Oklahoma Seeks New Conviction of Richard Glossip Using Old Evidence

Jimmy Harmon chief of the criminal division of the Oklahoma Attorney General s Office was standing in a courtroom packed with journalists and onlookers during a Tuesday afternoon bond hearing in Richard Glossip s scenario when he disclosed that the state would be calling a couple of eyewitnesses The announcement was unexpected the state hadn t notified Glossip s attorneys that they planned to put anyone on the stand When Harmon declared his first witness s name Malissa West the confusion appeared to deepen No one not Glossip his attorneys or supporters in the gallery seemed to know who this woman was After West introduced herself as the resident communications specialist at the Oklahoma County Detention Center in charge of monitoring outgoing phone calls placed from the jail it became clear that Harmon intended to introduce into evidence a recording of a call between Glossip and someone on the outside Glossip glanced at his wife Lea sitting in the front row He looked confused and a bit nervous and shrugged signaling he had no idea what this was about Corbin Brewster one of Glossip s defense attorneys objected They hadn t heard the recording in question and desired a chance to listen to it Judge Heather Coyle agreed and the lawyers filed out of the courtroom It was the second time in as a multitude of weeks that Glossip was back in Coyle s Oklahoma County courtroom after the U S Supreme overturned his conviction for the murder of Barry Van Treese who was killed at the rundown motel he owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City A -year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death but insisted Glossip had put him up to it Prosecutors reported that Glossip orchestrated the killing to cover up the fact that he d been embezzling money from the motel offering to split with Sneed any cash Van Treese had on him at the time of his death Although the evidence to patronage the theory was thin two different juries revealed Glossip guilty and sentenced him to death Read Our Complete Coverage Murder at the Motel Glossip faced nine execution dates and was served three last meals before the court ruled in February that his development had been tainted by false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct The hard-won conquest was due in no small part to Harmon s own boss Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond who took unprecedented policies to prevent Glossip s execution and fought alongside his attorneys to have the conviction tossed only to announce in early June that he intended to try Glossip for murder a third time Among the spectators in the eighth-floor courtroom were members of the Van Treese family who sat in the front row Until Harmon sought to introduce the recorded call the hearing had been going as expected Brewster had laid out the reasons why Coyle should release Glossip from jail pending a third trial for first-degree murder Glossip didn t have any meaningful criminal history before being sent to death row is not a flight pitfall and has a wealth of individuals ready to backing him after release including Lea friends and religious leaders and at least one current Republican state lawmaker But the preponderance essential reason why Coyle should grant bond Brewster mentioned was that there is no reliable evidence that Glossip is guilty of murder In order to keep Glossip in jail Brewster pointed out Coyle would have to find that the state was likely to win a third conviction something Drummond had repeatedly acknowledged would be hard to do In the decades since Glossip was sent to death row explosive revelations have cast serious doubt on the state s theory of the affair including the revelation that the state destroyed a key box of evidence prior to Glossip s retrial A slew of new observers have also come forward to challenge the state s portrayal of Sneed as wholly under Glossip s control describing Sneed as violent unpredictable and entirely capable of killing on his own A great number of of these revelations are contained in a series of reports by the private law firm Reed Smith which investigated the development at the behest of a bipartisan group of Oklahoma lawmakers The inspection revealed that Sneed repeatedly tried to recant his testimony implicating Glossip and unearthed records debunking Glossip s supposed financial motive for wanting to kill Van Treese The new evidence largely dismantled the state s situation and thoroughly discredited Sneed the state s one indispensable witness as Drummond himself had previously argued If there was any anticipation that the mysterious phone call might introduce specific new evidence against Glossip it was expeditiously dispelled when the lawyers returned to the courtroom Harmon s co-counsel Senior Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Hinsperger placed a laptop on the witness stand Coyle leaned forward and craned her neck to listen to the recording which was almost impossible to hear from the gallery It was a clip of a conversation between Glossip and a woman identified as an anti-death penalty activist I haven t seen my family in a long time Glossip recounted her As it turned out this was the point of playing the call an attempted gotcha moment to challenge Brewster s assertion that Glossip had a help structure outside prison It didn t appear to land as Harmon intended Would it be a surprise to anyone that Richard Glossip may be estranged from family members after serving years incarcerated Brewster petitioned Harmon moved on to his second witness The state calls Richard Glossip he stated Glossip s lawyers directly urged to approach the bench Glossip looked confused Wait what me he demanded looking at Lea Before the judge Brewster and co-counsel Andrea Miller argued that calling Glossip to testify was improper for a variety of legal reasons Coyle agreed With that Harmon moved to the podium to argue his event for keeping Glossip in jail Harmon questioned Glossip s roots in Oklahoma saying he had hoped to ask Glossip about this on the stand I think the evidence as the court could hopefully hear through that phone call is that Mr Glossip has no ties to his biological family Harmon revealed All of Mr Glossip s family ties center around one person And that s his current spouse And I don t mean to diminish that he noted before questioning the sincerity of their bond He suggested that Glossip was engaged in flirtatious conversations with other women and brought up charges by Glossip s ex-wife that he had used her over the unit of their relationship In fact Harmon spent much of his time at the podium summarizing old affidavits by her and another woman who claimed Glossip manipulated them into giving him money I do have a couple questions Coyle informed Harmon In order to deny bond she had to have