By John Kruzel, Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Supreme Court justices raised concerns on Wednesday about a judicial decision that would let Richard Glossip’s execution move forward as they wrestled with the Oklahoma death row inmate’s appeal of his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-hire.
The justices during arguments in the case probed whether an Oklahoma court properly weighed newly revealed information that Glossip’s lawyers said would have aided his defense and which the state’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, called wrongly withheld by prosecutors.
Glossip asked the justices to throw out his conviction and grant him a new trial after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld his death sentence despite potentially exculpatory evidence being found in an independent investigation ordered last year by Drummond, who supports Glossip’s appeal.
Glossip, now 61, was convicted of commissioning the murder of Barry Van Treese, owner of the Best Budget Inn motel in Oklahoma City where Glossip was a manager. All parties agree Van Treese was fatally beaten with a baseball bat by maintenance worker Justin Sneed. Sneed confessed to the murder but avoided capital punishment by accepting a plea deal that involved testifying that Glossip paid him $10,000 to do it.
Securing a murder conviction against Glossip hinged on the testimony of Sneed, who was a methamphetamine addict. Glossip admitted to helping Sneed cover up the murder after it occurred, but denied knowing Sneed planned to kill Van Treese or encouraging him to do so.
The Supreme Court last year halted Glossip’s scheduled execution while his appeal proceeded.
The evidence disclosed last year by Drummond – including a prosecutor’s hand-written notes from a meeting with Sneed – cast doubt on Sneed’s credibility, according to Glossip’s lawyers. They contend they were kept in the dark about Sneed receiving psychiatric treatment for bipolar disorder immediately after his arrest, and that prosecutors failed to correct Sneed’s false statement about his prescription for the medication lithium.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Seth Waxman, representing Glossip, said Glossip was “convicted on the word of one man,” referring to Sneed, and that his conviction violated the U.S. Constitution’s right to due process.
“He (Sneed) lied to the jury about his history of psychiatric treatment, including the fact that a prison psychiatrist prescribed lithium to treat his previously undiagnosed bipolar disorder,” Waxman added.
“The prosecution suppressed that evidence and then failed to correct Mr. Sneed’s perjured denial,” Waxman added.
‘FALSE IS FALSE’
Because Oklahoma’s attorney general is supporting Glossip’s appeal, the Supreme Court tapped an outside lawyer, private attorney Christopher Michel, to argue to uphold Glossip’s conviction.
Michel sought to rebut Waxman concerning the meaning and significance of the newly disclosed information.
“Your one witness has been exposed as a liar,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan told Michel, adding, “False is false.”
Michel said that “it still wouldn’t have made a difference to the jury had they known that Sneed was bipolar and that he lied on the stand.”
“I’m having some trouble … understanding that,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh told Michel, “when the whole case depended on his credibility.”
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and conservative Justice Samuel Alito suggested that the justices could return the case to a lower court for an evidentiary hearing to assess the information made available by Drummond.
Drummond became an unlikely ally of Glossip after the investigation he commissioned led him to conclude prosecutors hid evidence that might have led to an acquittal. Although Drummond said he believes Glossip’s role in covering up Van Treese’s murder makes him at least an “accessory after the fact,” justifying a long prison sentence, Glossip’s murder conviction was too flawed for him to defend.
Michel urged the justices to dismiss the case, leaving Glossip “free to pursue state law clemency or other available relief.” If the Supreme Court decides the case’s legal merits, Michel urged it to defer to the Oklahoma court’s ruling upholding Glossip’s conviction based on a state law limiting on post-conviction legal efforts.
Kagan raised concerns about the Oklahoma court’s ruling, calling its review of the legal merits and complex procedural issues “very confusing.”
“I mean everything was intertwined with everything else,” Kagan said.
“You’ve issued, you know, a strong legal writing critique of this opinion,” Michel told Kagan.
“I haven’t even started,” Kagan responded, eliciting laughter from the courtroom.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas questioned why Waxman had not interviewed two prosecutors involved in the case.
“Not only because their reputations are being impugned but (because) they are central to this case, it would seem that an interview of these two prosecutors would be central,” Thomas said.
The justices are expected to issue their ruling by the end of June. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in considering Glossip’s appeal, apparently because he earlier dealt with the case while serving on a lower court.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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