00:00:06
Speaker 1: Since we first released Richard Glossop's story, there have been some incredible developments. In the months following that release. A bipartisan group of Oklahoma legislators commissioned an independent, third party review of the case, which began in February twenty twenty two, and upon that November's election of Oklahoma Attorney General Ganner Drummond, the report was released along with his announcement admitting prosecutorial errors and Brady violations and that he'd be seeking a new trial, not conceding Richard's innocence, but acknowledging that the trial was unfair. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Drummond's concession didn't provide statutory or legal grounds for relief, and over the last two years, that decision went all the way up to the US Supreme Court and were happy to report that they sided with Richard and Ganner Drummond, and his death sentence and conviction have finally been busied. Now. The majority decision was based on a Brady violation that doesn't directly speak to Richard's innocence, but the credibility of the state's only witness, Justin Snead, who testified falsely about his mental health treatment that went uncorrected by the state, but the credibility of sneed was critical to Richard's conviction. Richard will be removed from death row but remain in custody while awaiting a new trial in which two things are in his favor. The death penalty may not even be on the table. They may even be seeking a lesser charge depending on the remaining evidence. Additionally, the exculpatory material that has never been heard as a whole can now finally have its day in court. Here's Richard's incredible story in his own words. Richard Glossop was the manager of a cdmotel in Oklahoma City called the Best Budget in where he was responsible for large sums of cash belonging to its owner, Barry Van Treace, cash that he could have stolen at any time without violence. A traveling roofer and methadic named Justin Snead began staying at the motel in exchange for maintenance work while enjoying easy access to the drugs and prostitutes one might find at a seedy motel. In the early morning of January seventh, nineteen ninety seven, Stead and a girlfriend lured Barry Van Trees into Room one O two to rob him of the cash he was known to carry. Barry resisted and was bludgeoned and stabbed to death. His car was moved to a nearby lot. Later that morning, Snead off handedly told Richard that he had killed Barry, but after seeing that Barry's car was not at its usual spot, Richard dismissed what he thought was Sneed's usual drug adult ramblings. When the body was discovered, Richard told police about what Snead had said, causing them to focus on him. Even though Snead eventually confessed, the police steered him to implicate Richard as the mastermind of a murder for higher scheme for him his testimony, Snead escaped to death penalty in exchange from life without parole, swapping Richard into his place. The word of a meth head and alleged motive to steal cash was all.

00:03:11
Speaker 2: It took.

00:03:13
Speaker 1: Twenty four years, two trials, three stays of execution, a lethal injection drug scandal, and two Supreme Court cases later, Richard remains on death row in Oklahoma. This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flapp welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flamm that's me. And if I sound a little down today, it's because this case that you're going to hear about is one of the most troubling cases I've ever heard of in my now twenty ninth year of doing this type of work. With us. Today we have one of the respected, even revered criminal and civil defense attorneys, a man named Don Knight. Welcome to ronfel conviction.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jason. I appreciate that.

00:04:12
Speaker 1: And of course with us today calling in from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary where he is now in his twenty third year on death row, and that is of course, Richard Glossip.

00:04:26
Speaker 3: Hello, this is a collect call from for sure, an incarcerated individual at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. This call is not private. This call will be recorded and may be monitored. To consent to this recorded call, press one to disconnect. Thank you for using securists. You may start the conversation now.

00:04:47
Speaker 1: Hello, Richard. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but I'm happier here.

00:04:52
Speaker 3: Oh that's cool. That's cool. Twenty four years of this and it stead a long battle and it dis continues, but the good thing is I'm still.

00:05:00
Speaker 1: Here, Richard, if you don't mind take us back to your childhood. You said, sort of an unusual childhood and moved from Illinois to Oklahoma. But also you were one of a lot of children, right, You had a lot of brothers and sisters.

00:05:12
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I actually grew up in Geilsburg, Illinois. There was sixteen of us. It was eight boys and eight girls. You know, I grew up around a lot of addiction and stuff like that, and you know, I just didn't think I was going to get anywhere if I stayed there any longer. And I left home when I was fourteen and just made it on my own.

00:05:28
Speaker 1: You know, it's actually kind of a miracle that you survived. I mean, we could do a whole podcast about that alone. But your story hadn't even begun yet. So, okay, you were strange from your family for many years, working and getting by. But how'd you end up in Oklahoma where you got a job at the best budget in working for Barry Van Trees.

00:05:50
Speaker 3: My mom and dad retired and they decided to move out here to Oklahoma to be closer to my mom's family. And in nineteen ninety three, my dad's health was and my mom asked me if I would come out here and spend some time with my dad, And that's how I ended up with the best budget in.

00:06:08
Speaker 4: Barry Van Trees didn't just run the best budget in Oklahoma City, he also ran best budget in in Tulsa. These were really low rent motels. They were a cash business. There was a lot of drug activity and prostitution. Barry Van Trees would come by every couple of weeks to the Oklahoma City Best Budget in where he would pick up the cash from Rich. Rich would have sometimes up to thirty thousand dollars in receipts depending on how long it took for Van Trees to come by the motel. So Rich was constantly handling large amounts of money and there was never any question about whether Rich was stealing money. He was not stealing anything at all.

