Richard Glossip will face a new murder trial—this time without the threat of execution. The US Supreme Court threw out his death sentence in February, citing a fundamentally unfair trial. During almost three decades on death row in Oklahoma, he had nine execution dates and three last meals. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond Richard Glossip announced Monday that the state will retry the 62-year-old for first-degree murder but without seeking the death penalty, NBC News reports.
Drummond said his office "concluded that sufficient evidence exists to secure a murder conviction" and will seek a sentence of life without parole. Glossip, who remained in prison on a first-degree murder charge after the top court's ruling, has long maintained his innocence in the 1997 murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese. Drummond had pushed for a new trial, arguing that executing Glossip would be a "grave injustice" after a state appeals court rejected his request to vacate the conviction. "While it was clear to me and to the US Supreme Court that Mr. Glossip did not receive a fair trial, I have never proclaimed his innocence," he said in a statement Monday, per the Oklahoman.
Glossip's case drew support from both sides of the political spectrum after a 2022 independent review—commissioned by Oklahoma lawmakers—found no reasonable jury, given the full record, would convict Glossip. Central to that report: claims that the main witness, motel handyman Justin Sneed, had discussions about retracting his testimony, and that prosecutors helped Sneed shape his statements to match witness evidence. Originally convicted in 1998, Glossip's first trial was overturned for lack of evidence, but a jury convicted him again in 2004. Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese but testified it was at Glossip's direction; in exchange, he was spared the death penalty. (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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