Glossip v. Oklahoma Currently before the Supreme Court – and it’s one of the most complex death penalty cases the court has heard in some time. How judges decide whether a man lives or dies.
Richard Glossip is on death row after being convicted of an Oklahoma murder 20 years ago. But now, the state’s Republican attorney general says his trial was unconstitutional and he should be convicted. The state plans to retry Glossip if he is convicted, but a ruling in Glossip’s favor would remove him from the death penalty for now.
Yet Attorney General Gentner Drummond has struggled to find a legal forum that will actually take his prosecution of unconstitutionality seriously. Oklahoma’s highest criminal court refused to accept Drummond’s argument and put Glossip on death row. The state parole board, meanwhile, is split 2-2 on whether to pardon Glossip, after one board member had to recuse himself because his wife was the lead prosecutor against Glossip.
Wednesday morning in the oral argument Glossip Only added more confusion to the mix. The two justices who typically take the toughest stance against criminal defendants, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, were determined to settle the case in its entirety, regardless of whether Glossip’s constitutional rights were violated. They likely have an ally in Chief Justice John Roberts, who doubted whether the potential constitutional violation in the case was actually significant enough to change the outcome of Glossip’s trial.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who often votes with the most radical members of the court In case of death penaltyExcluded from the case due to non-disclosure. This is actually bad news for Glossip as he must muster five positive votes to toss his conviction to victory and even a skeptic justice loss is a less likely vote for him.
All three Democrats on the court, meanwhile, were sympathetic to Glossip’s arguments and spent much of the case batting against Alito’s motion to dismiss the case on procedural grounds — though Justice Ketanji Brown showed some openness to forming an alliance with Jackson Thomas. Case returned to state court to gather additional evidence.
That leaves Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, conservative Republicans who asked some questions sympathetic to Glossip, as wild cards in the case. It is possible that they may have cast a fourth and fifth vote to save Glossip’s life, but not certain.
The alleged constitutional violation before the court — that prosecutors withheld evidence that a key witness had a serious mental illness and failed to correct this witness when he lied — is fairly marginal. It turns on four words in a handwritten note by prosecutor Connie Smotherman that wasn’t given to Glossip’s lawyers until January 2023. The state agrees with Glossip’s legal team that those four words reveal a constitutional violation serious enough to warrant a new trial.
But while this narrow legal issue, which is the only issue before the Supreme Court, is the kind of legal question on which reasonable jurors could disagree, Smotherman’s notes are only part of a broader body of evidence indicating that Glossip’s criminal convictions are constitutional: Oklahoma conducted two independent investigations, both concluded that Glossip’s trial was fundamentally flawed.
Among other things, those investigations found that Justin Snead — the man who killed at issue here — was pressured by police to implicate Glossip in the crime. They also show that police and the prosecution lost or destroyed evidence that could have potentially exonerated Glossip. And they show that the police inexplicably did not question potentially important witnesses or search obvious locations for evidence.
Now, however, Glossip’s life is likely to revolve around whether Kavanaugh and Barrett are driven by the procedural arguments pressed on the Court’s right, or by the arguments pressed by both Glossip and the state: Four words in Smotherman’s note reveal a serious constitutional violation.
Why is Smothermon’s note so important?
In 2023, prosecutors returned a box of evidence to Glossip’s legal team for the first time. The box contained a handwritten note from Smothermon, containing two important questions. In the corner of the note, smothermon “in lithium?” And “Dr. Trumpet?”
Both the state and Glossip’s legal team quickly discovered that these somewhat cryptic notes were quite important. As a state told the justices in his briefWhen Sneed was incarcerated in the Oklahoma County Jail, that “there was a practicing psychiatrist at the jail when Sneed was incarcerated there in 1997: Dr. Larry Trombka.”
Both Glossip and the State agree that “Trumpet referred to by Dr. Smothermon must have referred to Dr. Trombka, who was “the only potential treating psychiatrist and the only medical professional at the jail qualified to prescribe lithium.”
The state had previously withheld Sneed’s medical records from Glossip’s attorneys, and those records “confirmed a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with lithium treatment in the county jail.”
All of this because Sneed was a key witness against Glossip at his trial. He was the only witness to implicate Glossip in the murder, and he did so on the theory that Glossip, who managed a motel where Sneed worked, had hired Glossip to kill the motel owner.
But Dr. Trombka later said that Sneed’s mental illness could have triggered a “manic episode” that would have made him “more paranoid or potentially violent.” Trombka added that Sneed’s condition was “exacerbated by the use of illegal drugs such as methamphetamine.” Thus, if Glossip’s defense attorneys had known about Sneed’s medical diagnosis, they could have argued that Sneed committed the murder because he was experiencing a serious mental health episode, and not because he was forced to do so by Glossip.