00:06:49
Speaker 1: Right, And if he wanted to steal the money, he could have done so almost any time without violence, and he could have skipped down. But he never did, and certainly he didn't do so by involving a meth head named Justin Sneak. Now, Justin had come through town with a roof and crew out of Texas, and while he was staying at the best budget in and he worked out a deal for a free room in exchange for maintenance and other work around the motel.

00:07:10
Speaker 3: Right, yes, I said, hey, I need you to go take care of this, or I need to take these people from tiles or whatever the case may be. He always did it. But as time went by, it was getting harder to find him, and I was going to let him go a couple of times, but you know, very like the fact that he was working Beru the very God didn't want me to let him go. But yeah, towards all this happening, in the end, it was like I hardly ever found him to do what he was supposed to do.

00:07:35
Speaker 1: Did you catch any signs that he was using math?

00:07:38
Speaker 3: Well, they were up all the time. So I did have a couple of family members that did it, and so learning from how they acted, you know, I could tell that, yeah, definitely they want something. Justin was a very odd guy. He would say things that would throw you off. He would say things that would just make him scratch your head and go, man, this guy is just like really weird.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: So were there any signs that he might have been robbing people to support his habit.

00:08:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I had one of the a guy named John Bieber's king to me and that he was missing a big jar of coins. When he said he thought Justin did it. I didn't believe him, But hindsight is twenty.

00:08:15
Speaker 1: Twenty, right, Yeah, it sure is. And at the time you and your girlfriend Deanna Wood were spending a lot of time together and most of it at the motel.

00:08:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I lived on the property. I lived behind the front desk in an apartment, so I'm always on the property other than like DN and i'd being able to go out and do something on our own. Why the desk pork was there?

00:08:34
Speaker 1: Now this brings us all the way up to January seventh, nineteen ninety seven. At six am, Justin Snead woke rich up and told him about a broken window and then kind of off handily says, oh, and by the way, I killed Barry. Now, Snead was known for saying weird stuff like that, and so when Richard looked at Barry's usual parking spot and didn't see Barry's car, he wrote it off as Sneed just being Sneid. Now, later on Barry Venturees's car was spotted in the Credit Union parking lot about fifty yards away from the Best Budget, but there was no sign of Barry, so this kicked off a search, and Rich was out shopping with his girlfriend Deiana and was called back to work around three pm. So at this point Rich is wondering do I tell the police about what sneeds said? But he Indiana decided against it because they didn't even know if Barry was dead or not. And finally at ten pm, Barry's body was discovered in room one oh two. He had been beaten with a baseball bat as well as having been stabbed with a blunt object.

00:09:34
Speaker 4: What happened here was that Barry van Trees stopped in in the evening of January sixth, took care of payroll and took care of everybody at the Best Budget in Oklahoma City before leaving and driving to Tulsa to take care of the payroll and the situation in Tulsa. He didn't get to Tulsa till around midnight or so and didn't.

00:09:58
Speaker 2: Stay there very long.

00:09:59
Speaker 4: Told the people in tolsonhen he left to tell his wife that he would be home in five and a half hours. Home was Lawton Oklahoma. It doesn't take five and a half hours to get to Lawton, so obviously, when he said that he had plans to stop, he stopped back the best budget in in Oklahoma City where he went to room one oh two, and that's where Justin Snead was waiting for him, or at least his girlfriend was waiting for him. Because we have found out that there was another person involved in this case. It wasn't Rich Glossop, but it was Justin Snead's girlfriend. The information that we have found is that it was simply a robbery attempt. These two meth fueled young people thought they could simply take the keys from Barry Van Trees and get the money out of his car without Van Trees knowing or objecting. I don't know what their plan was. We talked to one witness and she had a great statement. She said, when you've been on meth for twenty days in a row, the idea fairy appears. That looks like what happened here. These two people knew Barry Van Trees had a lot of money, and so we think that he was lured into room one h two by this girl. He knew he was coming back to that place and once there, confronted by Justin Snead. From the information we have that we have found from new witnesses, Sneid admitted that he was intending simply to take Van Trees's money and not kill him. But Van Trees fought back, and at the end of that fight, Barry van Trees was beaten to death. It wasn't just beaten to death, but there was also some stab wounds on his body from a very blunt object. And the blunt object appears to be a pocket knife that the police found in the motel room that had its tip broken off. So for this murder, Justin Snead and his girlfriend had two weapons, a baseball bat and a broken knife.

00:12:06
Speaker 2: It would be.

00:12:06
Speaker 1: Really low on anyone's choices of how to go right, sure.

00:12:11
Speaker 4: But also I think low on somebody's idea of how to kill somebody. I mean, if you're really planning to murder someone, you don't go with a dull knife in a baseball bat. You know. It sounds like a bad plan from mess fueled young people. And the aftermath was a continuation of that bad plan.

00:12:30
Speaker 2: The vehicle where.

00:12:31
Speaker 4: The money was was moved not more than fifty yards, not as if it was moved away so that it could be hidden. It was within plain view of the best budget in in a credit union, right next to the best budget in. It was found there the next morning by the security guard off duty sheriff's deputy working at the way Yoki credit Union found this vehicle sort of with one tire up on the curb, parked in a place that it shouldn't be parked, and that's what started the investigation on the seventh into Barryvan Teresa's death.

