#210 Jason Flom with Richard Glossip

and prostitutes one might find at a CD motel. In the early morning of January seven, Stead and a girlfriend lured Barry van Trees into Room one O two to rob him of the cash he was known to carry. Barry resisted and was bludgeoned at stabbed to death. His car was moved to a nearby lot. Later that morning, sneyed off handedly told Richard that he had killed Barry, but after seeing that Barry's car was not at its usual spot, Richard dismissed what he thought was Sneed's usual

drug adult ramblings. When the body was discovered, Richard told police about what Sneed had said, causing them to focus on him. Even though Sneed eventually confessed, police steered him to implicate Richard as the mastermind of a murder for higher scheme. For his testimony, Sneed escaped the death penalty in exchange for life without parole, swapping Richard into his place. The word of a meth head and alleged motive to

steal cash was all. It took. Twenty four years, two trials, three stays of execution, a lethal injection drug scandal, and two Supreme Court cases later, Richard remains a death row in Oklahoma. This is wrongful Conviction with Jason Flopper. Welcome

back to wrongful conviction with Jason flomm That's me. And if I sound a little down today, it's because this case Ace that you're going to hear about is one of the most troubling cases I've ever heard of in my now twenty ninth year of doing this type of work. With us today we have one of the respected, even revered criminal and civil defense attorneys, a man named Don Knight.

Welcome to ronfle Conviction. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate that, and of course with us today calling in from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary where he is now in his twenty third year on death row. And that is of course Richard Gloss. Hello, this is a collect call from and incarcerated individual at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. This call is not private. This call will be recorded and may be monitored. To consent to this recorded call, press one to disconnect. Thank

you for using securance. You may start the conversation now. Hello, Richard. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but I'm happier here. Oh that's cool. That's cool. Twenty four years of this and uh, it's been a long battle and it just continues. But the good thing is I'm still here. Richard, you don't mind take us back to your childhood. Use that sort of an unusual childhood and moved from Illinois to Oklahoma. But also, you were one of a lot of children, right,

You had a lot of brothers and sisters. Yeah. And I actually grew up in Gillsborge, Illinois. There was sixteen of us. There was eight boys and eight girls. You know, I grew up around a lot of addiction and stuff like that, and you know, I just didn't think I was going to get anywhere if I stayed there any longer. And left home when I was fourteen and just made it on my own. You know, it's actually kind of

a miracle that you survived. I mean, we could do a whole podcast about that alone, but your story hadn't even begun yet. So okay, you were strange from your family for many years, working and getting by. But how did you end up in Oklahoma where you got a job at the best budget in working for Barry Van Trees.

My mom and dad retired and they decided to move out here to Oklahoma to be closer to my mom's family, and my dad's health was selling and my mom asked me if I would come out here in some times with my dad, and that's how I ended up with the best budget in. Barry Van Tresse didn't just run the best budget in Oklahoma City, he also ran best budget in in Tulsa. These were really low rent motels. They were a cash business. There was a lot of

drug activity and prostitution. Barry Van trest would come by every couple of weeks to the Oklahoma City Best Budget in where he would pick up the cash from Rich. Rich would have sometimes up to thirty dollars in receipts depending on how long it took for Van Trees to come by. The motel. So Rich was constantly handling large amounts of money, and there was never any question about

whether Rich was stealing money. He was not steal anything at all, right, And if he wanted to steal the money, he could have done so almost any time without violence, and he could have skipped down. But he never did, and certainly he didn't do so by involving a math head named Justin Snead. Now Justin had come through town with a roof and crew out of Texas, and while he was staying at the best budget in he worked out a deal for a free room and exchange for

a maintenance and other work around the motel. Right, yes, I said, hey, I need you to go take care of this, or he needs to take these people from toils or whatever the case. Maybe he always did it, but as time went by, he was getting harder to find him, and I was gonna let him go a couple of times, but you know, very like the fact that he was working beru but very good moment to let him goes. But towards all this happening, in the end, it was like I hardly ever found him to do

what he was supposed to do. Did you catch any signs that he was using math, Well, they were up all the time. So I did have a couple of family members that did it, and so learning from how they acted, you know, I could tell that, yeah, definitely they want something. Justin was a very odd guy. He would say things that would throw you off. He would say things that would just make you scratch your head and gold Man, this guy is just like really weird. So were there any signs that he might have been

robbing people to support his habit? Yeah, you know, I have one of the guy named John Biebers came to me and that that he was missing a big jar of coins. When he said he thought Justin did it, I didn't believe him, but hindsight right, Yeah, it sure is. And at the time, you and your girlfriend Diana would were spending a lot of time together and most of it at the motel. Yeah. I lived on the property.

