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CNN
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In an unprecedented move, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond will recommend clemency for Richard Glossip, who is set to be executed on May 18 on a capital murder charge.
In a letter to the state’s Pardon and Parole Board – which will meet Wednesday – Drummond wrote, “For there to be public faith in our criminal justice system, it is incumbent on me as the State’s chief law enforcement officer to not ignore evidence and facts.”
The state’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board will decide the fate of Glossip, who has spent more than 24 years on death row and had three reprieves or stays of execution. In another unusual move, the attorney general will attend the hearing, according to his office.
“I am not aware of an Oklahoma Attorney General ever supporting a clemency application for a death row inmate,” Drummond wrote in the letter dated Monday. “In every previous case that has come before this board, the state has maintained full confidence in the integrity of the conviction. That is simply not the case in this matter due to the material evidence that was not disclosed to the jury.”
Glossip, a former motel manager, was convicted of murder for ordering the killing of his boss, Barry Van Treese, in 1997.
Another employee, then-19-year-old Justin Sneed, admitted to killing Van Treese with a baseball bat at the Oklahoma City motel. But in 1998, prosecutors told jurors Sneed killed Van Treese in a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Glossip. Sneed received a life in prison sentence in exchange for his testimony as the key witness.
Glossip, 60, has insisted he was not involved in the killing of Van Treese.
Drummond, a Republican who took office in January, also cited in his letter the results of a recent special investigation he commissioned, writing the findings were “troubling.”
Among the evidence included in the special counsel report was paperwork showing Sneed wanted to recant his testimony, writing to his attorney: “There are a lot of things right now that are eating at me. Somethings I need to clean up.”
The report concluded Glossip’s murder conviction should be vacated and that he be granted a new trial.
The attorney general wrote in his letter he believes the evidence shows Glossip is guilty of accessory after the fact and that he might be guilty of murder, but the current record doesn’t support that he is guilty of that crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a separate clemency request filing, Glossip’s defense team writes, “Richard Glossip is an innocent man who has been the victim of a massive breakdown in the justice system that would have been disturbing had it occurred even in a minor case … This Board should recommend that he be allowed to live.”
Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Kim Kardashian tweeted support for Glossip’s case, urging her followers to call the state’s Pardon and Parole Board and Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt. Kardashian is not working alongside Glossip’s defense team.
Three years after Glossip was first convicted of capital murder the decision was overturned because of ineffective defense counsel. He was again convicted in 2004 and again sentenced to death.
In 2015, Glossip was more than an hour past his execution time when then-Republican Gov. Mary Fallin issued a stay based on the constitutionality of the state’s execution protocols.
His execution date has been scheduled nine times.
On April 6, the attorney general asked the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate Glossip’s conviction and the case to be returned to the district court. But in a 5-0 decision last week, the judges denied all requests.
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