The U.S. Supreme Court has halted the execution of Richard Glossip, sentenced to death in Oklahoma, for whom the State Attorney General's Office no longer supported capital punishment. The appeal was filed by Glossip himself with the support of the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office, which asked to cancel the execution that was scheduled for May 18. The Court's decision was highly anticipated, Glossip's case had attracted national and international attention, in part due to the considerable intervention of a bipartisan group of lawyers and Attorney General Gentner F. Drummond.
The man, now 60, was convicted of commissioning the 1997 murder of his boss at an Oklahoma City motel where they worked. Glossip, whose execution has been scheduled nine times, has long professed his innocence. In an initial review of the trial, Attorney General Gentner Drummond ruled that he did not receive a fair trial but the state appeals court rejected stopping the conviction.
Glossip's case has already been examined by the Supreme Court, including an appeal filed with other death row inmates in 2015 concerning the protocol for lethal injection used in executions. On that occasion, the Court dismissed the appeal. Glossip has already narrowly avoided being executed on other occasions, including in 2015, a few months after the Supreme Court judgment. In that circumstance, the Oklahoma authorities stopped the execution at the last minute, due to problems related to the drug that was to be used for lethal injection.
The latest appeal alleges, among other things, that prosecutors had deprived Glossip's lawyers of key information about a crucial witness and had failed to correct false testimony in the case. Now the highest court has blocked the execution, but has not declared Glossip innocent, so it is possible that a new trial will be held.