I lived behind the front desk in an apartment, so I'm always on the property other than like Dena and I've been able to go out and do something on our own. Why the death work was there? Now? This brings us all the way up to January seven, at six am. Justin sneed woke Rich up and told him about a broken window and then kind of off handily says, oh,

and by the way, I killed Barry. Now, Snead was known for saying weird stuff like that, and so when Richard looked at Barry's usual parking spot and didn't see Barry's car, he wrote it off as Sneed just being sneaed. Now, later on, Barry van tress car was spotted in the Credit Union parking lot, about fifty yards away from the best budget in but there was no sign of Barry. So this kicked off a search, and rich was out shopping with his Girlfrienddianna and was called back to work

around three pm. So at this point rich is wondering do I tell the police about what Sneed said, but he Indiana decided against it because they didn't even know if Barry was dead or not, And finally at ten pm, Barry's body was discovered in room one oh two. He had been beaten with a baseball bat as well as

having been stabbed with a blunt object. What happened here was that Barry van Trese stopped in in the evening of January six, took care of payroll and took care of everybody at the Best Budget in Oklahoma City before leaving and driving Tulsa to take care of of the payroll and the situation in Tulsa. He didn't get to Tulsa till around midnight or so, and didn't stay there very long, told the people and Tulsa, and he left to tell his wife that he would be home in

five and a half hours. Home was Lawton, Oklahoma. It doesn't take five and a half hours to get to Lawton, so obviously, when he said that he had plans to stop, he stopped back at the Best Budget in in Oklahoma City where he went to room one oh two, and that's where Justin Sneed was waiting for him, or at least his girlfriend was waiting for him. Because we have found out that there was another person involved in this case. It wasn't Rich Glossop, but it was Justin Sneed's girlfriend.

The information that we have found is that it was simply a robbery attempt. These two meth fueled young people thought they could simply take the keys from Barry Van Trese and get the money out of his car without Van Trese knowing or objecting. I don't know what their plan was. We talked to one witness and she had a great statement. She said, when you've been on mess for twenty days in a row, the idea fairy appears.

That looks like what happened here. These two people knew Barry Ventres had a lot of money, and so we think that he was lured into room one o two by this girl. He knew he was coming back to that place, and once they're confronted by Justin Snead. From the information we have that we have found from new witnesses, Snead admitted that he was intending simply to take Van Trese's money and not kill him. But Van Trese fought back, and at the end of that fight, Barry van Trese

was beaten to death. It wasn't just beaten to death, but there was also some stab wounds on his body from a very blunt object. And the blunt object appears to be a pocket knife that the police found in the motel room that had its tip broken off. So for this murder, Justin Sneed and his girlfriend had two weapons, a baseball bat and a broken knife. That would be really low on anyone's choices of how to go right, um sure, But also I think low on somebody's idea

of how to kill somebody. I mean, if you're really planning to murder someone, you don't go with a dull knife in a baseball bat. You know. It sounds like a bad plan from mess fueled young people, and the aftermath was a continuation of that bad plan. The vehicle where the money was was moved not more than fifty yards, not as if it was moved away so that it could be hidden. It was within plain view of the best budget in in a credit union, right next to

the best budget in. It was found there the next morning by the security guard off duty Sheriff's deputy working at the way Yoke credit Union found this vehicle sort of with one tire up on the curb, parked in a place that it shouldn't be parked, and that's what started the investigation on the seventh into Barry Van Tresea's death. So you might notice that Rich hasn't been mentioned yet in the story of this crime, and that's because no one, not even the prosecution, ever claimed that he was even

in the room when it happened. Rich was sleeping in the apartment behind the front desk with his girlfriend. That's undisputed. So why are we even having this conversation and how is Rich on death row? Well, the lead investigators in this case BMLINKOK, who did little to no investigation, basically didn't talk to anyone at the motel and instead focused on Richard early on. For a few very ill conceived reasons. They focused on Rich and I think the first reason

is Rich's last name is Gloss. Rich's family was a known family with a criminal history in Oklahoma, So I think that's one thing. That The second thing when they found Vantres's body at ten o'clock and they said, you know, Rich, why don't you come in and sit and talk with us? And it was at that point that Rich told them about that statement that Snead made. That was the point I think when the police said, oh, well, he's hiding something.

And I think that, in combination with Rich's last name, I think that's what made the police begin to think Rich Gloss have had something to do with this case. They decide to focus on this one statement that he omitted, right, which is I don't know that I would have done anything differently myself. It's clearly his right to do so. I mean, he doesn't have to talk to the police.

