The Supreme Courtroom dominated on Tuesday that Richard Glossip, a person sentenced to die underneath terribly doubtful circumstances, should obtain a brand new trial. The case is Glossip v. Oklahoma.
The Courtroom, which has a 6-3 Republican majority, is typically unsympathetic to dying row inmates who problem their conviction or who search to keep away from execution. It’s unlikely that the Glossip case foreshadows a break with this development, as Glossip introduced an unusually robust case to the Supreme Courtroom. Certainly, his case is robust sufficient that Oklahoma’s Republican lawyer basic, who ordinarily could be tasked with defending Glossip’s conviction, as a substitute argued that Glossip’s trial was so flawed that it violated the Structure.
In whole, 5 justices — Chief Justice John Roberts, plus Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — voted to grant Glossip a brand new trial. Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed that Glossip’s constitutional rights have been violated, however she would have despatched the case to an Oklahoma appeals court docket as a substitute. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented (Justice Neil Gorsuch was recused).
Many highly effective gamers inside Oklahoma raised severe doubts about Glossip’s conviction, and the state produced two investigations laying out the various flaws within the case towards Glossip. One investigation, carried out by the legislation agency Reed Smith on behalf of a gaggle of a number of dozen state lawmakers, decided that a variety of errors, destroyed proof, and police failures “basically name into query the equity of the proceedings and the last word reliability of the responsible verdict towards Glossip for homicide.”
A second investigation, commissioned by state Lawyer Normal Gentner Drummond, decided that “Glossip was disadvantaged of a good trial through which the State can trust within the course of and outcome.”
Although the police investigation and prosecution of Glossip had many errors (I summarize a few of them right here), Sotomayor’s majority opinion in Glossip focuses on simply one in every of them. Practically 20 years after Glossip’s conviction, the state revealed {that a} key witness falsely testified at trial that he’d by no means seen a psychiatrist. The prosecution by no means corrected that false testimony regardless of being conscious of the witness’s earlier psychiatric therapy.
That violates the Supreme Courtroom’s choice in Napue v. Illinois (1959), which typically forbids prosecutors from introducing false testimony, and which usually requires prosecutors to appropriate such testimony when it happens.
The case towards Glossip is kind of flimsy
In 1997, Justin Sneed, a upkeep employee at a motel owned by Barry Van Treese, killed Van Treese with a baseball bat. On the time, Glossip was the supervisor of this motel.
Glossip isn’t solely harmless. In accordance with his attorneys, Glossip “spoke to police voluntarily on the day of the homicide and once more after he was detained the following day, admitting that he took actions after Van Treese was killed that helped Sneed after the very fact.” Initially, the state charged Glossip as an adjunct after the very fact, for serving to to cowl up the homicide and clear up the homicide scene. However that cost was later upgraded to homicide.
There are lots of causes to doubt the upgraded cost. At Glossip’s trial, the state’s principle was that Glossip masterminded the homicide and employed Sneed to hold it out. Nonetheless, there may be vital proof that the police railroaded Sneed into endorsing this principle. The Reed Smith report, for instance, discovered that Sneed implicated Glossip within the homicide itself “solely after [lead] Detective [Robert] Bemo interjected his views that Sneed didn’t act alone, that Sneed may assist himself, that Glossip was arrested, and that Glossip was blaming Sneed for the homicide.”
Sneed testified towards Glossip at his 2004 trial, and this testimony was the one direct proof connecting Glossip to the homicide. The state, which supported Glossip’s name for a brand new trial, describes Sneed as an “indispensable witness.”
However Sneed was additionally a way more flawed witness than prosecutors allowed the jury to consider. Throughout that trial, Sneed falsely testified that he had “by no means seen no psychiatrist or something.” Although he’d been prescribed lithium, a drug used to deal with some psychological diseases, whereas he was in jail for Van Treese’s homicide, Sneed urged that this was a mistake and that he’d solely requested for Sudafed to deal with a chilly.
In 2023, nonetheless, the state turned over a doc to Glossip’s attorneys which undermined Sneed’s testimony and urged that prosecutors knew that Sneed was mendacity throughout Glossip’s homicide trial. That doc, a web page of handwritten notes by lead prosecutor Connie Smothermon, included notations indicating that Smothermon knew that Sneed was “on Lithium” in addition to a reference to a “Dr. Trumpet.”
“Dr. Trumpet” seems to be Dr. Larry Trombka, who was the jail psychiatrist whereas Sneed was incarcerated in that facility. Trombka prescribed lithium to deal with Sneed’s bipolar dysfunction. And he later stated that Sneed’s psychological sickness may have induced him to expertise a “manic episode” that will have led him “to be extra paranoid or doubtlessly violent,” and that Sneed’s situation was “exacerbated by illicit drug use, reminiscent of methamphetamine.”
Had Glossip’s attorneys recognized about Sneed’s analysis and therapy throughout his 2004 trial, they might have used it to undercut Sneed’s testimony in a number of methods. For starters, the mere proven fact that Sneed testified falsely about his personal medical historical past undermines his credibility and should have induced the jury to doubt the state’s important witness.
Moreover, had protection attorneys recognized about Sneed’s psychological well being analysis, they might have raised doubts in regards to the state’s murder-for-hire principle — as a substitute arguing that Sneed dedicated homicide as a spontaneous act led to by a manic episode and his drug use.
As Sotomayor explains within the Courtroom’s Glossip opinion, the Napue choice is kind of favorable to somebody, like Glossip, who’s convicted primarily based on false testimony that the prosecutor may have corrected. Napue requires a conviction to be tossed out “as long as the false testimony ‘might have had an impact on the result of the trial.’”
Later Supreme Courtroom choices set up that “a conviction obtained by the understanding use of perjured testimony should be put aside if there may be any cheap chance that the false testimony may have affected the jury’s verdict,” and so they counsel that this rule can solely be overcome if the prosecution can “show past an affordable doubt that the error complained of didn’t contribute to the decision obtained.”
Sotomayor’s opinion, in different phrases, merely adopted these established precedents to their logical conclusion. There’s a cheap chance {that a} jury would have acquitted Glossip if it had recognized that Sneed’s testimony was false. And that’s sufficient to grant him a brand new trial.