clear and convincing evidence that Glossip was likely to be determined guilty If you would please expand on the facts that help that for my consideration In other words she was asking Harmon for chosen concrete proof that Glossip is a murderer When it comes to Glossip s incident the question on the minds of several in Oklahoma City these days and certainly inside Coyle s courtroom on Tuesday is What on earth is Genter Drummond doing Until in the last few days there was every reason to believe that Glossip s incident would be resolved sooner rather than later One expected scenario was that Glossip would agree to plead guilty to a lesser crime specifically of being an accessory to Van Treese s murder This is what Glossip was originally charged with in and arguably the only charge that ever had any basis in fact On the night that he bludgeoned Van Treese Sneed recounted Glossip that he d killed the motel owner Glossip didn t right now share this information with the police he later described them because he didn t believe Sneed In a letter asking the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to spare Glossip s life Drummond wrote as supported by unimpeachable evidence I believe that Mr Glossip is guilty of accessory after the fact Related The Power Pride and Politics Behind the Drive to Execute Richard Glossip Over the last two years Drummond had gone out of his way to spare Glossip s life Upon assuming office in after the release of the Reed Smith account he communicated that he was launching his own independent research into Glossip s episode Several months later Drummond concluded that Glossip s conviction was rooted in prosecutorial misconduct and false testimony by Sneed and sought the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn it When the court refused Drummond alongside Glossip s defense gang appealed to the U S Supreme Court emphasizing the myriad problems with the circumstance and arguing that no evidence outside of Sneed s saying so tied Glossip to the murder s commission After oral arguments last fall the justices ultimately sided with Drummond Drummond who is running for governor made the rounds in the wake of the Supreme Court decision boasting about his preeminence and publicly acknowledging that Glossip didn t murder the victim in the event This month however Drummond suddenly changed his tune My office thoroughly reviewed the merits of the matter against Richard Glossip and concluded that sufficient evidence exists to secure a murder conviction he mentioned in a press release announcing the decision to retry Glossip But in a written motion and in front of Coyle the state offered little more than old talking points about Glossip s behavior after the crime while pointing out that Sneed has never certainly taken back his testimony Contrary to the defendant s insinuations Sneed has never recanted his testimony recounting how the defendant solicited him to murder Barry Van Treese split the nearly in incident they stole from the victim s motorcycle and then attempted to conceal the fact of the murder Drummond wrote in the motion In fact to this day Sneed stands by his testimony In truth Sneed s own daughter explained the state in that her dad required to recant his testimony In a letter addressed to the pardon and parole board she wrote that for a couple of years now my father has been talking to me about recanting his original testimony but that he feared the consequences if he did so Eight years later the Reed Smith assessment ascertained corroborating evidence In a pair of letters Sneed wrote to his attorney about recanting his testimony the attorney discouraged him however suggesting that if he did he would face the death penalty Sneed who is now remains in prison serving a life sentence Drummond also relies on a piece of circumstantial evidence that has long been used against Glossip At the time of his arrest Glossip was carrying about which was roughly half of the cash the state alleged that Van Treese had on the night he was killed Homicide detectives took note of the defendant s possession of a large sum of cash not only because it appeared to correspond to half the value of the stolen cash but also because the defendant was not known to have large quantities of money on him Drummond wrote Glossip has repeatedly explained that this money was a combination of funds from his paycheck savings and the proceeds from several items he d sold He planned to use the money to hire a lawyer Glossip was arrested as he exited the office of an Oklahoma City attorney More importantly latest investigations have discredited the state s theory that Glossip had a financial motive to want Van Treese dead Forensic accountants who reviewed the situation determined not only that there was no evidence of embezzlement but also that the motel funds on hand the night Van Treese was murdered would have been closer to roughly the amount of money in Sneed s possession Notably the cash Sneed had was covered in blood Glossip s money was not As the hearing came to a close it seemed increasingly clear that Coyle would not be issuing an immediate ruling In light of Drummond s previous stance she wished Harmon to lay out exactly what evidence would sponsorship a first-degree murder charge and justify keeping Glossip in jail We have a plethora of evidence definitely he reported But rather than present anything new Harmon urged Coyle to look at the transcripts of Glossip s preliminary hearing and his two trials for the proof she needed In his closing argument Brewster reemphasized Drummond s multiple statements arguing that the situation against Glossip was fatally flawed I don t know how the state can come in this courtroom and say The evidence is great he noted when they re on the record before the U S Supreme Court saying the exact opposite I don t know how the state can come in this courtroom and say The evidence is great when they re on the record before the U S Supreme Court saying the exact opposite The state had absolutely failed to show that it was likely to win a new murder conviction against Glossip Brewster announced While it isn t remarkable for judges to deny bond in first-degree murder cases Brewster pointed out that this was not a typical situation It would be an absolute travesty not to grant this man a bond Nevertheless Coyle recounted the lawyers that she needed time to read the trial transcripts Glossip sat at the defense table shackled at the waist and ankles as the lawyers conferred at the bench with Coyle to compare schedules and work out next actions Coyle announced she would make a decision about Glossip s bond request by July Surrounded by armed sheriff s deputies Glossip was led out of the courtroom loaded into an elevator and taken back to jail The post Oklahoma Seeks New Conviction of Richard Glossip Using Old Evidence appeared first on The Intercept