Barry Van Treese, a Tulsa motel owner, was brutally beaten to death with a baseball bat in a motel room. His killer, Justin Sneed, was sentenced to life imprisonment. The prosecutor dropped the death penalty against Sneed in exchange for his testimony that Richard Glossip hired him to kill Van Treese. Glossip, even though he didn’t kill Van Treese, and denies having anything to do with his murder, was sentenced to death for instigating the murder. This is one of those cases where an experienced and successful criminal defense attorney could have completely changed the outcome. Oklahoma plans to execute him on January 29. The case is in the news today because of the controversy over execution drugs used by Oklahoma and several other states.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/15/us/oklahoma-resumes-executions/index.html
But I’m writing about it from a different angle — the fact Glossip claims he’s innocent, the state’s thin case against him, and whether that’s good enough to execute someone. I won’t address whether he deserves to die if he’s guilty; I’m simply concerned about the risk of executing innocent people when evidentiary standards are weak.
There’s no doubt the criminal justice system is flawed. Judging by how many inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence, it’s apparent some juries aren’t finding a reasonable doubt when they should. Appeals are supposed to be a safeguard against flawed jury decisions, but this part of the system doesn’t seem to work very well, either.
The most troubling aspect of this case is where prosecutors told Mr. Sneed, in effect, that “we won’t execute you for this crime if you tell a jury that Mr. Glossip put you up to it, so we can execute him.” What are the chances anyone in that position won’t say whatever he thinks the prosecutor wants him to say, whether it’s true or not? As a juror, would you the testimony of such a witness as sufficient to execute someone? Or would you, even if you thought Glossip was guilty, harbor some residual doubt?
The state’s view of the case is this was a tawdry murder of a motel owner by employees who lived on the premises and were about to be evicted because the manager, Glossip, was caught skimming receipts and offered Sneed, the maintenance man, a cash payment to get rid of Van Treese. You can read the factual details here:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ok-court-of-criminal-appeals/1466730.html
As the prosecutor sees it, Glossip knew the victim, had a motive to kill him, and the killer testified that Glossip hatched the plan and paid him to carry it out. He completed the picture by drawing Glossip as the clever mastermind and Sneed as an easily-manipulated low-IQ patsy. This lurid tale depends mostly on Sneed’s say-so. It should be noted the plot, if there was one, made no provision for disposing of the body, nor did Glossip have the money to pay Sneed the $10,000 he allegedly promised him. According to the state, Glossip handed Sneed a $100 bill, and on that inducement, Sneed killed Van Treese.
No direct evidence ties Glossip to Sneed’s murder of Van Treese. The state depended for corroboration of Sneed’s tale of a plot on two things: First, Glossip told the housekeepers that day not to clean the first rooms, where Van Treese’s body (and a great deal of blood and gore) was located. Second, police found cash apparently stolen from Van Treese in the possession of both men. It amounted to around $6,000, and apparently was business receipts. The inference is they found it after Van Treese was dead and Glossip gave some of it to Sneed as payment for killing Van Treese.
