Attorneys for Glossip have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution claiming “new evidence” of his innocence. Glossip says he is innocent and has thousands of supporters, including Susan Sarandon and Richard Branson.
AP Photo/Oklahoma Department of Corrections, File
Anti-death penalty activists, including members of MoveOn.org and other advocay groups rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to protest Glossip's impending execution.
Larry French / Getty Images for MoveOn.org
Oklahoma is set to execute Richard Glossip on Wednesday at 3 p.m. CDT — 4 p.m. EST — for planning the 1997 murder of his former boss, Barry Van Treese, the owner of a motel that Glossip worked at. Van Treese was found beaten to death by a baseball bat in his motel room.
Justin Sneed, a maintenance worker at the motel, confessed to killing Van Treese, but under police interrogation said that Glossip offered him money to carry out the murder. In exchange for testifying against Glossip, Sneed is serving life in prison, while Glossip was sentenced to death for his role as the mastermind of the murder.
Glossip's lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday to stop his execution citing "new evidence" of his innocence, including two witness accounts that said Sneed lied about Glossip's involvement in the murder.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday refused to grant a further stay of execution to Glossip after reviewing the new evidence that his lawyers claimed proved his innocence. The state's highest court had granted Glossip a two-week reprieve on Sept. 16, hours before he was scheduled to be executed.
In its 3-2 ruling, the court said that Glossip's "new" evidence "merely expands on theories" that have been previously raised in his appeals and did not warrant an evidentiary hearing or a further stay of execution.
In his dissent, Judge Smith wrote he would have granted a 60-day stay for an evidentiary hearing to give Glossip the chance to prove his allegations that Sneed has recanted his original testimony.
"...the State has no interest in executing an actually innocent man," Smith wrote.
On Tuesday, several anti-death penalty advocates, including members of MoveOn.org, demonstrated outside the U.S. Supreme Court to demand a stay of execution.
Gov. Mary Fallin has repeatedly denied Glossip a 60-day reprieve as requested by his lawyers, saying in her statement, "Over and over again, courts have rejected his arguments and the information he has presented to support them. If a state or federal court grants Glossip a new trial or decides to delay his execution, I will respect that decision. If that does not happen, his execution will go forward on September 30."
Oklahoma uses midazolam, a controversial drug that has been at the center of problematic executions, as part of its three-drug lethal injection protocol. Unless the court intervenes, Glossip will be the first person to be executed using midazolam since the significant Supreme Court decision in June which allowed the use of the drug in executions.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1O7R0DO
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