00:13:06
Speaker 1: So you might notice that rich hasn't been mentioned yet in the story of this crime, and that's because no one, not even the prosecution, ever claimed that he was even in the room when it happened. Rich was sleeping in the apartment behind the front desk with his girlfriend. That's undisputed. So why are we even having this conversation and how is rich on death row? Well, the lead investigators in this case, bimohen Cook, who did little to no investigation, basically didn't talk to anyone at the motel and instead focused on Richard early on for a few very ill conceived reasons.

00:13:46
Speaker 4: They focus on rich and I think the first reason is Rich's last name is Glossom. Rich's family was a known family with a criminal history in Oklahoma, So I think that's one thing. The second thing when they found Van Trees's body at ten o'clock and they said, you know, Rich, why shot You come in and sit and talk with us. And was at that point that Rich told them about that statement that Sneed made. That was the point I think when the police said, oh, well, he's hiding something. And I think that, in combination with Rich's last name, I think that's what made the police begin to think Rich Glossip had something to do.

00:14:25
Speaker 2: With this case.

00:14:27
Speaker 1: They decide to focus on this one statement that he omitted, right, which is, I don't know that I would have done anything differently myself.

00:14:38
Speaker 4: It's clearly his right to do so. I mean, he doesn't have to talk to the police. Nobody has to talk to the police.

00:14:44
Speaker 1: After this initial interview, on the seventh, Rich sells some personal items to raise money for a lawyer and talk to an attorney named David Mackenzie, who told him quite rightly to not speak with the police. But Rich did what a lot of innocent people do, right. He believed that just telling the truth, we'll set you free. So he talked to Bemo and Cook anyway.

00:15:05
Speaker 4: In the parking lot of Mackenzie's office, the police were waiting for Rich. Rather than tell them I can't talk to you because this lawyer just told me this is what I'm supposed to say, Rich says, okay, I'll talk to you, and Demo and Cook.

00:15:22
Speaker 2: To have a real bad history.

00:15:24
Speaker 4: Of how they do their interrogations, and when they set themselves upon Rich, they were going to do what they could do to try to get Rich to say things that they could say were inconsistent, and then they would start driving that home to try to get him to confess to this crime.

00:15:43
Speaker 1: But he never does confess to the crime. However, they start trying to tell him that he said things in his initial interview on the seventh that he did not. They tried to catch him in lies with lies of their own, and it's clear that they have their sites set on him. Meanwhile, Snead took off on the afternoon of the seventh, before Barry's body was even found. He went off working with the roofing crew that he came into town with from Texas, trying to make himself scarce.

00:16:12
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, he left.

00:16:13
Speaker 4: New motel sometime after three o'clock, just took a skateboard and took off again. It was it's something that the prosecutor in both trials tried to paint that he was totally dependent on Glossop for everything because he had no way of making any money, which was just wrong. I mean, first off, he was stealing the place blind, he was breaking into motel rooms, he was breaking into cars, he was doing everything he could do to get money for his drug habit. But when he left the motel that.

00:16:42
Speaker 2: Day, he skateboarded over to where the people who he.

00:16:46
Speaker 4: Used to work for doing roofing were and he joined the roofing crew again. So he had the opportunity at any point in time to go make more money doing his roofing work than he ever made it the best budget in and he did that on that day. They didn't catch Snead until the fourteenth of January. It was the owner of the roofing company who seeing the news accounts of what had happened and seeing Sneed's picture on the news, that said to Sneid, I think you need to turn yourself in. So he's the one that called the police and that's when they interrogated Snead.

00:17:21
Speaker 1: Right, and in Sneed's interrogation it's clear that Rich is their main target. So they start working Snead over to both admit to the crime and implicate Rich in some way.

00:17:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was not a situation where they were saying, okay, justin, we've caught you, why don't you tell us what happened. Instead, they go through this long prelude telling him what happened, telling him what they know, telling him that they know that somebody else was involved, and they don't want him to hang alone. And in Sneed's first is like, I don't even know what to say. I don't know what to tell you, as if he didn't have anything to do with it. And then they brought Rich's name into it. We think Rich had something to do with it. You know, he's under arrest. So Snead never said anything about Glossop at all. That came from the police, and then they began to work with Sneid from there until they finally got.

00:18:08
Speaker 2: This sort of crazy idea about.

00:18:10
Speaker 4: Rich wanting to steal the money, kill Van Trees and split the money with Snead, and somehow or another they would run the motels some crazy story that came out, which I think you would probably expect from somebody who's high on.

00:18:23
Speaker 1: Math, right, and who's being fed information by police who are exactly not interested in the truth here, so.

00:18:32
Speaker 4: Right, because if they had been interested in the truth, they simply would have said, why don't you tell us what happened? Tell us everything that you know.

00:18:38
Speaker 1: And so Snead confesses to the murder. But what's clear from his interrogation is that he was steered to drag Rich into it as the mastermind of a murder for higher plot, and then Snead uses this made up scenario to save himself, making a deal for a life without parole instead of the death held.

00:18:57
Speaker 4: We have a witness who says he talked to Sneed that year while he was in jail with Sneed, and as Sneed said, I had two main goals. One I didn't want the death penalty and two I didn't want my girlfriend to get caught. Sneed got both of what he wanted at Rich's expense.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss Rifkin, Porton and Garrison, a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal justice area.

