The Case of Richard Glossip: a High-Judicial-Crime Attorney General and the State’s Attorney General

The US Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a true-crime drama that pits Oklahoma’s attorney general against the state’s highest court for criminal appeals. There is a question as to whether the state court wrongly rejected the attorney general’s findings that Richard Glossip was entitled to a new trial.

Justice Samuel Alito, who was the most vocal supporter of the death penalty, was upset that the case had come back to the high court.

At that point, Drummond hired former district attorney Rex Duncan, also a Republican, to review the case as an independent counsel. He had not been given a fair trial. In Duncan’s opinion, the “cumulative effect of errors, omissions, lost evidence and possible misconduct cannot be underestimated.”

Glossip has been on death row for more than 25 years. In that time, he has been tried and convicted twice and has lost multiple appeals, including one at the Supreme Court. The handyman who worked at the motel where Glossip was the manager was the only person who could prove that Glossip was involved in the murder of Van Treese. Sneed confessed to murdering Van Treese and, in exchange for testifying against Glossip, got life in prison instead of the death penalty.

For years, Glossip’s lawyers have argued that the prosecution’s theory made little sense, and that the prosecutors concealed, and even destroyed, exculpatory evidence.

When reviewing the case files, he said he knew there were eight trial boxes for the defendants. I was curious about number eight.

What he found in box eight were the notes of prosecutor Connie Smothermon — notes that showed that the prosecution knew about evidence that would have helped the defense, and that she not only failed to disclose that evidence, but that she worked at trial to present what she knew was false testimony.

The only direct evidence implicating Glossip came from Justin Sneed, the handyman who confessed to bludgeoning Van Treese to death. Attorney General Drummond said the state relied on the murderer to testify. In exchange for confessing and serving at the state’s star witness, Sneed was given life in prison instead of the death penalty. The state knew the star witness had suffered from a mental condition and that he was prescribed a drug that would cause him trouble in court.

The Case of Paul Clement, the Director of the Office of Governmental Secrecy in the George W. Bush Administration, is Before a High Court

The Supreme Court has no authority to review claims when they are resolved on a pure state law basis, as was the case in Oklahoma.

The state of Oklahoma has a lawyer in the Supreme Court. Paul Clement, who was the director of the Office of Governmental Secrecy in the George W. Bush administration. He thinks it’s a mistake for the state court to convict based on false testimony and incomplete evidence.

On Wednesday, the argument in the case will be heard by an eight justice court. Justice Neil Gorsuch stepped aside from the case because he was on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals when it made a decision regarding one of the earlier appeals.

If the Supreme Court were to split 4-4, the state court’s decision would prevail, and barring a commutation or a pardon from the state Pardon and Parole board, which previously rejected Glossip’s application on a tie vote, he will once again be headed for execution.

Lawyer Michel told the court that there are new members of the board, so they all can participate, avoiding a repeat of the earlier deadlock.

Justice Barrett focused largely on procedural concerns, noting that for Oklahoma’s highest criminal court it “is unusual not to accept: the attorney general’s request for a new trial.

Clement told the justices that the trial was unfair and that the state court treated the confession as an error rather than a mistake.

Chief Justice John Roberts, echoing the Oklahoma court’s position, asked whether “it would make that much of a difference to a jury” that they didn’t know the star witness was suffering from bipolar disorder and was being treated by a psychiatrist with lithium.

Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed with the view of the star witness in the second trial, saying that the prosecutors had been unfairly criticized. He repeatedly asked the two lawyers seeking a new trial if they had interviewed the prosecutors. Clement and Glossip’s lawyer Seth Waxman, both replied that the prosecutors had been interviewed by two independent counsels, and that the prosecutors themselves had submitted “unsworn statements” for a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the victim’s family in the Supreme Court.

The court’s liberals were not as tolerant of the other side. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the prosecutors knew their star witness had lied, and did nothing to correct the lie, as required by multiple Supreme Court rulings.

Justice Elena Kagan spoke more bluntly than before. She pointedly said that the entire case relied on the testimony of one person, and that the witness has just been exposed as a liar. Those lies are particularly important, she said, because “the critical question the jury is asking is ‘Do I believe this guy and do I believe him when he’s pointed the finger at the accused.’”