February 27, 2025 • 53 mins
On January 7th, 1997, the owner of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, OK was beaten to death with a baseball bat at his motel by admitted killer, thief, and methamphetamine addict Justin Sneed. Mr. Sneed, fearful of the death penalty, falsely accused his boss, Richard Glossip, of masterminding the murder for hire plot in exchange for leniency. Now, Richard sits on death row in Oklahoma.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://linktr.ee/FreeRichardGlossip
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
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
(00:30):
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
(00:52):
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,
(01:15):
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
(01:39):
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
(02:00):
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
(02:21):
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
(02:42):
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
(03:04):
from life without parole, swapping Richard into his place. The
word of a meth head and alleged motive to steal
cash was all.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It took.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
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
(03:42):
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,
(04:07):
a man named Don Knight. Welcome to ronfel conviction.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Thank you, Jason. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Hello, Richard. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but
I'm happier here.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
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
(06:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
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
(07:31):
I hardly ever found him to do what he was
supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Did you catch any signs that he was using math?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
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
(07:58):
just like really weird.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So were there any signs that he might have been
robbing people to support his habit.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
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?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
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
(08:55):
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
(09:16):
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.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Stay there very long.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
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
(10:21):
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
(10:46):
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
(11:08):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It would be.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Really low on anyone's choices of how to go right, sure.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
The vehicle where.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
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
(12:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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
(13:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
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.
(14:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
With this case.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
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.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
To have a real bad history.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
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
(16:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Basically, yeah, he left.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
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
(16:36):
was doing everything he could do to get money for
his drug habit. But when he left the motel that.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Day, he skateboarded over to where the people who he.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
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
(17:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
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.
(17:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
This sort of crazy idea about.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Math, right, and who's being fed information by police who
are exactly not interested in the truth here, so.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
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.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
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
(20:15):
be more. In my opinion, you know, prosecutors and stuff
need these notches in their belt so bad so they
can further their career.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
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
(21:11):
not a cowboy. Can you tell us about this awful character.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
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
(21:38):
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
(22:01):
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
(22:22):
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
(22:44):
the defendant and to sort of get on the train
or get run over by the trained mentality takes over.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
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
(23:12):
death row himself. I feel like this should have been
easy to be.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
A case before.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
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
(23:47):
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?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (23:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
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?
Speaker 4 (24:22):
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
(24:43):
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
(25:04):
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
(25:25):
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
(25:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
So after his first conviction, Rich took his case to
the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who called the evidence
against him extremely weak.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
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
(26:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
The prosecutor said, Judge, we've.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
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,
(27:32):
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.
(27:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
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
(28:27):
sit there and say, the prosecutor helped us remember.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
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
(29:04):
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
(29:24):
believe it. It's one of the most overwhelming things I've
ever had to face, you know, when I walked in.
(29:47):
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,
(30:07):
it felt like death. It just felt like you were
surrounded by death.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Rich.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Which turned out to be just as big of a
fiasco as my trials did.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Now.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
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?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Did she not remember?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
She knew me really well?
Speaker 1 (31:04):
And Bob Macy Sun is there as well.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah, maybe some still has something to do with the
billboard today.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that is
just ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
So your clemency was denied, but you didn't take that.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
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
(32:09):
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
(32:33):
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
(32:53):
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,
(33:16):
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
(33:39):
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.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
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,
(34:28):
we're out of options. At this point in time, Rich
comes up for an execution date.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
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.
(35:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
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
(35:44):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
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,
(36:19):
the Supreme Court just gave you a study, and you
are now born to Supreme Court against lethal ingestion.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
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
(36:48):
to have his case Glossop p Gross go before the
United States Supreme.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
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,
(37:13):
so thirty five days prior the death ritual began again.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
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
(37:37):
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
(37:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Had a two weeks stay so that Rich.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
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
(38:50):
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
(39:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
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
(39:46):
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,
(40:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
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
(40:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
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
(41:20):
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,
(41:45):
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.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
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
(42:21):
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
(42:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
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
(43:28):
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
(43:51):
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?
Speaker 4 (44:08):
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
(44:30):
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
(44:53):
to the current lawsuit that's going on with Rich's name
on it.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Again.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
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
(45:19):
set for execution, and that could take place sometime in
the late summer.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
The worst case scenario, they could set a date on
July first.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
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.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
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
(46:08):
on forever. We're going to stop it. Like you said,
innocence doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
That's the legal posture that we face today.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
The people.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
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
(47:15):
is such a bornbaric practice and why it should no
longer take place.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
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.
(47:40):
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
(48:01):
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.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Later this year.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
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
(48:53):
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
(49:15):
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
(49:37):
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
(49:58):
is to grant rich clemency and allow us to get
back into court again.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
What were you, Rich?
Speaker 3 (50:04):
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
(50:26):
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.
