Richard Glossip, the Oklahoma man who spent nearly 30 years on death row before his murder conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court last year, pleaded guilty Thursday to accessory to murder after the fact, avoiding a third murder trial, his lawyer told CNN.
The plea deal was reached during what was supposed to be a pretrial hearing, ahead of a retrial scheduled for December on a first-degree murder charge.
His sentencing is scheduled for December 17 and 18, his lawyer said. His defense plans to seek prison time served, while prosecutors have said they intend to seek additional prison time.
“After 30 years, after nine execution dates and three last meals, the state finally admitted that it did not have enough evidence to convict Richard Glossip of first-degree murder,” defense attorney Don Knight told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “They never had enough evidence to convict him of that.”
The guilty plea is the latest twist in a sprawling legal saga for Glossip, now 63, that stems from the 1997 murder of an Oklahoma City motel owner, Barry Van Treese.
At two murder trials, Justin Sneed, a motel clerk who admitted to killing Van Treese with a baseball bat, took the stand and testified that Glossip, the motel manager, had instigated him to commit it as part of a murder-for-hire plot. Glossip was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 – a conviction that was overturned due to ineffective defense counsel – and again in 2004.
Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony against Glossip.
While on death row, Glossip was scheduled to be put to death nine times and was served three final meals, but narrowly avoided execution. In 2015, his execution was stopped at the last minute by the government of the time. Mary Fallin after authorities discovered a mix-up in a shipment of lethal injection drugs.
But lingering questions about Sneed’s testimony and the lack of evidence linking Glossip to the crime led to a bipartisan investigation questioning the legitimacy of the conviction. In 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, moved to overturn Glossip’s conviction.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a split decision, overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial, citing Sneed’s false testimony and the prosecution’s withholding of evidence from the defense.
“We conclude that the prosecution violated its constitutional duty to correct false testimony,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority.
Sneed has never publicly recanted his testimony. But Glossip’s legal team has produced witnesses who claim Sneed exonerated Glossip in private conversations, as well as a handwritten note from prison in which he asks: “Do I have the choice to retract my testimony at any time in my life, or something like that.” »
Still, Drummond said last June that his office planned to retry Glossip for murder.
While awaiting his third trial, Glossip was released on bail in May with funds from celebrity and criminal reform advocate Kim Kardashian.
Glossip has maintained his innocence, according to his lawyer
Drummond said Thursday that agreeing to a lower fee for Glossip was a “difficult decision,” according to CNN affiliate KOKH.
“Today, Richard Glossip finally took some responsibility for the murder of Barry Van Treese,” he said. “While allowing Glossip to plead guilty to the lesser charge of complicity to first-degree murder was a difficult decision for me, (and) more importantly, for the Van Treese family, we both recognize that this path secures a conviction related to Mr. Van Treese’s murder and gives us the best chance of obtaining additional prison time for Glossip.”
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Special counsel examines case of man sentenced to death for 26 years
Knight reiterated that his client was not involved in the murder, telling Tapper that the plea had “nothing to do with the murder of Barry Van Treese.”
“He didn’t know there was going to be a murder, he didn’t participate in the murder. The plea he made was actually accessory after the fact,” he said.
In a statement, the defense attorney said Glossip had “more than paid his debt to society by spending nearly 30 years on death row.”
“In 1997, if Rich had received the longest sentence possible for the crime to which he pleaded guilty today, he would never have been on death row and would have been released ten years ago,” Knight said. “We look forward to the opportunity to show why his return to custody would not serve the interests of justice and to bring an end to this nightmare for Rich and everyone involved.”
Glossip spoke to CNN in 2023 about the difficulty of life on death row.
“It’s one of the scariest things, especially if you’re an innocent person, to know that they’re going to kill you for something that you had nothing to do with,” Glossip told CNN in an exclusive interview during one of those phone calls.
After his release on bail in May, Glossip told reporters he was grateful to his wife and his lawyers and said he was “just very happy.”
“It’s overwhelming, but it’s incredible at the same time,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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