officers realized that they had obtained the improper deadly drug, a mix-up that helped immediate an almost seven-year moratorium on the loss of life penalty in Oklahoma.
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