00:19:54
Speaker 3: Detective Demo in the document series that Was Done changed what he testified at two trials, and it was a murder for hire. He gives the statement in our docu series where he says, Oh, I think it was a robbery went bad. That's the original story that Justin gave him, that it was a robbery went bad, and they knew that that's what it was, but they needed it to be more. In my opinion, you know, prosecutors and stuff need these notches in their belt so bad so they can further their career.

00:20:22
Speaker 2: And it doesn't matter.

00:20:23
Speaker 3: Who they get that notch from, as long as they get it. My first judge, Judge Johnson, even looked at the prosecutor and said, I don't understand where this is the murder case, and she convinced the judge will give me some time. And that's the only reason the judge even allowed it to go forward, because he was convinced by a prosecutor to let her build a case.

00:20:47
Speaker 1: Okay, So don There is a villain in this story, of course. I'm talking about then district's attorney, Bob Macy, who was nicknamed the Angel of Death, and he seemed to get off on winning death penalty cases, innocent, guilty, whatever. He played dress up like a cowboy, although he was not a cowboy. Can you tell us about this awful character.

00:21:16
Speaker 4: Bob Macy's just one of a handful of prosecuting attorneys in the country that really drives the death penalty in this country. There are only a handful of places where most of the death penalty verdicts come from, or at least that has been the way in the past. New Orleans there was certainly one in Oklahoma City. And these prosecutors they derive their power, i think, and their political base from seeking and getting the death penalty. They look at that as being tough on crime, and Bob Macy certainly forged his legacy with all of that in mind. I think the thing that happens in these places is it can't just be one person that does this, but it becomes a culture. He was in power in Oklahoma City for a long time. A lot of his prosecutors went on to become judges. So now you've got not just the prosecuting attorney's office, but they're on the bench as well. So they've got judges, prosecutors, forensic people, you've got police, and you've got jurors who are just ready to go on these death penalty cases. And they begin to sort of cow the defense bar into either going along and getting their clients some kind of plea or they lose at trial, and these death verdicts result. It becomes a cultural situation where you have no one fighting anymore for the defendant and to sort of get on the train or get run over by the trained mentality takes over.

00:22:51
Speaker 1: So Rich is charged with capital murder, which the fact that he's being tried for his life or not having killed anyone is insane in and of its but that's a totally another story. And so a trial sneed testified that Rich was the mastermind behind this murder for higher plot, thereby receiving the direct benefit of not being sent to death row himself. I feel like this should have been easy to be.

00:23:17
Speaker 4: So Rich had a terrible lawyer, guy named Wayne Farnarat. In the first trial, he never I don't even know if he ever tried.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: A case before.

00:23:25
Speaker 4: He was completely incompetent and put on no witnesses, didn't know how to cross examine anybody. Basically, the case went exactly as the prosecutors wanted it to go, and Rich was sentenced to death. Kaunerot had no idea how to do a penalty phase in a death case. He didn't do any investigation. I mean, Rich was a guy without a criminal history at all. I mean, if you're talking about the death penalty in the United States, you're supposedly talking about the worst of the worst. Well, Rich had never committed a crime before. How could he possibly be the worst of the worst? Is this crime bad?

00:23:59
Speaker 2: Yes?

00:23:59
Speaker 4: Is it the worst crime ever? No, it's not the worst crime ever. So he doesn't fit that category at all. And yet, because of the way things were in Oklahoma at the time, they were able to get a conviction and a death sentence.

00:24:13
Speaker 1: Right So was Rich convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of a murderous meth head or was there some sort of other evidence offered a trial?

00:24:22
Speaker 4: I would answer the question in both ways. Yes, no question. It was really all about what Snead said, and he said very many different things at different times. He initially told the police that Glossip told him to kill Van Trees and rob him of somewhere around five thousand dollars and they would split it. But by the time the first trial rolled around, Snead added things like Rich told me to go buy some muriatic acid because we were going to melt the body and I wasn't able to do that. So Sneed had a variety of story worries that ultimately came out that just simply shows that he was not telling the truth. He was never consistent with anything that he said, and the prosecutor had to sort of cobble together what the Court of Appeals would later call corroborating evidence that was really really weak from a standpoint of corroborating evidence. They had put together a spreadsheet and an allegation that Rich was stealing money, that somehow or another, the Van Trees family knew he was stealing money and that they were about to fire him, and Rich knew he was about to be fired, and so that formed the motive for Rich to do this killing. There is no real evidence of that. We took a look at that spreadsheet, which, by the way, no one did until we got involved in this case. We have two forensic accountants who looked at it and they said, the idea that Rich was stealing money based upon the information that we see is crazy.

00:25:54
Speaker 1: So after his first conviction, Rich took his case to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who called the evidence against him extremely weak.

00:26:04
Speaker 4: And the Oklahoma Quarter Criminal Appeals looked at the job that Wayne Farnerott did and said this can't be okay, and in a unanimous verdict which never happened undirect appeal threw it back and said he gets a new trial.

00:26:18
Speaker 1: Right. So the second trial rolls around and Oklahoma is not done with their dirty tricks. And you know what I'm talking about the way that they managed to remove an attorney who was prepared to probably win this case and right this wrong.