During Glossip’s trial, moreover, Sneed testified that he had been given lithium in prison, but suggested that he had been given it by accident and that he “Didn’t see a psychiatrist or anythingThus, Smotherman’s notes not only suggest that Sneed lied on the stand—a fact that would undermine his credibility to the jury—they also suggest that Sneed knew Sneed was lying and failed to correct him.
Smothermon’s failure to promptly return the notes, and Smothermon’s failure to correct Sneed’s testimony, violate the Constitution in two ways. in Brady v. Maryland (1963), the Supreme Court stated that prosecutors must turn over evidence to the defense that is “favorable to the accused” if that evidence is “material to guilt or conviction, regardless of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”
In addition, in Napue v. Illinois (1959), the Court held that “a conviction obtained through the use of perjured evidence, known as such by agents of the State, must fall within the Fourteenth Amendment.” This rule applies even if “the State does not plead falsity evidence, allowing it not to be corrected when it appears.” Thus, by failing to correct Sneed’s false testimony that he had never seen a psychiatrist, Smotherman potentially violated napue.
In any event, Smothermon’s notes significance and its alleged infringement napue Judges appeared to be divided. Roberts was particularly skeptical of their relevance, pointing out early in the argument that defense counsel knew that Snead had been prescribed lithium, so why would it matter if defense lawyers also knew that the drug was primarily used to treat mental health disorders. , was also prescribed by a psychiatrist?
Notably, however, Kavanaugh appears to have broken with Roberts on this question. “I’m having some trouble,” he told Christopher Michell, a court-appointed lawyer who was tasked with securing Glossip’s conviction because the state would not, if they found out Sneyd lied on the stand, deadlock the jury. The whole case hinges on his credibility.
Kavanaugh also said that Snead’s mental health diagnosis raises “all kinds of ways to question his credibility.”
So Kavanaugh, at least, seems open to the argument that Smotherman has violated it napue or Brady. But it is not yet clear whether the five judges agree with this argument. And it’s also unclear how they would approach a systemic problem that could destroy Glossip’s case.
Systematic problems Glossip case
Oklahoma law, like most states and the federal government, places strict limits on a defendant’s ability to challenge a conviction after conviction and after all appeals have been exhausted. Among other things, Oklahoma prohibits someone like Glossip from committing multiple assaults after that conviction unless issues arise in subsequent proceedings. Couldn’t be picked up before.
These barriers, moreover, are heightened by an Oklahoma state law that requires Glossip to present any new evidence he discovers. Within 60 days of its discovery. So Glossip’s lawyers couldn’t take their time, gather all the evidence they needed to make the best case for their client, and then present it to the court all at once. They had to present this evidence piecemeal or lose the ability to present it.
As a result, the case currently before the Supreme Court is Glossip’s fifth legal proceeding challenging his conviction since it was finalized.
Before this fifth proceeding could reach the justices, Oklahoma’s highest criminal court rejected it Brady And napue The argument, in part because, the court claimed, Oklahoma law limits his ability to repeatedly challenge convictions, preventing him from raising those arguments. If the Oklahoma court is correct on this point, it precludes the Supreme Court from hearing the case, as the US Supreme Court generally cannot overrule a state’s highest court on a question of state law.
Indeed, much of Wednesday’s argument focused on this threshold question — does Oklahoma’s own law prevent Glossip from even uttering it? napue And Brady Argument?
Oklahoma Attorney General Glossip’s side in this case played a large role in the debate over this threshold question. If Glossip was alone in seeking relief, he would probably perish. But several justices argued that Drummond had an absolute right to waive procedural rules that would otherwise prevent Glossip from pronouncing it. Brady And napue claim
Notably, the one judge who seemed to agree that Drummond waived those procedural rules was Barrett, who noted at one point that it was highly unusual for a court not to accept such a waiver. Similarly, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that there is a “100-year history” in which no Oklahoma court has refused to honor a similar waiver, suggesting that the state court hearing Glossip’s case created a single rule preventing him from challenging it. conviction
Yet, while at least four justices were convinced that state courts should have respected Drummond’s decision to waive procedural bars in the Glossip case, it is unclear whether five were. Kavanaugh, likely the fifth vote for Glossip, played his cards particularly close to his chest, often framing his questions about whether Smothermon had violated the law. napue or Brady With the caveat “if you cross all procedural bars.”
So the bottom line is that Glossip may dominate, but he’s got a tough road. Assuming all three of the Democratic justices side with him, he would have to win against Barrett — who appeared to side with him on procedural questions but who was largely silent on the merits of his case — as well as Kavanaugh, who appeared to side with Glossip on the merits. Will be but silent on methodological questions.