Nobody has to talk to the police. After this initial interview, on the seventh, Rich sells some personal I was to raise money for a lawyer and talk to an attorney named David Mackenzie, who told him quite rightly to not speak with the police. But Rich did what a lot of innocent people do, right. He believed that just telling the truth will set you free, so he talked to Demo and Cook. Anyway, in the parking lot of Mackenzie's office,

the police were waiting for Rich. Rather than tell them I can't talk to you because this lawyer just told me this is what I'm supposed to say, Rich says, okay, I'll talk to you. And Demo and Cook have a real bad history of how they do their interrogations, and when they set themselves upon Rich, they were going to do what they could do to try to get Rich to say things that they could say, We're inconsistent, and then they would start driving that home to try to

get him to confess to this crime. But he never does confess to the crime. However, they start trying to tell him that he said things in his initial interview on the seventh that he did not. They tried to catch him in lies with lies of their own, and it's clear that they have their sights set on him. Meanwhile, Snee took off on the afternoon of the seventh, before Barry's body was even found. He went off working with the roof and crew that he came into town with

from Texas, trying to make himself scarce. Basically, yeah, he left new motel sometime after three o'clock, just took a skateboard and took off again. It was it's something that the prosecutor in both trials tried to paint that he was totally dependent on Glossip for everything because he had no way of making any money, which was just wrong. I mean, first off, he was stealing the place blind he was, he was breaking into motel rooms, he was breaking into cars, he was doing everything he could do

to get money for his drug habit. But when he left the motel that day, he skateboarded over to where the people who he used to work for doing roofing were and he joined the roofing crew again. So he had the opportunity at any point in time to go make more money doing his roofing work than he ever made it the best budget in and he did that on that day. They didn't catch Snead until the fourteenth

of January. It was the owner of the roofing company who seeing the news accounts of what had happened and seeing Sneed's picture on the news, that said to Snead, I think you need to turn yourself in. So he's the one that called the police, and that's when they interrogated Sneed, right, and it sneeds interrogation. It's clear that Rich is their main target, so they start working Snead over to both admit to the crime and implicate Rich

in some way. Yeah, this was not a situation where they were saying, okay, justin we've we've caught you, why don't you tell us what happened. Instead, they go through this long prelude telling him what happened, telling him what they know, telling him that they know that somebody else was involved and they don't want him to hang alone. And in Sneeds first is like, I don't even know what to say. I don't want to tell you, as if he didn't have anything to do with it, And

then they brought Rich's name into it. We think Rich had something to do with it. You know, he's under arrest. So Snead never said anything about glossip at all. That came from the police and then they began to work with Snead from there until they finally got this sort of crazy idea about Rich wanting to steal the money, killed Van Trees and split the money with Snead and

somehow or another they would run the motels. Some crazy story that that came out, which I think you would probably expect from somebody who's high on math, right and who's being fed information by police who are exactly not interested in the truth here. Um so, because if they had been interested in the truth, they simply what I said, want to tell us what happened, tell us everything that

you know. And so Snead confesses to the murder. But what's clear from his interrogation is that he was steered to drag Rich into it as the mastermind of a murder for higher plot, and then Snead uses this made up scenario to save himself, making a deal for a life without parole instead of the death penalt. We have a witness who says he talked to Snead that year while he was in jail with Sneed and a. Snead said,

I had two main goals. One I didn't want the death penalty, and too I didn't want my girlfriend to get caught. Snead got bold of what he wanted at Rich's expense. This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison. A leading international law fer. Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest, including extensive

work in the criminal justice area. Detective Demo in the docuseries That Was Done changed what he testified the two trials, saying that it was a murder for hire. He gets a statement in our docuseries where he says, Oh, I think it was a robbery went bad. That's the original story that Justin gave him, that it was a robbery went bad, and they knew that that's what it was, but they needed it to be more. In my opinion, you know, prosecutors and stuff need these notches in their

belts so bad so they could further their career. And it doesn't matter who they get that notch from, as long as they get it. My first judge, Judge Johnson, even even looked at the prosecutor and said, I don't understand where this is the murder case. And she convinced the judge will give me some time. And that's the only reason the judge even allowed to go forward, because he was convinced by a prosecutor to let her build

a case. Oh so, don there is a villain in this story, of course, I'm talking about then district attorney Bob Macy, who was nicknamed the Angel of Death and he seemed to get off unwinning death penalty cases, innocent, guilty, whatever. Um he played dress up like a cowboy, although he