00:26:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, this lawyer was the appellate lawyer for Rich, a guy named Lynn Birch, did a great job getting the case tossed out on appeal, decided to keep it, and was working the case leading up to the second trial when he made an error. And that is going to see Justin Snead. The night before the trial began. They think Lynn Birch was looking to see if there was some way that Sneed would simply come clean and tell the truth. The air that Lynn Birch made was not taking an investigator with him, not taking a third party, because when he showed up in court the next morning.

00:27:10
Speaker 2: The prosecutor said, Judge, we've.

00:27:12
Speaker 4: Got a problem. Lynn Birch was threatening our witness and was harassing Justin Snead. Rather than fight that, which I think Burch should have done, he should have said, I didn't do anything like that. I never said anything wrong. Let me tell you what I told him. Put me on the witness stand, put Sneed on the witness stand, let's have it out. Birch simply said, you know, okay, you know I probably screwed up in there, and he left the case the morning of trial, which caused a six month extension. But with Birch gone, it left it in the hands of two lawyers who were not prepared for the trial, and he did very little in the lead up to the next trial. They did no investigation, they put on no witnesses, their cross examinations were horrible. They allowed the prosecution to run wild with leading questions. Basically, the kids were greased and the prosecution just got their case through like they wanted.

00:28:05
Speaker 3: In the second trial, it was really strange because the prosecutor came into the courtroom, she looked at the jury and she goes, I have no evidence against Richard clad just justin sneath. So now it becomes who you're going to believe. Every witness had new testimony. Who when they were asked, oh, you didn't remember it the day it happened, but you remember it seven years later, And they would sit there and say, the prosecutor helped us remember.

00:28:32
Speaker 1: As a result, the results were predictable, which is that in August two thousand and four, another Oklahoma jury found Richard guilty and Richard gets sentenced to death again.

00:28:43
Speaker 3: It's strange how you go through your whole life doing what's right, thinking that you know, if you tell the truth, then everything's going to be okay. And then you're standing there when somebody says, you know, we find you guilty of murder and you had nothing to do with this prime and your your mouth this balls opening. This feeling comes over you like, how can this possibly be happening to me? This doesn't make sense. It's one of the strangest feelings that's really hard to put into work. But it's just like every part of you just goes now. It's like you're just in shock, and you don't know, you don't even have a response to it. You just stand there and you just like you just can't even believe it. It's one of the most overwhelming things I've ever had to face, you know, when I walked in. They take you to the main gate up there, and they put you in this little shock. They wait to get people to take you down to agna where you're supposed to go, and I got to be honest with you, and they open that door, like your whole disappears almost immediately because it's so gloomy and so cold. In all honesty, it felt like death. It just felt like you were surrounded by death.

00:30:13
Speaker 2: Rich.

00:30:13
Speaker 1: I want you to know that there are a lot of good people who are out here pulling for you more than you even know. And so you ended up exhausting all of your appeals with substandard representation who never did any of the necessary investigation into your case, so predictably you had more of the same results, which brings us to your clemency proceedings back in twenty fourteen.

00:30:36
Speaker 3: Which turned out to be just as big of a fiasco as my trials did.

00:30:41
Speaker 2: Now.

00:30:41
Speaker 3: I was turned down for Clymothy, and the reason being is not only was there a prosecutor from my case on the board, Bob Macy's Sun was as well, and when we brought to their attentions after him, I was denied Clymathy. The clemency board claimed that they had no idea that she had been as here on my case?

00:31:01
Speaker 1: Did she not remember?

00:31:03
Speaker 3: She knew me really well?

00:31:04
Speaker 1: And Bob Macy Sun is there as well.

00:31:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe some still has something to do with the billboard today.

00:31:11
Speaker 1: I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that is just ridiculous.

00:31:15
Speaker 3: I know, why don't we have anybody that had anything to do about me or his office on a parole board that deals with that throw inmids.

00:31:25
Speaker 1: So your clemency was denied, but you didn't take that.

00:31:28
Speaker 3: Sitting down in o Sober twenty fourteen, I started this campaign. I was writing letters on hundreds of letters to everybody. I wrote letters to John McCain, who answered me, by the way, who I became friends with, and he introduced my case to people here in Oklahoma like Tom Koger and others who sit up for me back then.

00:31:48
Speaker 1: So, while Richard was fighting for his life, other significant events were afoot concerning the way in which the state planned to kill him and others. Lethal injection Lethal injection as a method of state sanction murder, consists of three drugs. A sedative, which depresses the nervous system and renders a person unconscious, next a paralytic, which provides skeletal and muscular relaxation as well as depresses respiration, and finally a potassium solution which causes cardiac arrest. The most common lethal injection drug combination is for the sedative sodium theopental or pentobarbitol, then pancuronium bromide as the paralytic, and finally potassium chloride, which causes the heart attack. In twenty eleven, some American pharma companies halted production of sodium theopental, and the European Union enacted a torture regulation that banned the export of drugs for the use of lethal injections, starting with sodium theopental and later pentobarbitol. So by twenty fourteen, states were experiencing a shortage of the necessary drugs, which affected their ability to carry out death sentences according to protocol, Oklahoma began looking for alternatives like medazolin in place of sodium theopental. Following this change, the forty three minute long botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April twenty ninth, twenty fourteen. Another death row inmate, Charles Warner, awaited the same fate that night, just steps away from the death chamber, but as a result of the horror of Lockett's execution, Warners was delayed. After an investigation, Oklahoma blamed an inability to find Lockett's veins as the cause of the botched execution and decided to continue with the same drug protocol involving medazlam as a sedative, prompting Richard, Charles Warner, and nineteen others to sue Oklahoma, and eventually they took the case all the way to the Supreme Court the United States. While this was being litigated, Richard's clemency was denied and his campaign from death row was just beginning. He got in touch with renowned death penalty abolitionist sister Helen Prejhn with his first execution date and Warner's loom in January twenty fifteen.

