Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

A Supreme Court Win Didn’t Free Richard Glossip. But This Judge Could.

A year since his legal victory — and after six judges recused themselves — Glossip is asking a new trial judge to release him from jail.

Oklahoma prosecutor Jimmy Harmon was making his usual points about why Richard Glossip belongs behind bars when he trotted out a not-so-casual dig at his opposing counsel.

It was mid-February in Oklahoma City, and one of Glossip’s lawyers had just explained the main reason why his client should be released on bond. Under Oklahoma law, defendants like Glossip are entitled to bail unless there is a firm basis to believe they are guilty. The evidence against Glossip had never been strong — and the U.S. Supreme Court demolished the state’s case when it vacated Glossip’s conviction over false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling, the attorneys argued, there was no justification for keeping him in jail.

Harmon responded with scorn. “The defendant’s argument reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song,” he said. “It’s called ‘Glory Days.’”

“The gist of that song is that glory days will pass you by,” he went on. Glossip’s attorneys were clinging to their cherished Supreme Court victory because, after years of losing in court, “they finally won one,” he said. “And they want to wave that Supreme Court opinion around.”

In other words, Glossip’s lawyers were like Springsteen’s former high school baseball star — still talking about his winning fastball at a roadside bar.

In the quiet courtroom, Harmon’s zinger landed with a thud. The comparison was clumsy and ill-fitting; a Supreme Court victory is anything but fleeting. Lawyers and courts are bound by Supreme Court decisions — invoking its rulings is sort of the point.

Glossip, meanwhile, sat at the defense table in his orange prison garb over a thermal shirt. Oklahoma County District Court Judge Natalie Mai — the seventh judge assigned to his case since the high court sent it back to Oklahoma — had allowed him to be unshackled for the hearing. Just a few days earlier, Glossip had turned 63, his 29th birthday behind bars. He knew more than most people about time you can never get back.

Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to die for the 1997 murder of his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, who was brutally killed at the Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of town. A 19-year-old handyman named Justin Sneed admitted to fatally beating Van Treese but insisted that Glossip pushed him to do it. Sneed’s account became the basis for the state’s case against Glossip — and for a plea deal that allowed Sneed to avoid the death penalty. Sneed is serving a life sentence.

But the case began unraveling soon after Glossip arrived on death row. Footage of Sneed’s police interrogation cast serious doubt on the state’s version of events, revealing coercive questioning by Oklahoma City detectives who pressured Sneed into implicating Glossip. In the decades that followed, Glossip’s attorneys discovered that prosecutors hid and destroyed evidence in the case — and that Sneed had attempted to recant his testimony multiple times.

The case ultimately ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Glossip’s favor on February 25, 2025. The justices found that Sneed lied on the stand, that prosecutors had failed to correct his testimony, and that additional evidence of prosecutorial misconduct “further undermines confidence in the verdict.”

Judge Failed to Disclose Personal Ties to Prosecutor in Two Death Row Cases

Yet one year later, the case is far from over. Rather than release Glossip, as advocates expected him to do, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced that he would retry Glossip for first-degree murder — and asked a judge to keep him in jail awaiting trial. An Oklahoma County judge granted the request and refused to release........

© The Intercept