was not a cowboy. Can you tell us about this this awful character, Bob Macy is just one of a handful of prosecuting attorneys in the country that really drives that the death penalty in in this country, they're only a handful of places where most of the death penalty verdicts come from. At least that has been the way in the past. New Orleans, there was certainly one in Oklahoma City. And these prosecutors, they derive their power. I think and and their their political base from seeking and

getting the death penalty. They look at that as being tough on crime, and Macy certainly forged his legacy with all of that in mind. I think the thing that happens in these places is it can't just be one person that does this, but it becomes a culture. He was in power in Oklahoma City for a long time. A lot of his prosecutors went on to become judges. So now you've got not just the prosecuting attorney's office,

but they're on the bench as well. So they've got judges, prosecutors, forensic people, you've got police, and you've got jurors who are are just ready to go on these death penalty cases. And they begin to sort of cow the defense bar into either going along and getting their clients some kind of plea or they lose at trial, and and these

death verdicts result. It becomes a cultural situation where you have no one fighting anymore for the defendant, and this sort of get on the train, get run over by the trained mentality takes over. So Rich is charged with capital murder, which the fact that he's being tried for his life for not having killed anyone is insane in

and of itself. But that's a totally another story. And so a trial snead testified that Rich was the mastermind behind this murder for higher plot, thereby receiving the direct benefit of not being sent to death row himself. I feel like this should have been easy to beat. So Rich had a terrible lawyer, guy named Wayne Faunerot. In the first trial, he never I don't even know if he ever tried a case before. He was completely incompetent and put on no witnesses, didn't know how to cross

examine anybody. Basically, the case when exactly as the prosecutors wanted it to go, and Rich was sentenced to death. Baigner Rot had no idea how to do a penalty phase in a death case. He didn't do any investigation. I mean, Rich was a guy without a criminal history at all. I mean, you were talking about the death penalty in the United States. You're you're supposedly talking about the worst of the worst. Well, Rich had never committed a crime before. How could he possibly be the worst

of the worst. Is this crime bad? Yes? Is it the worst crime ever? No, it's not the worst crime ever. So he doesn't fit that category at all, and yet, because of the way things were in Oklahoma at the time, they were able to get a conviction and a death sentence. Right So, was Rich convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of a murderous meth head or was there some sort of other evidence offered a trial? I would

answer the question in both ways. Yes, no question. It was really all about what Snead said, and he said very many different things at different times. He initially told the police that Glossip told him to kill Van Tres and rob him of somewhere around five thousand dollars and they would split it. But by the time the first trial rolled around, Snead added things like Rich told me to go buy some meriadic acid because we were going to melt the body and I wasn't able to do that.

So Snead had a variety of stories that ultimately came out that just simply shows that he was not telling the truth. He was never consistent with anything that he said, and the prosecutor had to sort of cobble together what the Court of Appeals would later call corroborating evidence that was really really weak. From the standpoint of corroborating evidence.

They had put together a spreadsheet and an allegation that Rich was stealing money, that somehow or another, the Vantry's family knew he was stealing money and that they were about to fire him, and Rich knew he was about to be fired, and so that formed the motive for Rich to do this killing. There is no real evidence of that. We took a look at that spreadsheet, which by the way, no one did until we got involved

in this case. We have to forensic accountants who looked at it and they said, the idea that Rich was stealing money based upon the information that we see is crazy. So after his first conviction, Rich took his case to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who called the evidence

against him extremely weak. And the Oklahoma Quarter Criminal Appeals looked at the job that Wayne Faunerott did and said this can't be okay, and they, in a unanimous verdict which never happens on direct appeal, threw it back and said he gets a new trial. Right. So the second trial rolls around and Oklahoma is not done with their dirty tricks. And you know what I'm talking about, the way that they managed to remove an attorney who was prepared to probably win this case and right this wrong.

This lawyer was the appellate lawyer for Rich, a guy named Lynn Birch, did a great job getting the case tossed out on appeal, decided to keep it, and was working the case leading up to this second trial when he made an error, and that is going to see Justin Sneed the night before the trial began. They think Lynn Birch was looking to see if there was some way that that Snead would simply come clean and tell

the truth. The air that Lynn Burch made was not taking an investigator with him, not taking a third party. Because when he showed up in court the next morning, the prosecutor said, Judge, we've got a problem. Lynn Burch was threatening our witness and was harassing Justin Snead. Rather than fight that, which I think Burch should have done, he should have said, I didn't do anything like that. I never said anything wrong. Let me tell you what I told him. Put me on the witness stand, put

