Glossip v. Oklahoma - Post-Decision SCOTUScast

for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He previously served for several years and as an assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Florida. Prior to that, he spent two years as an associate in the Washington, d c. Office of Clearly, gottlied Stein and Hamilton, which he joined after clerking for the Honorable Emmett R. Cox on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

And with that, I'll hand things over to Zech to get a started by talking about how the case got to the Supreme Court.

is at the Court. It's gone through an extensive period of litigation on direct appeal and then also on collateral appeal as well, and so to go all the way back to the very beginning. This case started in nineteen ninety seven when Justice Need murdered Barry van Trees. Barry Van Trees owned two motels, one in Oklahoma, one in Tulsa, and Justin Snead was working at one of those motels

along with Richard Glossop. Now Glossop managed one of those motels, and the facts underlying this entire the background of the murder are somewhat in dispute, but essentially what happened is Van Trees showed up at one of his hotels and

while he was there, Sneed murdered him. Now. Sneed later came out and said that Glossop essentially solicited him to murder Barry Van Trees, and Glossop was worried that he was going to be fired by Van Trees, allegedly for maybe some financial improprieties, and this meant that Sneed himself would probably end up homeless because he too was living at the hotel. Now in the wake of the murder of Van Trees, in the immediate aftermath, Glossop said he

didn't know where Van Trees was. He said he had seen Van Trees the next morning, after he had been murdered. He spoke to Van Trees's wife on the phone, assuring her that everything was okay. And it turned out, of course that that just wasn't true. And it wasn't until several days later that a police officer showed up at the hotel and found Van Trees's body in one of the rooms, which, by the way, Snead and Glossop had replaced broken glass in the room to try to hide

the crime. And so what happened, police arrested Snead. They later arrested Glossop as well, and they initially charged Glossop as an accessory after the fact of the murder, but after talking to Sneed getting more factual information, they also charged Richard Glossop with capital murder, essentially for soliciting Sneed to commit the murder. Now, in terms of the trial, Gossop was originally tried and convicted in nineteen ninety eight, sentenced to death for his role in Barry Ventree murder.

But because of an ineffective assistance of Council claim that was brought, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the highest criminal court in Oklahoma, sent the case back for retrial. So Richard Glossip was retried, convicted once again, and once again sentenced to death after a trial in two thousand and four. And so it's the proceedings of that two thousand and four trial that are really an

issue in this collateral appeal. Now. Since his conviction in two thousand and four, Glossop as I mentioned earlier, has taken a number of direct appeals, he has filed a number of collateral attacks on his sentence. And so the collateral attack is that the Supreme Court considered and ruled on was actually his fifth Habeus petition that he had

filed with Oklahoma's court system. So it's a long and tortured history that this case took to ultimately end up at the Supreme Court and for the Court to issue this decision.

flag any other issues with the trial. And so reed Smith wrote the report and issued report flagging a number of issues, particularly as it relates to some evidence that they alleged wasn't turned over, particularly as it relates to some testimony that came out at trial. And so what ultimately happened is shortly after Reed Smith wrote its report,

a new Oklahoma Attorney General also took office. Now the Oklahoma Attorney General who took office, he turned over additional evidence to Richard Gossop's counsel, which prompted the filing of this fifth habeas petition with the cork And along the way he turned over an eighth box. There were seven boxes originally that he turned over. He turned over an eighth box as well, which contained some handwritten notes from

the prosecutor that tried the case. And so after he turned over this eighth box, Richard Gossop's council was alleging that Justin Sneed, remember the man who actually murdered Barry Ventries, offered what Glossop's council characterized as false testimony at trial. Essentially,

Justin snead he had mental health issues. He'd been prescribed lithium to deal with bipolar disorder, and at trial, one of the questions to ask was whether he had ever been prescribed to lithium, and he said, yes, he took lithium, but he said he took it either in the wake of a toothache, or that he had been inadvertently prescribed lithium because he had a head cold and was supposed

to get zoodafed. Now everyone knows the only reason someone would be prescribed to lithium is for mental health issues. But the fact that the prosecutors didn't go back and clarify that Glossop said that was a false testimony that essentially had been left uncorrected, which would be a violation

of the Supreme courtse holding in Napoo versus Illinois. So the Oklahoma Attorney General, he actually conceded error in front of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and asked for mister Gossip's sentenced to be vacated and for Glossop to

receive a new trial. Now, for state procedural reasons, Oklahoma has a many states, like the federal government, has a statute that governs when a prisoner can bring a successive habeas petition, And essentially the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said that Glossop hadn't met those very strict procedural requirements, particularly because much of the information that now is being disputed could have been discovered by his attorneys much much

earlier in the process, and they certainly had access to much of the underlying information about these issues. But nonetheless Oklahoma's attorney general conceded error. Now, it's interesting when the case came to the Supreme Court, because Oklahoma's attorney general had conceded error below and actually supported mister Glossop's efforts to get a new trial. The Oklahoma Attorney General was

lined up on the same side as Richard Glossom. What this meant is that the court had to appoint in amikus someone to argue on behalf of the state to actually uphold the integrity of this conviction. And I think the individual of the court appointed did a very good job at that. At the oral arguments, it was clear that justices were divided on exactly how to deal with

this issue, and there were really two substant issues. The court was grappling with an argument and I think you see that coming out in the opinion is one whether the Court even had the power to hear this case, because if there's an independent and adequate state ground where a state ice court reaches the decision, the US Supreme Court will not have the ability to hear that case.