00:34:03
Speaker 4: So in late twenty fourteen, he calls sister Helen, or he sends her a letter and says, hey, sister Helen, you know, will you be with me when they kill me? And she looks into the case a little bit and then she calls me. And I got together with another lawyer named Mark Olive who does a lot of state habeas work. And by now we're out of options. I mean there's no court appearances left, clemency has been done. Basically, we're out of options. At this point in time, Rich comes up for an execution date.

00:34:34
Speaker 1: So Oklahoma sets the date for January twenty nine, twenty fifteen. And a lot of people don't know this, but in Oklahoma and other states, a period of real psychological torture begins prior to execution.

00:34:47
Speaker 3: Now, I was taken upstairs. They take you up thirty five days prior to your execution. You have to sit in this room that is so brightly lit for twenty four hours a day. Lights never go out so bright that I can see a tiny ant walking across a dark and gray floor. That's how bright that rumor is. You're on camera twenty four to seven, and you have a guard sitting outside your door twenty four seven. You can't cover your head. You can't do any of that. This is what people have to endure in Oklahoma before they're executed.

00:35:22
Speaker 1: While he and war are away to death. The suit continued in litigation, and on January thirteenth, twenty fifteen, the group of condemned prisoner's petition the US Supreme Court for a writ of certieri and stays of their executions, as evidenced by other botched executions in Ohio and Arizona. The petitioners argued that the medazolam would not numb the pain that would be caused by the other two drugs, so on January fifteenth, the lead petitioner, Charles Warner, was denied a stay and executed later that day over the descent of four justices, leaving Richard as the next in line.

00:35:56
Speaker 3: Sister Helen and a bunch of people were there visiting me. It was the day before excuded. It was funny because Sister Helen came like I seen her head like moving up and down in the crowd, and she gave me the phone and it was the Vatican, and I got talked to the Vatican that day and as soon as I got done. The guards ran everybody out of there to hey, you got an attorney call. So they set me down and gave me the phone, and my attorney said, the Supreme Court just gave you a study, and you are now born to Supreme Court against lethal ingestion.

00:36:26
Speaker 4: Sister Helen was able to mobilize a lot of people and put some petitions together, and the Supreme Court, while they didn't grant a stay for Charles Warner, based on basically the same information on the lethal injection drug, granted rich a stay, and so he got to stay about twenty four hours in advance of his first execution date to have his case Glossop p Gross go before the United States Supreme.

00:36:52
Speaker 1: Court, And so there was a whole place on all executions in Oklahoma until a ruling was made on June twenty ninth, twenty fifteen, in the last of the Supreme Court's term. They ruled five to four against Richard and the condemned prisoners, allowing me dazlam as the sedative, and Richard's execution date was set for September fifteenth, twenty fifteen, so thirty five days prior the death ritual began again.

00:37:17
Speaker 4: They actually move you to a cell that's about four cells away from the actual death chamber, and you're in that cell for a few days, and then they bring you to the third cell, one closer to the death chamber, and they leave you there for a few days, and then they bring you to the second cell, one more step closer to the death chamber, and then they move you to the cell next to the death chamber. And if that's not torture in and of itself, by the time you get to that final thing, you can see the people coming and going from the death chamber. You know what's happening, you know what they're preparing, you know what they're going to do. And Rich was subject to that for a long period of time because we ended up with a stay of execution September fifteenth. He had already been subjected to that, he'd already been brought to that final place. It was two hours in advance of the execution that hit that the second execution was stopped and then they we.

00:38:10
Speaker 2: Had a two weeks stay so that Rich.

00:38:12
Speaker 4: Was moved once again, just back to where he had been and to start that whole process over again. So Rich was subjected to this incredible emotional torture. In advance of the third execution date, which was set for September thirtieth of twenty fifteen.

00:38:28
Speaker 3: I was in a lit room for fifty four straight days, no darkness whatsoever. It's crazy what they put you through. They do mock executions in front of you. And I'm not trying to compare Oklahoma to ISIS, but it's no different than what ISIS does to people. When they pull somebody out, they put a sword to their neck. They actually they're going to chop their head off them and they stop and they say, oh, we're going to wait for another day. Put them back in itself, you know. I mean, they put the guy back in and bring him out the next day and keep doing this. I mean, where do we draw the line at torture, because this is torture. My first date, I got to stay the day before my execution. The second time I got to stay hours before my execution. The third time I got to stay after my execution was supposed to have taken place.

