Supreme Court stays Richard Glossip's execution in Oklahoma

By Kate Scanlon, OSV News

WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- The U.S. Supreme Court May 5 temporarily blocked Oklahoma from executing death-row inmate Richard Glossip after the state's attorney general said Glossip should have a new trial.

Glossip was scheduled to be put to death May 18 despite arguments from Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond that he did not receive a fair trial. The now-blocked execution date was his ninth scheduled execution date, coming so close on prior occasions that he received three last meals, despite investigations resulting in doubts about his conviction.

The high court put the execution on hold so it may consider whether to take up the case. Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself. While no official reason was given by the court, Gorsuch previously dealt with the case when he was an appeals court judge.

In a statement, Drummond said he is "very grateful to the U.S. Supreme Court for their decision to grant a stay of execution."

"I will continue working to ensure justice prevails in this important case," he added.

Glossip, a former motel manager, has been on death row for more than 25 years, following his conviction for a murder-for-hire plot of his boss, Barry Alan Van Treese, at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City in 1997.

But Glossip's lawyers have argued that his conviction should be thrown out based on issues associated with key testimony in the case by Justin Sneed, who carried out the murder. Sneed testified that Glossip had hired him to kill Van Treese, but subsequent investigations have raised concerns that prosecutors had withheld information about Sneed and that he may have given false testimony at the trial.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, praised the stay in a statement.

"We give thanks to God that Richard Glossip has been granted a temporary stay of execution, and we pray the Supreme Court decides to formally take up his case," Vaillancourt Murphy said.

Vaillancourt Murphy said Glossip's story "has captured the nation's attention because it shines a spotlight on so much of the brokenness in our death penalty system."

"Oklahoma legislators and even the state attorney general have said that there isn't enough evidence to uphold Mr. Glossip's conviction and death sentence," she said. "Mr. Glossip never received a fair trial, and has maintained a strong innocence claim for all 25 years he's spent on death row. His case shows how arbitrarily death sentences are handed down, with the undisputed killer, Mr. Glossip's co-defendant, receiving a life sentence compared to Mr. Glossip's sentence of death."

The case, Vaillancourt Murphy said, also "lays bare the unbelievable cruelty of capital punishment."

"He has faced nine different execution dates over the years -- an unthinkable number," she said. "On three occasions, he has eaten his last meal, said his goodbyes, and come within hours of losing his life."

Meanwhile, she said, Glossip "should not be put to death -- not on May 18, not ever."

"It's important for all of us to learn from Mr. Glossip's story and see that no state should have the power to take the lives of its citizens," Vaillancourt Murphy said. "As we see in Mr. Glossip's case, the system is too broken, too cruel, too disrespectful of human dignity."

In his 2020 encyclical, "Fratelli Tutti," Pope Francis cited the writings of his predecessor St. John Paul II, arguing that the saint "stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice."

"There can be no stepping back from this position," Pope Francis wrote. "Today we state clearly that 'the death penalty is inadmissible' and the church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide."

In 2018, Pope Francis revised paragraph No. 2267 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church to reflect that position.

Vaillancourt Murphy said, "Our Church teaches that all human life is sacred, regardless of innocence or guilt."

"There is no place for the death penalty in that vision of a consistent ethic of life," she said.