Sneed on the witness stand. Let's have it out. Birch simply said, you know, okay, you know, I probably screwed up in there, and he left the case the morning of trial, which caused a six month extension. But with Birch gone, it left it in the hands of two lawyers who were not prepared for the trial, and he did very little. And the lead up to the next trial, they did no investigation, They put on no witnesses, Their cross examinations were horrible. They allowed the prosecution to run

wild with leading questions. Basically, the kids were greased and the and the prosecution just got their case through like they wanted. In the second trial, it was really strange because the prosecutor came into the courtroom, she looked at the jury and she goes, I have no evidence against Richard Glad just justin sneeded. So now it becomes who

you're going to believe. Every witness had new testimony, who when they were asked or you didn't remember it the day it happened, but you remember seven years later, and they would sit there and say, the prosecutor helped us remember. As a result, the results were predictable, which is that in August two thousand, for another Oklahoma jury found Richard

guilty and Richard gets sentenced to death. Again. It's strange how you go through your whole life doing what's right, thinking that you know, if you tell the truth and then everything's gonna be okay. Um. And then you're you're standing there when somebody says, you know, we find you guilty of murder and you had nothing to do with this time, and your just your mouth just falls open and this feeling comes over. You're like, how can this possibly be happening to me? This doesn't make sense. It's

one of the strangest feelings. It's really hard to put into word, but it's just like every part of you just goes now. It's like you're just in shock, and you don't know, you don't even have a response to it. You just stand there and you just like you just can't even believe it. It's one of the most overwhelming things I've ever had to face. Um. You know when I walked in, Um, they take you to the main gate up there, and they too in this little shack whither you wait to get people to take you down

to a general where you're supposed to go. And I gotta be honest with you, when they open that door, like your home just like disappears almost immediately because it's so gloomy and so cold, and in all honesty, it felt like death. It just felt like you were surrounded by death. Rich I want you to know that there are a lot of good people who are out of

here pulling for you more than you even know. And so you ended up exhausting all of your appeals with substandard representation who never did any of the necessary investigation into your case. So predictably you had more of the same results, which brings us to your clemency proceedings back in two thousand fourteen, which turned out to be just as big of a fiasco as my trials did. I was turned down for crimacy, and the reason being is not only was there a prosecutor from my case on

the board, Bob Macy's son was as well. And when we robbed to their attentions after Hi Bob was denied Clemacy, the Clemacy boyd claimed that they had no idea that she had been a prosecutor on my case. Did she not remember? She knew me really well? And Bob Macy's son is there as well. Yeah, still has something to do with the billboard today. I'm rarely at a loss

for words, but that is just ridiculous. I know, why don't we have anybody that had anything to do with Bob maybe or his office on a parole board that deals with that's row inmates. So your clemency was denied, but you didn't take that sitting down. In October twenty four, I started this campaign. I was writing letters, hundreds of

letters to everybody. I wrote letters to John McCain, who answered me, by the way, who I became friends with, and he introduced my case to people here in Oklahoma like Tom Koger and others who set up for me back then. So, while Richard was fighting for his life, other significant events work foot concerning the way in which the state planned to kill him and others. Lethal injection.

Lethal injection, as a method of state sanctioned murder, consists of three drugs, a sedative, which depresses the nervous system and renders the person unconscious, next, a paralytic which provides skeletal and muscular relaxation as well as depresses respiration, and finally, a potassium solution which causes cardiac arrest. The most common lethal injection drug combination is for the sedative sodium, theopental or pentobarbital, then pancyronium bromide as the paralytic, and finally

potassium chloride, which causes the heart attack. In two thousand eleven, some American pharma companies halted production of sodium theopental, and the European Union enacted a torture regulation that banned the export of drugs for the use of lethal injections, starting with sodium theopental and later pental barbital so By two thousand fourteen, states were experiencing a shortage of the necessary drugs, which affected their ability to carry out death sentences according

to protocol, Oklahoma began looking for alternatives like medazzo lem in place of sodium theo pental. Following this change, the forty three minute long botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April nine, two thousand and fourteen. Another death row inmate, Charles Warner, awaited the same fate that night, just steps away from the death chamber, but as a result of

the horror of Locketts execution, Warners was delayed. After an investigation, Oklahoma blamed an inability to find Locketts veins as the cause of the botched execution and decided to continue with the same drug protocol involving Medazzo lem as a sedative prompting Richard, Charles Warner, and nineteen others to sue Oklahoma, and eventually they took the case all the way to

the Supreme Court the United States. While this was being litigated, Richard's clemency was denied and his campaign from death row was just beginning. He got in touch with renowned death penalty abolition as Sister Helen Prejean. With his first execution date and warners looming in January two thou fifteen, So in late he calls Sister Helen, or he sends her a letter and says, hey, sister Helen, you know, will you be with me when they kill me? And she looks into the case a little bit and then she