00:39:24
Speaker 1: And these days came with a lot of work. Don So for the second one. On September fifteenth, few filed motions presenting new evidence, including a July ninety seven psyche evaluation showing Sneed was aware of the charges against him and that he made no mention of Richard, as well as the numerous people Sneed confessed to along the way that he had acted alone and saved his own hide by implicating Richard. But despite all of that, on September twenty eighth, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted three to two to proceed with the execution, and the Supreme Court also deny to stay. Then the governor granted a stay on the thirtieth, citing that Oklahoma, contrary to lethal injection drug protocol, had received potassium acetate, a freaking food preservative, instead of potassium chloride for the cardiac arrest inducing portion of the cocktail. So then Richard got a thirty seven day stay to November sixth, twenty fifteen.

00:40:21
Speaker 3: And it was interesting when that happened because sister Hillm was outside the prison and she was saying, it's a Richard gloss of preservative, because the drug they were going to use was actually used as a preservative, you know. But I think the scariest thing about that time was when the governor at the time told the first second in command, who was there google it when we'd gotten to a point in a society where we google how to execute people? Or is it okay to certain drugs that execute people? That should just end the destiny by itself.

00:40:58
Speaker 1: It makes no sense to me at all that we entrust so many deeply flawed humans with the machinery of death, But nevertheless, here we are. So on October first, twenty fifteen, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Prewitt asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to issue an indepfinite stay of all executions, citing the acquisition of the wrong drugs. Then, on October eighth, it was revealed that Charles Warner had been killed using potassium acetate, the food preservative, contrary to protocol DAG. Prewitt then ordered a multi county grand jury investigation, and this put a hold on executions in Oklahoma. And with this moratorium, the famous documentarian Joe Burlinger, who made Paradise Lost about the West Memphis Three, got involved to help uncover more evidence and make the incredibly powerful docuseries Killing Richard Glossip that we've been referencing.

00:42:01
Speaker 5: I'm Joe Berlinger, and I guess they've been talking about my docuseries killing Richard Glossop. I mean, this case, to me is the very definition of why there should be no death penalty. It just demonstrates how easily innocent people can be put to death. This was a spontaneous act of a opportunistic robbery that went awry, and all the evidence suggests that, and no evidence points to Richard Glossop, even the fact that when they found money on each of them, the fact that there was blood on the two thousand dollars that Sneed had in his pocket and Richard's money had no blood on it. Here, you have a murder for higher plot. And yet he himself, justin Snead says in his original statement, and he said it again to me when I interviewed him, that he never really intended to kill Barry Bantrees. He just was hoping to kind of immobilize him. Well, then, how is it a murder for higher plot? I mean, that very basic fact makes it impossible to believe his story.

00:43:04
Speaker 1: So the one thing that Sneed has been consistent about is that he never meant to kill Barry Van Tries, So, through his own repeated admissions, he denies Rich's involvement rich was supposed to have ordered him, remember, according to the state, to rob and kill Barry. But if he never intended to kill Barry, then he could not have been operating under Rich's authority. Therefore there was no murder for higher plot. Richard could never have been involved. I mean, which, justin Snead, are we supposed to believe the Sneed who says Richard told me to do it, so I had to do it, or the Sneed who never intended to kill Barry Van tries despite the alleged quote unquote orders of Richard classip he can't be both. Not that any of this matters to our legal processes, as actual innocence does not entitle one to relief according to the United States Supreme Court. So don where do we stand now?

00:44:08
Speaker 4: So we've got several new witnesses, people that nobody has ever heard. We know the story now we heard it from Sneed's mouth through at least two or three witnesses. We know what happened in this case, and we know that rich didn't have anything to do with this murder at all. And so we are ready to go to the Pardon and Parole Board with this new information. We would go to court, but we've already been to court in twenty fifteen. We lost there. There are procedural bars that are in place to keep us from even getting a chance to fairly litigate this innocence again. So right now the state of Oklahoma is set to once again begin the process of killing people. There is an end to the current lawsuit that's going on with Rich's name on it.

00:44:58
Speaker 2: Again.

00:44:58
Speaker 4: It's the successor of a glass be gross And once the court makes a ruling on the protocol that they know how to kill somebody with whatever drug they use, they're going to go ahead and begin to set dates once again. And we don't know if Rich will be first. He doesn't have to be first, but he was last up. It's entirely possible that he will be the first one set for execution, and that could take place sometime in the late summer.

00:45:24
Speaker 3: The worst case scenario, they could set a date on July first.

00:45:31
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say anymore. His fate has essentially been determined, barring action from the parle board and the executive branch, but his legal fate has been sealed because of technical considerations.

00:45:46
Speaker 4: In twenty fifteen, we had two judges who based upon the evidence we had then, which is a shadow of the evidence that we have now at that point in time, two judges said we want to give this guy hearing on his innocence claim, but three judges said we won't simply because of finality of judgment. That was their whole point. That's the Court's point is we can't let this go on forever. We're going to stop it. Like you said, innocence doesn't matter.

00:46:13
Speaker 2: That's the legal posture that we face today.

00:46:18
Speaker 1: Right that awful decision was Herrera versus Collins in nineteen ninety three, where the Supreme Court said what I just said, evidence of innocence is not enough to stop the wheels of justice from turning and in this case, turning right into a state sponsored murder of an innocent man named Richard Class.

