The Supreme Court said in a 5-3 ruling that a defendant in a rare death penalty appeal will get a new trial because the prosecution violated its obligations.
Richard Glossip’s appeal was unusual because Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general agreed that the defendant should get a new trial due to prosecutorial misconduct. But Oklahoma’s criminal appeals court said Glossip’s execution must go forward despite the prosecution’s confession of error.
In a decision backed by the state at the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices agreed in 2023 to keep Glossip from the death chamber pending the resolution of his appeal. But instead of just ordering a new trial as the state said would be appropriate, the justices appointed a third party to argue in defense of the state court’s ruling against Glossip, who maintains his innocence.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion published Tuesday, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett partially joining. Barrett wrote her own opinion partially concurring and partially dissenting, while Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent joined by Justice Samuel Alito and partially by Barrett. Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t participate in the case. Gorsuch — a Trump appointee who, like Thomas and Alito, has been skeptical of claims from death row — didn’t explain why he sat this case out, but it’s probably because he sat on prior Glossip-related litigation when he was a federal appellate judge on the court that covers Oklahoma.
Glossip was convicted based on testimony from the state’s key witness, Justin Sneed, who murdered Barry Van Treese in 1997 and testified that Glossip was also involved. But it later emerged that the state hid from the jury that Sneed had seen a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with a condition that rendered him potentially violent, and the state let Sneed tell the jury he hadn’t seen a psychiatrist. Sneed received a life sentence while Glossip has been fighting off execution dates.
Sotomayor wrote for the majority that “the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony.” She wrote that the prosecution’s failure to correct Sneed’s trial testimony violated the Constitution’s due process clause. “Here, this Court has jurisdiction and a Napue violation occurred,” she wrote, referring to Supreme Court precedent holding that prosecutors must correct false testimony. “Thus, Glossip is entitled to a new trial.”
Barrett explained in her separate opinion that, while she agreed with much of the majority’s analysis, she wouldn’t have gone so far as undoing Glossip’s conviction. She said the justices should’ve sent the case back for further proceedings rather than the majority drawing its own conclusions and, as she put it, “thereby exceeding its role.”
Disagreeing more pointedly with the majority, Thomas wrote in his dissent that the court “distorts our jurisdiction, imagines a constitutional violation where none occurred, and abandons basic principles governing the disposition of state-court appeals.”
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