View Poll Results: Is Richard Glossip Innocent of the Murder of Barry Van Treese?

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    10 62.50%
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Thread: Richard Eugene Glossip - Oklahoma Execution - Stayed

  1. #281
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Handwritten letter casts doubt on key testimony in Oklahoma death row case

    Self-confessed killer Justin Sneed gave only implicating evidence at Richard Glossip’s trial, later writing ‘things are eating at me’

    A handwritten letter has come to light casting doubt on the critical testimony of a self-confessed murderer who provided the only implicating evidence at the trial of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate in Oklahoma who is to be executed in 6 weeks’ time.

    The letter was written in 2007 by Justin Sneed, a motel handyman who by his own admittance bludgeoned to death Barry Van Treese, the owner of a Best Budget, a decade earlier. Sneed’s testimony that Glossip, the manager of the motel, had put him up to the murder with a promise of $10,000 was central to the state’s case – with no other forensic or corroborating evidence to back it up.

    In their letter, the 61 legislators ask the attorney general to call for a hearing to consider new evidence that has been uncovered in the case. Oklahoma lawmakers urge pause amid fears innocent man to be executed

    As a result, Glossip was sentenced to death in his second capital trial in 2004. By contrast Sneed, the killer, was given life without parole.

    In the handwritten letter, Sneed writes to his own defense lawyer 3 years later expressing deep anxiety about the case and his role in it. “There are a lot of things right now that are eating at me,” he begins.

    “Somethings I need to clean up,” he goes on. Then he writes: “I think you know were (sic) I’m going it was a mistake reliving this.”

    The letter was uncovered recently by Reed Smith, an international law firm that was asked by Oklahoma state lawmakers to carry out an independent investigation into the Glossip case. In recent days, concern that the state might be about to kill an innocent man has reached fever pitch, with 61 legislators – most of them pro-death penalty Republicans – pleading with the state’s attorney general to hold a special hearing to consider the new evidence.

    In its 343-page report, released in June, the law firm revealed that prosecutors had intentionally destroyed crucial evidence before trial in a gross violation of due process. The review concluded that “no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first-degree murder”.

    Sneed’s newly uncovered letter, contained in a supplemental report released by Reed Smith on Thursday, raises further disturbing questions. What precisely was “eating at” him, and what did he want to “clean up”? Most importantly, what did he mean by “it was a mistake”?

    Yet Gina Walker, Sneed’s lawyer from the Oklahoma county public defender’s office, to whom he wrote the letter, did not raise any of these questions with him. Instead Walker, who died in 2020, effectively closed down the conversation.

    “I can tell by the tone of your letter that some things are bothering you,” she wrote back to Sneed in August 2007. “I know that it was very hard for you to testify at the second trial.”

    She went on to accuse Glossip’s defense lawyers of trying to talk Sneed out of testifying, saying that went “totally against your best interests to the benefit of their client. Had you refused [to testify], you would most likely be on death row right now.”

    She added: “I hope [Glossip] has not or his lawyers have not tried to make you feel responsible for the outcome of his case”.

    Kevin McDugle, a Republican representative in the Oklahoma legislature who has led the call for a pause in the approaching execution, said the letter amounted to compelling new evidence. It strongly suggested, he said, that “Sneed wanted to recant his statement implicating Richard Glossip, and his attorney shut him down”.

    (source: theguardian.com)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #282
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    I can't remember how to do it. Could someone do a poll just to see how many people actually believe if Glossip is guilty and should he be executed.

    Thanks kindly, Helen
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #283
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    First prison wife of death row inmate Richard Glossip says he "used me for financial gain"

    By Nolan Clay
    The Oklahoman

    In a sworn statement sent to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, the first prison wife of death row inmate Richard Glossip wrote that she feels used and "did not get anything out of the relationship."

    "Glossip, on the other hand, got exactly what he wanted, which was financing for himself while in prison," Leigha Joy Jurasik stated in the affidavit signed Wednesday in New Jersey.

    Their wedding in September 2018 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester became international news. The marriage was dissolved without fanfare in February 2021.

    She revealed in the affidavit that she spent $7,000 on Glossip and another $1,000 on other death row inmates at his request. "He only thought of himself," she wrote. "Glossip was controlling and manipulative and used me for financial gain."

