By Lawrence Hurley and Zoë Richards -
NBC News
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday blocked the execution of an Oklahoma death row inmate who claims to be innocent, in a rare case in which the state attorney general accepted that the underlying conviction was not strong.
In a brief order, the court granted the request of inmate Richard Glossip, convicted of organizing the murder of his boss at the Oklahoma City motel where he worked.
The decision means that Glossip's execution, scheduled for May 18, will no longer take place while his legal appeal continues.
The state has not found Glossip innocent, which means a new trial could take place if the conviction is overturned.
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In an interview with NBC Nightly News hours before the sentence was announced, Glossip said he hoped that, if executed, his death would be his last and "would prevent this from ever happening to anyone else in the United States."
“We have tons of evidence that proves my innocence,” Glossip told Lester Holt of NBC News, the sister network of Noticias Telemundo.
“They still want me dead.
And it's scary to sit here and have to deal with what I'm dealing with knowing that they have a chance to make this right.
They have an opportunity to do the right thing.
But they still don't want to do it,” he added.
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Glossip said he still had hope.
“I have to believe that we can prevail,” he said.
“If they execute me, it will come out that I am innocent.
And the sad thing is, what do you do then?” she added.
“Either I let this consume me or I make peace with it and try to live the best I can with the life I have left.
And that's what I try to do,” he stated.
During a subsequent interview with state representatives Kevin McDugle and Justin Humphrey, two Republicans who had opposed Glossip's execution, the Supreme Court ruling was revealed, and both welcomed it with relief.
“They have to see the errors in this case.
Oklahoma is finally going to get a chance to look under the hood,” McDugle told Holt.
“We have some excellent prosecutors in Oklahoma.
We have great judges in Oklahoma.
But those who are involved in this particular case, we have to call them so this doesn't happen again."
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McDugle and Humphrey have said they both support the death penalty, but Glossip's sentence "should be overturned," Humphrey said.
Glossip's lawyers have also argued that his conviction should be overturned based on concerns about key testimony in the case provided by Justin Sneed, who carried out the murder in 1997. Sneed testified that Glossip had hired him to kill the owner of the Barry Van Treese Motel.
But it has come to light that prosecutors had withheld information about Sneed and that he had given false testimony at trial.
An independent investigation ordered by Oklahoma's attorney general, Republican Gentner Drummond, found, among other things, that at Glossip's second trial, in 2004, it had not been disclosed that Sneed had received treatment for a serious psychiatric disorder.
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Despite Drummond announcing that he believed Glossip's conviction should be overturned for due process violations, an Oklahoma appeals court upheld the death sentence last month and the state board of pardons and paroles also voted against it. to grant Glossip clemency.
Glossip, now 60, went to the Supreme Court to ask that his execution be blocked, and Drummond produced court papers siding with the death row inmate.
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“In the absence of intervention by this court, the execution will go ahead in circumstances where the Attorney General has already confessed his error, an outcome that would be unthinkable,” Drummond wrote.
Glossip's lawyers said there have been "serious concerns" about his conviction since the trial.
“Sneed's inconsistencies are especially problematic because the State's case for executing Mr. Glossip hinges on Sneed's credibility,” the lawyers wrote.
The Supreme Court previously blocked Glossip's execution in 2015 in a separate lawsuit over whether the state's execution protocol was unconstitutional.
The court ultimately ruled against Glossip and two other Oklahoma death row inmates.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, rarely grants stays of execution, and some judges have criticized lawyers for making last-minute requests for death row inmates.
In 2015 oral arguments in the earlier Glossip case, Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said those cases were part of a "guerrilla war" against the death penalty itself.