So that's the first prosecut issue. The second issue the court was being asked to consider was whether, in fact, this new information that came out constituted either a violation of Napou versus Illinois, whether there's false testimony that the prosecution left uncorrected, and also whether there was a violation of Brady, where essentially prosecutors have to provide exculpatory evidence to criminal defendants. Great.

the consideration of this case. Now, Justice side in my War in her opinion that was joined by everyone except for Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, joined in part by Justice Barrick, and we can talk about that more in a minute, But essentially, Justice sign in my War said that the procedural bar to the case, there was not an adequate and independent state ground for the Court to

avoid ruling on the case. And the reason she did that, I agree with Justice Thomas for rationale was somewhat convoluted on this respect. But she said because the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, essentially, in the process of deciding the state law procedural issues, had to reject mister Glossop's napu claim, which would be a federal claim, a claim arising from federal law that aadequate federal ground existed essentially to allow

the court to take jurisdiction. Now, the reason napoo claim is a federal claim is because essentially the Court said in that case that the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process clause requires that prosecutors essentially not knowingly solicit or allow false testimony to stand uncorrected, particularly when it can have a material impact on the jury's verdict. So that's the first

thing Justice Sonom Martter said. She said, the court had the jurisdiction, you take the case, and then when she got to the merits of the claim, she never ruled on the Brady violation issue whether exculpatory evidence was not provided to mister Blossipan's defense team. And the reason she didn't rule in the Brady claim is because she said

that the napoo claim would resolve the case. And so again for the reasons you know we've talked about, she said that essentially this testimony about the lithium, justin sneed taking it, why he received it, that that was that was sufficient to raise a successful napoo claim in this circumstance.

And a lot of the discussion between the majority of the descent turned around some very cryptic handwritten notes that the prosecutor in the case had made concerning mister Sneath's lithium, maybe a doctor at the prison that had prescribed it. And there are different interpretations of what that meant. Certainly the notes were kind of very quick scribbles you made

typically during the meeting. Justice Thomas actually appended an image of the notes to his discent so everyone could see just how cryptic they were in fact, and maybe not as clear cut as just ae side of my Horse suggested in her majority opinion. But because there was this NAPU violation, according to the majority, the Court then ordered a new trial for mister Glossop, and this was a major point of contention, with Justice Thomas and the descent

essentially saying that this was not the correct remedy. And this is where Justice Barrett disagreed with the majority as well. She said, Justice Barrett, Justice Thomas, and Alito essentially took issue with the Court ordering a new trial for mister Glossop.

And part of the reason Justice Thomas and Aledo in particular took issue with that is because of the role of the US Supreme Court versus state Supreme Court, so the state's highest courts, where typically because the Supreme Court does not exercise the same supervisory authority over state supreme courts that it does over lower federal courts, that typically whenever the US Supreme Court reverses a state Supreme court's decision or the high decision from a state's highest court,

they'll simply send it back for further proceedings consistent with this decision in this case, that usually would have meant something like an evidentiary hearing would have needed to take place. And so essentially this ruling that a new trial has required. Justice Thomas, Justice Leado, and Justice bhar All argue that this was an inappropriate remedy, something that was beyond the

Court's power to issue. And yet that's what Justice soughtamor and the majority of justices ordered to take place in this case.

when it reverses a state Supreme Court's decision. That is something that is going to have to be determined in the future as well, because obviously, this order of a new trial is just as Thomas pointed out, is a somewhat very aggressive assertion of power by the US Supreme Court, and it'll be We'll have to wait and see what happens in future cases if the Court continues down this path of ordering very specific relief, or if it will

simply continue to remand case for further proceedings consistent with this decision. The last thing I'll note one of the interesting shout outs from Justice Sotomeyer's opinion, and I think was underlining a lot of the discussion but never really explicitly talked about, was an ameekus brief that Paul Cassel filed. Now, if you don't know Paul Kassel, he's a professor at

the University of Utah. He's a former federal judge himself, and he writes a lot on crime and criminal justice, and particularly he writes a lot in the realm of victim's rights. And he actually filed a very powerful Meekis brief on behalf of Barry Van Trees's family, highlighting some of the problems with the physician, the Oklahoma Attorney General, the Reed Smith Report, and many other previous iterations of

this case had taken. And he was arguing that mister Van Trees's family had really received adequate opportunity to participate in this case. He was also arguing that essentially those handwritten notes, he very much agreed with Justice Thomas that

they certainly didn't constitute Brady violation or NAPU violation. But if folks are interested in doing a little bit of a deeper dive, particularly on how victims' rights statutes often interplay with some of these criminal cases, Paul Cussell's brief is a very excellent explanation of kind of the background and some of the larger picture items related to these types of cases.

has been committed. So I don't know if the Court was essentially worried that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals might not issue the specific judgment that it wanted, that justices wanted the issue in a case, which, of course is certainly it's prerogative as a separate and independent court exercising separate stop authority aside from the Supreme Courts and so.

But yes, according to Justice Thomas and even Justice Barrett and Herkin Currents noted, this was a very unusual and very aggressive remedy to the Court ordered.

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