    Glossip, 59, is set to be executed Sept. 22 for the murder death of his boss, Oklahoma City motel owner Barry Van Treese. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board meets Aug. 23 to decide whether to recommend Glossip for clemency. He claims he is innocent.

    That claim has received widespread support, most recently from conservative pro-death penalty legislators in Oklahoma. One outspoken supporter, state Rep. Kevin McDugle, R- Broken Arrow, has vowed to fight to abolish the death penalty in the state if Glossip is executed.

    Attorney General John O'Connor and his assistants included affidavits from Jurasik and another woman, along with graphic crime scene photos, in their packet to the parole board.

    "Glossip does not ask for mercy; he asks for vindication," the state attorneys wrote. "The media might ignore portions of the evidence. Politicians might question the reliability of the outcome. Public opinion might claim certain witnesses cannot be believed. But for this Board, the facts of this case cannot be changed.

    "Glossip orchestrated the murder of Barry Van Treese. A jury sentenced him to death. This Board must see that justice is done."

    The victim was found beaten to death in Room 102 of his motel the Best Budget Inn on Jan. 7. 1997. Van Treese was 54 and lived in Lawton.

    A motel maintenance man, Justin Sneed, confessed to killing the owner with a baseball bat. He said Glossip pressured him into doing it and offered him $10,000 as payment.

    Sneed also said Glossip was worried about being fired when Van Treese discovered motel rooms had not been remodeled.

    Richard Glossip's defenders claim he is an innocent victim of a faulty justice system

    Glossip was first sent to death row after being convicted in 1998. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new murder trial because his defense attorney failed to represent him adequately. He was sent to death row again after a 2004 retrial.

    His attorneys contend the maintenance man killed the killing the motel owner during a botched robbery for drug money and lied about Glossip to avoid the death penalty. They claim Sneed, a meth addict, made admissions in jail and later in prison about framing Glossip.

    One prisoner reported Sneed openly bragged multiple times about the deal he had made to save his life and that Glossip had not done anything, the attorneys said. Sneed, now 44, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

    "Richard Glossip is an innocent man who has been the victim of a massive breakdown in the justice system that would have been disturbing had it occurred even in a minor case." his attorneys told the Pardon and Parole Board in their packet.

    "Police are supposed to investigate cases objectively and thoroughly rather than jumping to conclusions and resting on their first theory," Glossip's attorneys wrote. "The State is supposed to provide competent lawyers to zealously represent indigent defendants’ interests, which includes investigating the case and testing the prosecution’s evidence. Prosecutors are supposed to ensure that the evidence they present is reliable, to safeguard the evidence in the case rather than destroying it, and to proceed with a prosecution only when it is consistent with justice.

    "None of these things happened in this case."

    Glossip's ex-wife claims she was threatened after divorcing death row inmate

    In her affidavit, Jurasik wrote that she first wrote Glossip in July 2017 after seeing a documentary about his case. State attorneys have criticized the documentary, "Killing Richard Glossip," as obviously slanted in his favor and inaccurate.

    "At the time, I was 20 years old and Glossip was 54," she wrote. "He told me he loved me during one of our first few phone calls with each other, and he started talking about marriage and a wedding very early on. During those conversations, Glossip told me he would be getting out of prison soon."

    She wrote that Glossip would throw temper tantrums during phone calls and at times threaten to even kill himself to get her to give in to "whatever demand he was making."

    Jurasik, now 25, also wrote that he stirred up animosity toward her "among his online following" after their relationship ended. "My mother and I received death threats from some of them. Glossip also sent me a letter stating that I was going to jail and that police were going to investigate me."

    Former Glossip supporter now says she believes he is guilty

    Also calling Glossip manipulative was Melissa Ratliff who first sent him a post card of support in 2015 after seeing an episode on the TV show, "Dr. Phil," about his innocence claim.

    "Glossip knew I was passionate about issues of innocence and the death penalty and took full advantage of that," Ratliff wrote in an affidavit signed Aug. 4 in West Virginia.

    She wrote they reconnected in 2020 and spoke up to seven times a day by phone for six months. She wrote she put thousands of dollars in the accounts of Glossip and other death row inmates at his request.

