The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in Glossip v. Oklahoma, a death penalty case involving a state’s admitted suppression of a key witness’s history of treatment for mental illness and prosecutors’ failure to correct that witness’s false testimony. The Court will decide whether this violates Richard Glossip’s due process rights and whether he will ultimately face execution or receive a new trial.
What You Need to Know
- Facts of the Case: Richard Glossip was sentenced to death in 1998 for allegedly hiring Justin Sneed to murder their employer, Barry Van Treese. A court overturned Glossip’s original conviction due to ineffective assistance of counsel. In 2004, Glossip was retried and again sentenced to death largely based on the testimony of Sneed, who admitted to committing the murder. Nearly 20 years later, Glossip obtained evidence in the possession of prosecutors at the time of his 2004 trial that Sneed had been treated by a psychiatrist and lied about it in his testimony and that the prosecutor falsely denied any advance knowledge of Sneed’s change in testimony regarding the use of a knife in the murder. This information, which prosecutors were required to disclose under Supreme Court precedent, could have been used by Glossip’s counsel to raise doubts about Sneed’s credibility. There is also evidence that Sneed had wanted to recant his testimony that Glossip hired him to kill Van Treese. The Oklahoma Attorney General opened an independent counsel investigation that found prosecutorial misconduct sufficient for the attorney general to conclude in 2023 that he could not, “stand behind the murder conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip.”
- Procedural History: In 2023, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (the highest criminal court in Oklahoma), denied Glossip’s motion to vacate his conviction, despite the Oklahoma Attorney General’s own motion submitted in support of Glossip’s motion. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board denied Glossip clemency that same month. Glossip was scheduled to be executed in May 2023, but sought and was granted a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court. Oklahoma filed a response in support of the stay. The Court subsequently agreed to review the case, and because the state supported Glossip’s position, appointed an amicus to defend the ruling of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.
- Questions Presented: (1) Whether the state’s suppression of the key prosecution witness’s admission that he was under the care of a psychiatrist and failure to correct that witness’s false testimony about that care and related diagnosis violate the due process of law under Brady v. Maryland and Napue v. Illinois; (2) whether the entirety of the suppressed evidence must be considered when assessing the materiality of Brady and Napue claims; (3) whether due process of law requires reversal where a capital conviction is so infected with errors that the state no longer seeks to defend it; and (4) whether the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals' holding that the Oklahoma Post-Conviction Procedure Act precluded post-conviction relief is an adequate and independent state-law ground for the judgment.
- Potential Impact: The severity and finality of death as a punishment raises serious concerns about courts’ willingness to rely on byzantine post-conviction procedures to deny relief in cases where the integrity of the conviction or guilt of the individual are in question. As highlighted by the recent case of Marcellus Khaliifah Williams – a man who was executed despite an overwhelmingly strong claim of innocence and over the objections of the prosecutor’s office that originally prosecuted his case – there is concern that courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, do not recognize the constitutional due process right of an innocent or wrongfully convicted person not to be killed by the state.
- What Happened at Oral Argument: This was an unusual oral argument before eight justices (Justice Gorsuch recused himself), where the petitioner and respondent were arguing the same side, with a Supreme Court-appointed amicus lawyer defending the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision. Justices Alito and Thomas seemed focused on the procedural barriers that could prevent the Court from weighing in on the merits. Other justices’ questions were more squarely focused on the damage the alleged prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations might have caused to Glossip’s defense. Justice Sotomayor observed that the alleged constitutional violations, including failure of prosecutors to correct a witness’s false testimony, “is a significant thing. A jury would take that into account that a prosecutor had to stop the testimony to point out the lie.” In a case that could determine whether a man lives or dies, Justice Thomas began the morning by asking Glossip’s attorney why they had not interviewed the two prosecutors who tried his 2004 case, since “their reputations are being impugned,” and later suggested that the two prosecutors, whose alleged misconduct is central to the case, could have cleared up any ambiguity around the meaning of the previously undisclosed evidence. The two prosecutors had been interviewed during an independent investigation launched by the Oklahoma Attorney General, and, as Glossip’s attorney pointed out, had offered multiple inconsistent statements about the evidence. Justice Jackson asked whether it might not be appropriate to return the case to the state court for an evidentiary hearing. In a moment that elicited laughter in the otherwise somber proceedings, when told by the amicus lawyer that she offered a strong legal writing critique of the Oklahoma court’s opinion, Justice Kagan quipped, “I haven’t even started.”