State's failure to correct accuser's lithium testimony entitles death row inmate to new trial, SCOTUS rules
Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip on Feb. 19, 2021. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that he is entitled to a new trial because the prosecution failed to correct testimony by the man who implicated him. (Photo by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections via the Associated Press)
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an Oklahoma death row inmate is entitled to a new trial because the prosecution failed to correct testimony by the man who implicated him.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the majority opinion, joined in full by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The case has attracted nationwide attention. Inmate Richard Glossip’s supporters include reality TV star Kim Kardashian and a bipartisan group of 62 Oklahoma lawmakers. The Republican attorney general of Oklahoma had supported vacating the conviction.
The co-defendant who testified against Glossip, Justin Sneed, had alleged that Glossip paid him to kill Barry Van Treese, the owner of an Oklahoma City hotel where Glossip worked as a manager and Sneed worked as a handyman.
Sneed had pleaded guilty and avoided the death penalty because of his testimony. Glossip turned down a plea deal and maintained his innocence in the 1997 murder. He was convicted a second time in a 2004 retrial.
When prosecutors asked at the trial whether Sneed was prescribed medication after his arrest, Sneed said he asked for cold medicine but was given lithium “for some reason, I don’t know why. I never seen no psychiatrist or anything.” Actually, Sneed had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he was prescribed lithium.
The Supreme Court said the failure to correct the testimony was material to the case.
“Because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossip’s guilt of capital murder, the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s credibility was necessarily determinative here,” Sotomayor wrote. “Besides Sneed, no other witness and no physical evidence established that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese’s murder. Thus, the jury could convict Glossip only if it believed Sneed. Had the prosecution corrected Sneed on the stand, his credibility plainly would have suffered.”
Sotomayor said a ruling by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals against Glossip had misinterpreted a 1959 Supreme Court case, Napue v. Illinois, which held that prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to correct false testimony.
Sotomayor also pointed to other evidence that undermined the guilty verdict, including a prosecutor’s notes and Sneed’s letters asking about recantation. The material was included in eight boxes of documents that weren’t disclosed to the defense until after the retrial.
The notes indicated that the prosecutor learned in a pretrial interview with Sneed that a doctor—apparently a jail psychiatrist—had prescribed the lithium. They also suggested that the prosecutor had violated a sequestration rule by seeking to question Sneed about his knife testimony during the second trial.
In addition, hotel financial records had been destroyed before the retrial, making it difficult to refute a prosecution argument that Glossip had a motive to kill Van Treese because he had been embezzling from the hotel.
In a partial concurrence, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she would not have ordered the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set aside the conviction. Instead, she said, the Supreme Court should have corrected the Oklahoma court’s misstatement of Napue and remanded for further proceedings.
Barrett also said the majority wrongly relied on the prosecution’s notes to establish knowledge of false testimony.
“These notes are hardly clear, and there are competing explanations of what they mean,” Barrett wrote.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Justice Samuel Alito and partly joined by Barrett.
Thomas said the Supreme Court based its decision on “patently immaterial testimony” about Sneed’s medical condition. In addition, he said, the high court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case and wrongly ordered a new trial for Glossip.
“The court stretches the law at every turn to rule in his favor,” Thomas wrote.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not take part in the opinion.
Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, commented in a statement forwarded to the ABA Journal.
“We are thankful that a clear majority of the court supports long-standing precedent that prosecutors cannot hide critical evidence from defense lawyers and cannot stand by while their witnesses knowingly lie to the jury,” Knight said. “Today was a victory for justice and fairness in our judicial system. Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”
Hat tip to SCOTUSblog, which had early coverage of the decision and a later story.
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