    "Once in 2020, I expressed some concern about the amount of money that I was sending Glossip," she wrote. "Glossip made ugly comments to me, suggesting that I need not worry whether he had anything to eat. I, of course, wanted him to eat, so I kept sending money."

    She wrote she ended the relationship in January 2021 and now believes Glossip is guilty. She wrote he sent her a letter in May 2021 threatening to destroy her career and have her investigated by the Department of Corrections.

    "There is a considerable amount of shame and embarrassment I feel for the time I spent dedicated to Glossip," she wrote. "I am happy to say I am no longer controlled by his tactics."

    Glossip in March married another woman who is opposed to the death penalty
    Glossip married again in prison in March. His new bride is Lea Rodger, a law student from Florida and anti-death penalty advocate.

    “For Rich, surviving three execution attempts, possibly facing a fourth, the one thing he’s really taken away from that is: Don’t take anything for granted ... really live in the moment,” Rodger told The Associated Press.

    Glossip's attorneys also are challenging his conviction again at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. They have told the court they have new evidence of his innocence.

    The number of legislators calling for an evidentiary hearing has grown to 62.

    Among the new evidence is a 2007 handwritten letter from Sneed to his defense attorney. "It was a mistake," he wrote. "Reliving this."

    He also wrote there were a lot of things "eating at me" and some things "I need to clean up."

    In a news release last week, McDugle called the letter "compelling new evidence that strongly supports what we heard, that Sneed wanted to recant his statement implicating Richard Glossip and his attorney shut him down."

    In a response to Sneed's letter, Gina Walker, then an Oklahoma County assistant public defender, wrote that she knew it was very hard for him to testify at the second trial. Walker, who is now dead, also wrote she knew Glossip's lawyers "tried to talk you out of it."

    "Had you refused, you would most likely be on death row right now," she wrote. "I hope he has not or his lawyers have not tried to make you feel responsible for the outcome of his case and his decisions."

    Attorneys for the state dispute the letter is proof Sneed considered recanting.

    https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news...r/65402902007/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  4. #284
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    I'm still not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Glossip actually did orchestrate van Treese's murder, but looking at what his exes said, he's enough of a scumbag that it's not worth the effort to fight his execution.
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  5. #285
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mastro Titta's Avatar
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    Governor Kevin Stitt granted a 60-day stay to Richard Glossip, and rescheduled his execution to December 8th, 2022.

    FaTEMeGWQAIVQtv.jpg

  6. #286
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    Won't that cause an issue with John Hanson's execution being the following week?
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

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    It would since the DOC said they want to have 4 weeks between each execution date. It could imagine they withdraw the December date and set a new one for February 2023.

  8. #288
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ted View Post
    I'm still not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Glossip actually did orchestrate van Treese's murder, but looking at what his exes said, he's enough of a scumbag that it's not worth the effort to fight his execution.
    I'm convinced he did it. His behavior after Van Treese's death was that of someone who was trying to cover his own tracks. He's also the only person who had a motive for doing it. Any argument that a loser like Sneed acted alone is wholly unconvincing.
    Last edited by Fact; 08-16-2022 at 04:11 PM.

  9. #289
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mastro Titta's Avatar
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    On the day Richard Glossip should have been executed, Oklahoma AG John O'Connor released the following statement.

    FdRHtlQX0AAPi2E.jpg

  10. #290
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Uncovered evidence in Oklahoma death row case prompts calls for new hearing

    Richard Glossip, who has maintained his innocence in a 1997 murder, was set to be executed this month. A new report says prosecutors failed to disclose evidence

    Attorneys for an Oklahoma death row inmate whose halted execution in 2015 led to a state moratorium on the death penalty requested a new hearing Thursday, alleging that prosecutors had failed to disclose key evidence that could have resulted in a different outcome at his trial or in his petition for a new one.

    A report initiated at the request of Oklahoma state legislators in the capital murder case against Richard Glossip contends that the state's primary witness, Justin Sneed, confirmed to investigators in interviews this summer that he has had discussions with multiple family members about "recanting" his testimony.

    In addition, the report said, investigators found that the district attorney's case file included documentation describing how the state provided Sneed information "so he could conform his testimony to match the evidence" from other witnesses.