calls me. And I got together with another lawyer named Mark Olive who does a lot of state habeas work. And by now we're out of options. I mean there's no court appearances left, clemency has been done. Basically, we're out of options. At this point in time, rich comes up for an execution date. So Oklahoma sets the date for January fifteen, and a lot of people don't know this, but in Oklahoma and other states, a period of real

psychological torture begins prior to execution. Now, I was taken upstairs. They take you up thirty five days prior to your execution. You have to sit in this room that is so brightly lit for twenty four hours a day. Lights never go off so bright that I can see a tiny ant walking across a dark and gray floor. That's how bright that rum is. You're on camera seven, and you have a guard sitting outside your door. Seven. You can't

cover your head, you can't do any of that. This is what people have to endure in Oklahoma before they're executed. While he and Warner awaited death, the suit continued in litigation, and on January fifteen, the group of condemned prisoners petition the U. S. Supreme Court for a writ of certier ari and stays of their executions. As evidenced by other

botched executions in Ohio and Arizona. The petitioners argued that the medazzalem would not numb the pain that would be caused by the other two drugs, so on January the lead petitioner, Charles Warner, was denied a stay and executed later that day over the descent of four justices, leaving Richard as the next in line. Sister Helen and a bunch of people were there visiting me. It was the

day before I'm supposed to be executed. It was funny because Sister Helen came like I've seen her head like moving up and down in the crowd, and she gave me the phone and it was the Vatican. And I got stock to the Vatican that day, and as soon as I got done, the guards ran everybody out of there, and hey, you've done the attorney call. So they set me down and gave me the phone, and my attorney said, the Supreme Court just gave you a stay and you

are now going to Supreme Court against lethal iningestion. Sister Helen was able to mobilize a lot of people and put some petitions together, and the Supreme Court, while they didn't grant a stay for Charles Warner, based on basically the same information on the leafal injection drug, granted rich a stay and so he got to stay about twenty four hours in advance of his first execut You should date to have his case glossop feed growscope before the

United States Supreme Court, and so there was a whole place on all executions in Oklahoma until the Rutling was made. On June twenty nine, two fifteen, in the last day of the Supreme Court's term, they ruled five to four against Richard and the condemned prisoners, allowing Medazzalem as the sedative, and Richard's execution date was set for September fifteen, two thousand fifteen, so thirty five days prior the death ritual

began again. They actually move you to a cell that's about four cells away from the actual death chamber, and you're in that cell for a few days, and then they bring you to the third cell, one closer to the death chamber, and they leave you there for a few days, and then they bring you to the second cell, one more step closer to the death chamber, and then they move you to the cell next to the death chamber.

And if if that's not torture in and of itself, by the time you get to that final thing, you can see the people coming and going from the death amber. You know what's happening, you know what they're preparing, you know what they're going to do. And rich was subject to that for a long period of time. Because we ended up with a stay of execution on September fifteen. He had already been subjected to that, he had already

been brought to that final place. It was two hours in advance of the execution that hit that the second execution was stopped, and then they we had a two weeks stay so that Rich was moved once again, just back to where he had been and to and to start that whole process over again. So Rich was subjected to this incredible emotional torture in advance of the third execution date, which was set for September. I was in a lit room for fifty four straight days, no darkness whatsoever.

It's crazy what they put you through. They do mock executions in front of you. I'm not trying to compare Oklahoma to Isis, but it's no different than what ISIS does to people. When they pulled somebody out and put a sword to their neck, they act why they're gonna chop their head off, And then they stopped and they say, oh, we're gonna wait for another day, put them back in this cell, you know. And then they put the guy back in and bring him up the next day and

keep doing this. I mean, where do we draw the line and tortured because this is tortured. My first date, I gotta stay the day before my execution. The second time I gotta stay hours before my execution. The third time I got to stay after my execution was supposed to have taken place. And these days came with a

lot of work done. So for the second one. On September fifteenth, few fold motions presenting new evidence, including a July nineties seven psyche evaluation showing Sneed was aware of the charges against him and that he made no mention of Richard, as well as the numerous people's Need confessed to along the way that he had acted alone and

saved his own hide by implicating Richard. But despite all of that, on September, Oklahoma Court of Criminal a Fields voted three to two to proceed with the execution, and the Supreme Court also denied a stay. Then the Governor granted a stay on the citing that Oklahoma, contrary to lethal injection drug protocol, had received potassium acetate, a freaking food preservative, instead of potassium chloride for the cardiac arrest

