Earlier this month, Amherst College Professor Austin Sarat criticized Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for asking pointed questions about death row inmate Richard Glossip’s claim that his 2004 murder conviction should be overturned. After all, Oklahoma’s new attorney general, Gentner Drummond, supports Glossip’s contention that the trial prosecutors withheld evidence.
This popular narrative, however, is a manufactured and bogus claim. The prosecutors never withheld evidence. The case’s true lesson is about the emerging dangers of prosecutors confessing phantom “errors,” and sometimes even throwing cases on purpose.
In 1988 , an Oklahoma jury convicted Glossip of hiring his friend, Justin Sneed, to murder Barry Van Treese. Following a reversal for ineffective assistance of counsel, a jury again convicted Glossip in 2004. He was again sentenced to death.
After nearly two decades of appeals, Glossip now argues that the trial prosecutors hid evidence that Sneed was taking lithium for a mental disorder under the direction of a psychiatrist — evidence that his attorneys could have potentially used to impeach Sneed as a witness.