Attorneys For Oklahoma Death Row Inmate Seek Reconsideration

Gov. Mary Fallin will not intervene in the case of Richard Glossip, who is scheduled for execution tomorrow afternoon. Two justices dissented, saying they favored a 60-day stay of execution for an evidentiary hearing on Glossip’s claim of newly discovered evidence.

The Supreme Court filing came around the same time the Court of Criminal Appeals announced it would not reconsider its Monday decision to deny a stay of execution and order a hearing to discuss the new evidence.

Attorneys for an Oklahoma death row inmate are asking a state appellate court to reconsider its decision to allow the execution to proceed.

“The evidence merely builds upon evidence previously presented to the Court”, it said in a majority opinion.

Glossip was convicted of orchestrating the fatal beating of a motel owner in 1997. In addition to denying Glossip a temporary stay of execution, they also denied his request for a hearing to introduce newly uncovered evidence.

The execution will be the first in Oklahoma since a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state’s three-drug lethal injection formula in June. The Supreme Court said that the drug did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Both trials ended with juries convicting Glossip and sentencing him to death.

They now know that it is entirely possible to execute someone who is potentially innocent, in a criminal justice system that is flawed.

Before the visit, she had said her goal was to help him ‘be poised that tomorrow at 3 pm, he may die’.

Sister Helen Prejean, a prominent campaigner against the death penalty, said if the execution goes ahead it is “very likely that Oklahoma will add the death of an innocent man to this record of mistakes”.

Another death row inmate — Benjamin Cole — is scheduled to be executed on October 7 for the 2002 killing of his 9-month-old daughter despite his attorneys’ claims that he is insane and ineligible for the death penalty.

Glossip wasn’t helped by his lawyers’ performance in the courtroom. He was found guilty again in 2004 and sentenced to death.

Glossip’s lawyers, a few of the top death penalty attorneys in the country who are working pro bono, have asserted that Sneed was an IV meth addict and have questioned the reliability of his testimony.

Coalition spokesman Rev. Adam Leathers said the Glossip case is especially disturbing based on the amount of new evidence that won’t be considered in a courtroom.

In a last-ditch effort to save Glossip’s life, his lawyers have filed affidavits from a variety of witnesses attesting to the unreliability of Sneed and alleged misconduct by the police.

They added Sneed has given contradictory accounts of the events. “Why would anybody do that?” asks Don Knight, Glossip’s new lead attorney.

Glossip will be killed in McAlester, Oklahoma.