00:46:34
Speaker 3: I'm asking everybody to go to say Richard Blosso dot com, to sign the petitions that we have, but to also participate in everything that we're doing to try to bring justice reforms so that we can prevent this from happening to other people. This isn't always about one person, and that's what I've always tried to make clear.

00:46:51
Speaker 2: The people.

00:46:52
Speaker 3: This is about many innocent people who are facing what I'm facing, and I don't want them to face it. I don't want them to go through what I went through. We got to stand up as a society. We have to stand up as some people. We have to stand up and say, hey, we're not going to tolerate this anymore. We gotta change this. We got to prevent in executed, and we got to open people's eyes to why this is such a bornbaric practice and why it should no longer take place.

00:47:19
Speaker 1: Go to save Richard glossip dot com. We'll also have links in the bio for action steps that you can take, and you know, with that, I want to turn it over to YouTube. Guys, thank you for being here with us today and spreading the word about this awful injustice. And well, now we turn to what we call closing arguments. This is a section of the show where I turned my microphone off, take back of my chair, leave my headphones on, close my eyes, and just listen to whatever you have to say that we may have left out, or anything you want to share with our audience. So, Richard, we're going to save you for last, and let don go first. And again, Richard, I just want you to know we're all out here thinking about you. So many people are praying for you, and we hope to see you free before too long. Over to you, Don.

00:48:16
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, Jason. I really appreciate you taking the time to shine a light on this terrible case and this terrible injustice that we are hoping to stop with a hearing.

00:48:27
Speaker 2: Later this year.

00:48:28
Speaker 4: Richard Glossop a simple guy who was in love with a young woman. Richard loved his job at the best budget in loved Barry Van Trees. They had a great relationship. Rich never took any money from Barry van Trees, and Verry respected Rich. And a terrible murder took place that rich did not have anything at all to do with, and the wheels of justice began to turn in Oklahoma City the way that they did back in those days with Bob Macy, and those wheels just simply ran over rich Blossop. He was a victim of very very poor lawyering, of over aggressive police work, of over aggressive prosecutors who only cared about one thing, and that was getting a conviction and getting a death sentence. Because that was the culture of Oklahoma City. At the time, there was a series of three letters to the current District Attorney, David Prater. We have requested a lot of substantive information that we believe would prove that rich Glossop had nothing to do with this, and we have received no answers. We continue to wait for David Prater. So at this point in time, we're preparing for a clemency hearing that we know will take place later this year, and we are hoping that people will go to say Richard Glossop dot com. You can find a petition there to the governor and the Partner Parole Board, letting those people know that this is wrong, what's happening, and that the only way to write it is to grant rich clemency and allow us to get back into court again.

00:50:02
Speaker 2: What were you, Rich?

00:50:04
Speaker 3: You know, when I walked in and I took that first step on agent on death row, I said that I have two choices. I can make peace with death or I can let it destroy me. And so I made peace with death right then and there, and I just said, I'm not going to let it destroy me. I'm going to be the same person I was and I am to this day. I sing in my cell out loud, I laughed. I dance around and guards are always freaking out because I'm the way that I am. And I told them, I said, you know, I was a happy guy my whole life, and I'm not going to let this change who I am because we only have one life to live and it's a gift. And I'm going to celebrate life no matter where the hell I'm at, even in this hole, I'm going to celebrate life. I've heard so many stories about people who lost it down on atunit, and I've seen it for myself. I've witnessed it myself, and there are a lot of people with serious mental health issues because you're isolated for years and years and years, and it's yeah, it's hard. And thankfully, you know, I had my art. I've written songs. I've written so many poems. I've written a book which I can't wait to get get out there to people because it's a book of hope. It's a book of showing people that you do have more strengthen you know, and you can take your courage and you can move forward and you can have hope at the end. And I describe the three execution attempt I describe everything because I want people to know, no matter how bad things get, there is always something good that will come from the worst situations you face in life. You just got to fight for it and you've got to make sure it happens. So it's we're in a fight. We're in a big fight with legislators and people in the state of Oklahoma who are standing up saying we need to prevent this, and hopefully we can succeed because I do have a lot more like lift and I do have a lot more battle to raise again, the destinility. Look at what's happening here in Oklahoma, one of the biggest Republican states in the country, and you have Republicans now standing up saying we're not going to tolerate this anymore. We're not going to kill innocent people. I'm proud of Legislator mcdogle and Legislator Humphrey, and you know, even the local businessman justin Jackson. I'm really proud of these people because they're diehard conservative and yet they're standing up for innocence because it's not a left thing and it's not a right thing. It's an innocent thing. And we've got to stop using politics in justice reform. We all want the right things. If we don't, then you shouldn't be an office. We all want fair, we all want justice, and that's why I've always said that take the blindfold off of Lady Justice, because that's one of the days that's always weirded me out over the years, because you're saying, well, she's bye sold fold us so she can be fair. How can you be fair if you can't see what's going on. So take the by and hold off the letters, see what's going on, and she'll see how fair justice really is in that country.

00:53:06
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Please support your local innocence projects and go to the link in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn and Kevin Warnis. The music on the show, as always, is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company. Number one,