inducing portion of the cocktail. So then Richard got a thirty seven day stay to November six, two thousand fifteen. And it was interesting when that happened because sister Helen was outside the prison and she was saying, it's a Richard gloss of preservative, because the drug day were going to use was actually used as a preservative, you know. But I think the scariest thing about that time was when the governor at the time hold for a second

in command who was there google it. When we've gotten to a point in a society, I where we google how to execute people? Or is it okay to use certain drugs that execute people that should just in the destinity by itself. It makes no sense to me at all that we entrust so many deeply flawed humans with

the machinery of death. But nevertheless, here we are. So on October one, two thousand fifteen, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Prue had asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to issue an indepthinite stay of all executions, citing the acquisition of the wrong drugs. Then, on October eight, it was revealed that Charles Warner had been killed using potassium acetate, the food preservative, contrary to protocol D A. G. Prewitt then ordered a multi county grand jury investigation, and this put

a hold on executions in Oklahoma. And with this moratorium, the famous documentary and Joe burl and Or who made Paradise Lost about the West Memphis Three, got involved to help uncover more evidence and make the incredibly powerful docuseries Killing Richard Glossop that we've been referencing. I'm Joe Burlinger, and I guess they've been talking about my docuseries Killing

Richard Glossop. I mean, this case, to me is the very definition of why there should be no death penalty, and it just demonstrates how easily innocent people can be put to death. This was a spontaneous act of a opportunistic robbery that went awry, and all the evidence suggests that, and no evidence points to Richard Glossop, even the fact that when they found money on each of them, the fact that there was blood on you know, the two thousand dollars that Sneed had in his pocket, and Richard's

money had no blood on it. Here, you have a murder for higher plot. And yet he himself justin Sneed says in his original statement, and he said it again to me when I interviewed him, that he never really intended to kill Barry van Trees, He just was hoping to kind of immobilize him. Well, then, how is it a murder for Higher Plot? I mean, that very basic fact makes it impossible to believe his story. So the one thing that's Need has been consistent about is that

he never meant to kill Barry van Trees. So through his own repeated admissions, he denies Rich's involvement. Rich was supposed to have ordered him, remember, according to the state, to rob and kill Barry. But if he never intended to kill Barry, then he could not have been operating under Rich's authority. Therefore, there was no murder for Higher Plot.

Richard could never have been involved. I mean, which, Justine Sneed, are we supposed to believe the Sneed who says Richard told me to do it so I had to do it, or the Sneed who never intended to kill Barry ventres to despite the alleged quote unquote orders of Richard Closset. He can't be both. Not that any of this matters to our legal processes, as actual innocence does not entitle one to relief. According to the United States Supreme Court. So don where do we stand now? So we've got

several new witnesses, people that nobody has ever heard. We know the story now, we heard it from Sneet's mouth through at least two or three witnesses. We know what happened in this case, and we know that Rich didn't have anything to do with this murder at all. And so we are ready to go to the pardner in Parole Board with this new information. We would go to court, but we've already been to court in we lost there.

There are procedural bars that are in place to keep us from even getting a chance to fairly litigate this innocence again. So right now the state of Oklahoma is set to once again begin the process of killing people. There is an end to the current lawsuit that's going

on with Rich's name on it. Again. It's the success of a gloss of be gross And once the court makes a ruling on the protocol that they know how to kill somebody with whatever drug they use, they're going to go ahead and begin to set dates once again. And we don't know if Rich will be first. He doesn't have to be first, but he was last up it's it's entirely possible that he will be the first one set for execution, and that could take place sometime

in the late summer. The worst case scenario, they could set a date on July one. I don't even know what to say anymore. His fate has essentially been determined barring action from the Pearl Board and the Executive branch, but his legal faith has been sealed because of technical considerations.

We had two judges who, based upon the evidence we had then, which is a shadow of the evidence that we have now at that point in time, two judges said we want to give this guy a hearing on his innocence claim, but three judges said we won't, simply because of finality of judgment. That was their whole point. That's the Court's point is we can't let this go on forever. We're going to stop it. Like you said, innocence doesn't matter. That's the legal posture that we face today.

Right that awful decision was Harrara versus Collins, where the Supreme Court said what I just said, evidence of innocence is not enough to stop the wheels of justice from turning, and in this case turning right into a state sponsored

murder of an innocent man named Richard Glass. I'm asking everybody to go to say Richard Glass dot com to sign the petitions that we have, but also participate in everything that we're doing to try to bring justice reform so that we can prevent this from happening to to other people. This isn't always about one person, and that's what I've always tried to make clear to people. This is about many innocent people who are facing what I'm facing, and I don't want them to face it. I don't

want them to go through what I went through. We got to stand up as a as a society. We have to stand up as a people. We have to stand up and say, hey, we're not going to tolerate this anymore. We've got to change this. We got to prevent innocent bunity have been executed, and we got to open people's eyes to why this is such a barbaric practice and why it should no longer take place. Go

to save Richard glossip dot com. We'll also have links in the bio for action steps that you can take, and you know, with that, I want to turn it over to YouTube. Guys. Thank you for being here. With us today and spreading the word about this awful injustice. And now we turn to what we call closing arguments.