I concede that Glossip doesn’t look very innocent, and you can argue the jury reached a logical verdict. But before we agree to let Oklahoma pump Drano into Glossip, or whatever chemical substance that Oklahoma uses to do away with people nowadays, let’s read what Glossip says about all this:
“My name is Richard E. Glossip and on November 20th of this year the State of Oklahoma is going to kill me. And they will be killing an innocent man. I’m coming to you today to ask if you can help to get my story out. In 1998 I was convicted of a crime I did not commit. Until this happened to me, I had never been in trouble with the law. I have led an honest life. I was convicted solely on the testimony of the confessed killer (Justin Sneed). There has never been any evidence against me, physical or otherwise. I was dragged into this so Mr. Sneed could get a deal from the District Attorney to save his own life. When Mr. Sneed was arrested and interviewed by detectives he continually said I had no involvement in this. After going off camera for 45 minutes, he then comes back saying I told him to do it (which is not true). After being convicted and sent to Death Row for 2 years my case was overturned by the Courts and sent back for a new trial (in the opinion the judges gave they said I have told the same story from the beginning, which is the truth). After 3 more years in the County Jail, a date for a second trial was set. My attorneys thought that they were going to drop this to, if anything, accessory after the fact. That didn’t happen. I was convicted again, and again it was based on the testimony of Justin Sneed, who had told my attorneys before the trial that he wasn’t planning on testifying against me. But the DA’s office threatened him and said they would take his deal away and seek the death penalty on him if he didn’t testify. So he testified, and even had a new story to add to the ones he had already given. There were many problems with the trial, from outbursts in front of the jury, poster boards with partial statements on them hung all over the court room in constant view of the jury, to claiming evidence existed when it didn’t. I never had a chance at a fair trial. If you don’t have money and can’t afford a good attorney you don’t stand a chance. But even after all that I have never given up hope. My first attorney said he had a deal with the judge that would save me from the death penalty, but I would have to confess to the crime. I could not do that, because I didn’t commit the crime, and I would be lying. The Appeals Court turned me down, after a split decision, because they said that while the problems with the trial were real, they were not bad enough. I am hoping you will help bring my story to light not only for me but for other people as well who could end up in the same situation I’m in. It’s time to stop executing innocent people.”
http://www.richardeglossip.com/introductory-letter.html
Okay, so now you know his side; and, well, as you know they all say they’re innocent — ask the prisoners and they’ll assure you there isn’t one guilty person in our prisons. Not one. Obviously, we won’t take their word for it; and if we’re going to second-guess juries, then we need some sort of objective standard. Now let’s examine what standards the Oklahoma appellate courts use to determine whether a jury may have convicted and condemned an innocent person in error:
“Glossip claims that the State presented insufficient evidence to convict him of first degree murder. Glossip claims that Justin Sneed’s testimony was not sufficiently corroborated. … When the sufficiency of evidence is challenged on appeal, this Court will determine, whether, after reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. … [F]or Glosssip’s conviction to stand Sneed’s testimony must be corroborated by some other evidence tending to connect Glossip with the commission of the crime. … Even entirely circumstantial evidence may be sufficient to corroborate an accomplice’s testimony. … Even slight evidence is sufficient for corroboration, but it must do more than raise a suspicion of guilt.”
Does that seem fair to you? It doesn’t to me, either, at least not when a life is at stake. As a judge, I maybe could sign off on locking someone up for a few years under this procedure, but I’m troubled by the idea of executing someone without requiring more certainty and less chance of error than you get with this approach. If making the rules were up to me, I’d never allow prosecutors to use the death penalty as leverage to elicit testimony from a defendant against another person. How reliable can such testimony be? The obvious problem is, what if Sneed acted alone, and having nothing to trade for his life, made up a story that Glossip also was involved? Great danger of wrongful conviction lurks here.
Running that risk might still be acceptable if the worst possible consequence was incarceration of an innocent person. After all, there is a societal need to take dangerous criminals off the streets, and we can’t expect a perfect criminal justice system in an imperfect world. When that happens — and it does happen, with distressing frequency — at least you can free a wrongfully imprisoned person and pay him compensation after the error comes to light. In other words, imposing the death penalty ought to be held to a higher evidentiary standard than for a prison term.
But the death penalty is different. Once the warden pulls the cork out of the Drano bottle, no one can put it back, if it later turns out the jury based its judgment on the coerced testimony of a witness who lied through his teeth to save his own ass. In my view, Glossip probably isn’t innocent, and I’m not disputing that the venality and brutality of Van Treese’s murder justifies the sentence, but because there’s a chance that Sneed lied about his involvement and the corroboration of Sneed’s story is rather gauzy, I think Governor Fallin should commute Glossip’s sentence to prevent the possibility of an irreversible mistake. If I were her, if I let this execution proceed, my conscience wouldn’t let me sleep at night.