    Glossip, a motel manager in Oklahoma City, was convicted in the 1997 killing of his boss, Barry Van Treese. Sneed, a motel handyman, admitted at trial that he killed Van Treese, but said that it was at Glossip's direction and that he had been promised $10,000. In exchange for testifying against Glossip, Sneed received a life sentence while Glossip was given the death penalty.

    Prosecutors alleged Glossip orchestrated the plot because he was embezzling from the motel and feared being fired. Glossip, now 59, has long maintained his innocence.

    "This newly obtained evidence establishes not only a pattern of Sneed discussing 'recanting' to individuals he trusts at various times spanning a period of over a decade, but also conduct by the State before and during Glossip's retrial that reveal its concerns over Sneed's reliability and credibility," according to the report, which was prepared by the Pittsburgh-based law firm Reed Smith LLP. The firm released an initial report in June.

    As a result of the latest report, Glossip's lawyers said Thursday they filed a so-called Brady motion, intended to compel prosecutors to turn over any evidence they may have that could help the defense. Failure to do so could result in a conviction being reversed.

    Lawyers are seeking the new evidentiary hearing from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, claiming that prosecutors in the Oklahoma County District Attorney's Office also destroyed evidence.

    "Rich Glossip is a nobody. He's not some powerful person. He's just like all the rest of us," Don Knight, an attorney for Glossip, said at a news conference. "This is what the government can do when they're allowed to run amok."

    Most recently, in a high-profile case against Adnan Syed, whose arrest and conviction in the 1999 murder of a former high school girlfriend was chronicled in the hit podcast "Serial," prosecutors in Baltimore cited Brady violations made by prosecutors at his trial among the reasons he deserved to be freed. A judge on Monday found the evidence compelling enough to vacate Syed's murder conviction.

    Glossip was set to be executed Thursday, but in August was granted a 60-day reprieve by Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, while an appeals court reviews his case based on the report's initial findings. A clemency hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9.

    A review of the case against Glossip has received bipartisan support in Oklahoma.

    In August, more than five dozen Democratic and Republican state lawmakers signed a letter urging state Attorney General John O'Connor, a Republican, to agree to an evidentiary hearing.

    O'Connor responded that it is up to the courts, but reiterated that "multiple courts have reviewed this evidence and determined that the jury that convicted Glossip and sentenced him to death did so in full accordance with the law." Glossip's original conviction was overturned on appeal, but a second jury found him guilty in 2004.

    O'Connor said in a statement Thursday that he believes Sneed used the word "recant" in reference to "his hope to negotiate a shorter prison term in exchange for his testimony at Glossip’s second trial — but that never happened."

    Reed Smith investigators have released other information discovered in the case in recent months, including a letter written by Sneed in 2007 to his lawyer in which he says he has "somethings I need to clean up" and "it was a mistake reliving this."

    O'Connor said he remains unconvinced, and that the only information in the case that Glossip's defense team could not review were "work product materials" protected by law.

    "It is disappointing that Glossip's supporters are criticizing law enforcement, prosecutors, juries, and judges in an attempt to distract the public from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of Glossip's guilt," O'Connor said.

    Glossip has escaped the death chamber multiple times as he appealed his case, including in September 2015, when then-Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, stayed his execution at the last minute after prison officials tried to go forward with the wrong lethal injection drugs.

    The stunning admission was among a wave of botched and bungled executions in Oklahoma in 2014 and 2015, prompting a statewide moratorium on capital punishment that lasted until October 2021.

    In June, O'Connor asked the state's highest appeals court to set execution dates for 25 death row inmates, including Glossip. The next one is scheduled for October 20.

    Glossip's case won support from notable names such as actress Susan Sarandon, Pope Francis and Barry Switzer, the popular former football coach at the University of Oklahoma.

    State Rep. Kevin McDugle, a Republican, has said that he is so disturbed by the circumstances surrounding Glossip's case that executing him would change his mind on capital punishment.

    "If we put Richard Glossip to death, I will fight in this state to abolish the death penalty, simply because the process is not pure," McDugle told reporters in June.

    Van Treese's family could not be reached for comment Thursday. His widow, Donna Van Treese, previously told NBC affiliate KFOR in Oklahoma City that she was ready to see Glossip put to death.

    "Would I wish a cruel death on anyone? No," she said. "I'm hoping that it is quick."

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...ring-rcna48938
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

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