(50:49):
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
(51:10):
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,
(51:31):
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
(51:53):
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
(52:14):
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.
(52:35):
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
(52:56):
what's going on, and she'll see how fair justice really
is in that country.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
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
(53:29):
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,
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
(00:30):
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
(00:52):
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,
(01:15):
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
(01:39):
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
(02:00):
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
(02:21):
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
(02:42):
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
(03:04):
from life without parole, swapping Richard into his place. The
word of a meth head and alleged motive to steal
cash was all.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It took.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
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
(03:42):
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,
(04:07):
a man named Don Knight. Welcome to ronfel conviction.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Thank you, Jason. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Hello, Richard. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but
I'm happier here.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
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
(06:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
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
(07:31):
I hardly ever found him to do what he was
supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Did you catch any signs that he was using math?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
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
(07:58):
just like really weird.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So were there any signs that he might have been
robbing people to support his habit.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
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?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
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
(08:55):
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
(09:16):
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.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Stay there very long.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
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
(10:21):
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
(10:46):
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
(11:08):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It would be.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Really low on anyone's choices of how to go right, sure.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
The vehicle where.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
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
(12:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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
(13:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
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.
(14:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
With this case.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
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.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
To have a real bad history.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
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
(16:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Basically, yeah, he left.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
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
(16:36):
was doing everything he could do to get money for
his drug habit. But when he left the motel that.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Day, he skateboarded over to where the people who he.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
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
(17:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
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.
(17:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
This sort of crazy idea about.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Math, right, and who's being fed information by police who
are exactly not interested in the truth here, so.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
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.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
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
(20:15):
be more. In my opinion, you know, prosecutors and stuff
need these notches in their belt so bad so they
can further their career.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
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
(21:11):
not a cowboy. Can you tell us about this awful character.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
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
(21:38):
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
(22:01):
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
(22:22):
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
(22:44):
the defendant and to sort of get on the train
or get run over by the trained mentality takes over.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
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
(23:12):
death row himself. I feel like this should have been
easy to be.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
A case before.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
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
(23:47):
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?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (23:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
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?
Speaker 4 (24:22):
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
(24:43):
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
(25:04):
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
(25:25):
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
(25:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
So after his first conviction, Rich took his case to
the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who called the evidence
against him extremely weak.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
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
(26:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
The prosecutor said, Judge, we've.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
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,
(27:32):
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.
(27:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
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
(28:27):
sit there and say, the prosecutor helped us remember.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
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
(29:04):
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
(29:24):
believe it. It's one of the most overwhelming things I've
ever had to face, you know, when I walked in.
(29:47):
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,
(30:07):
it felt like death. It just felt like you were
surrounded by death.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Rich.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Which turned out to be just as big of a
fiasco as my trials did.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Now.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
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?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Did she not remember?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
She knew me really well?
Speaker 1 (31:04):
And Bob Macy Sun is there as well.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah, maybe some still has something to do with the
billboard today.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that is
just ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
So your clemency was denied, but you didn't take that.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
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
(32:09):
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
(32:33):
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
(32:53):
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,
(33:16):
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
(33:39):
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.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
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,
(34:28):
we're out of options. At this point in time, Rich
comes up for an execution date.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
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.
(35:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
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
(35:44):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
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,
(36:19):
the Supreme Court just gave you a study, and you
are now born to Supreme Court against lethal ingestion.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
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
(36:48):
to have his case Glossop p Gross go before the
United States Supreme.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
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,
(37:13):
so thirty five days prior the death ritual began again.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
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
(37:37):
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
(37:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Had a two weeks stay so that Rich.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
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
(38:50):
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
(39:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
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
(39:46):
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,
(40:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
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
(40:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
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
(41:20):
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,
(41:45):
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.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
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
(42:21):
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
(42:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
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
(43:28):
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
(43:51):
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?
Speaker 4 (44:08):
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
(44:30):
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
(44:53):
to the current lawsuit that's going on with Rich's name
on it.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Again.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
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
(45:19):
set for execution, and that could take place sometime in
the late summer.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
The worst case scenario, they could set a date on
July first.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
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.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
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
(46:08):
on forever. We're going to stop it. Like you said,
innocence doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
That's the legal posture that we face today.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
The people.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
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
(47:15):
is such a bornbaric practice and why it should no
longer take place.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
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.
(47:40):
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
(48:01):
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.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Later this year.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
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
(48:53):
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
(49:15):
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
(49:37):
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
(49:58):
is to grant rich clemency and allow us to get
back into court again.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
What were you, Rich?
Speaker 3 (50:04):
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
(50:26):
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.
(50:49):
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
(51:10):
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,
(51:31):
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
(51:53):
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
(52:14):
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.
(52:35):
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
(52:56):
what's going on, and she'll see how fair justice really
is in that country.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
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
(53:29):
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,
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com