This is a section of the show where I turned my microphone off, take back in my chair, leave my headphones on, close my eyes, and just listen to whatever you have to say that we may have left out, or anything you want to share with our audience. So Richard, we're going to save you for last and let don go first. And again, Richard, I just want you to know we're all out here thinking about you. So many people are praying for you, and we hope to see you free before too long. Over to you. Done well,

Thank you, Jason. I really appreciate you taking the time to shine a light on this terrible case and this terrible injustice that we are hoping to stop with with a hearing later this year. Richard Glossop, simple guy who was in love with a young woman. Richard loved his job at the best budget in loved Barry van tres

They had a great relationship. Rich never took any money from Barry van Tresse and very respected Rich And a terrible murder took place that rich did not have anything at all to do with and the wheels of justice began to turn in Oklahoma City the way that they did back in those days with Bob Macy, and those

wheels just simply ran over Richard Blossop. He was a victim of very very poor lawyering, of over aggressive police work, of over aggressive prosecutors who only cared about one thing, and that was getting a conviction and getting a death sentence, because that was the culture of Oklahoma City at the time.

Through a series of three letters two the current District Attorney, David Prator, we have requested a lot of substantive information that we believe would prove that rich Glossop had nothing to do with this, and we have received no answers. We continue to wait for David Prator. So at this point in time, we are we're preparing for a clembency hearing that we know we'll take place later this year, and we are hoping that people will go to say

Richard Assip dot com. You can find a petition there to the governor and the partner in Pearol Board letting those people know that this is wrong, what's what's happening, and that the only way to write it is to grant rich clemency and to allow us to get back into court again. What do you rich Um? You know, when I walked in and took that first step on aging it on death row, I said that I have two choices. I can make peace with death or I

can let it destroy me. And so I made peace with death right then and there, and I just said, I'm not gonna let it destroy me. I'm gonna be the same person I was and I am to this day. I singing my cell out loud, I laugh, I danced around, and guards are always freaking out because I'm the way that I am. And I told them, I said, you know, I was a happy guy my whole life, and I'm not going to let this change who I am because we only have one life to live and it's a gift.

And I'm going to celebrate life no matter where the hell I'm at, even in this hole, I'm going to celebrate life. I've heard so many stories about people who lost it down on un and I've seen it for myself. I've witnessed it myself. And there are a lot of people with serious mental health issues because you're isolated for years and years and years and and it's yeah, it's hard, and thankfully I you know, I had my art. I've

written songs. I've written so many poems. I've written a book which I can't wait to get get out there to people because it's a book of hope. It's a book of showing people that you you do have more strengthen you know, and you can take your courage and you can move forward and you can have hope at the end. And I described the three execution attempt. I describe everything because I want people to know no matter how bad things yet there's always something good that will

come from the worst situations you face in life. You just gotta fight for it and you've got to make sure it happens. So it's we're in a fight. Um, we're in a big fight with legislators and people in the state of Oklahoma. We're standing up saying we need to prevent this and and hopefully we can succeed because I do have a lot more like the lifts, and

I do have a lot more battle to raise. Again, the destinility look at like what's happening here in Oklahoma, one of the biggest Republican states in the in the country. And you have Republicans now staying and up saying we're not going to tolerate this anymore. We're not gonna kill innocent people. I'm proud of Legislator make Google and Legislator Humphrey,

and you know, even the local businessman Justin Jackson. I'm really proud of these people because they're diehard conservative and yet they're standing us for innocence because it's not a left thing, and it's not a right thing. It's an innocent thing. And we've got to stop using politics in justice reform. We all want the right things. If we don't,

then then you shouldn't be an office. We all want fair, we all want justice, and that's why I've always said that take the blindfold off of Lady Justice, because that's one of the things. It's always weirded me out over the years, as you're saying, well, she's finefold folders that she could be fair. How can you be fair if you can't see what's going on? So take the fine fold awful lettera see what's going on and she'll see alfair of justice. Really isn't that country. Thank you for

listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. Please support your local innocence projects and go to the link in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Wardens. The music on the show, as always, is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at

Wrongful Conviction. Podcast. Wrangful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one