June 23, 2021 • 52 mins
On January 7th, 1997, the owner of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City 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 where his time is running out.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Richard Glossop was the manager of a CD motel in
Oklahoma City called the Best Budget in where he was
responsible for large sums of cash belonging to its owner,
Barry Van Trees, cash that he could have stolen at
any time without violence. A traveling roofer and methadic named
Justin Snead began staying at the motel in exchange for
maintenance work, while enjoying easy access to the drugs and
(00:24):
prostitutes one might find at a CD motel. In the
early morning of January seventh, nineteen ninety seven, Stead and
a girlfriend lured Barry van Trees into Room one O
two to rob him of the cash he was known
to carry. Barry resisted and was bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
His car was moved to a nearby lot. Later that morning,
(00:46):
Snead off handedly told Richard that he had killed Barry,
but after seeing that Barry's car was not at its
usual spot, Richard dismissed what he thought was Sneed's usual
drug adult ramblings. When the body was discovered, Richard told
police about what Snead had said, causing them to focus
on him, even though Snead eventually confessed police steered him
(01:07):
to implicate Richard as the mastermind of a murder for
higher scheme. For his testimony, Snead escaped to death penalty
in exchange for life without parole, swapping Richard into his place.
The word of a meth head and a legit motive
to steal cash was all.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It took.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
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
(01:55):
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,
(02:19):
a man named Don Knight. Welcome to ronfel conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I appreciate that, 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 2 (02:38):
Hello, this is a collect call from for Sure, an
incarcerated individual at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. This call is not private.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
This call will be recorded and may be monitored.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
To consent to this recorded call, press one to disconnect.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Thank you for using securists.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You may start the conversation now.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Richard. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but I'm
happier here.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh that's cool, man, that's cool. Twenty four years of
this and it's bed a long battle and it just continues.
But the good thing is I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
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 2 (03:24):
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 (03:41):
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 2 (04:02):
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 selling
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 3 (04:20):
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
(04:41):
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 (05:01):
Right, And if he wanted to steal the money, he
could have done so almost any time without violence, and
he could have skipped town. But he never did, and
certainly he didn't do so by involving a meth head
named Justin Snead. 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 2 (05:22):
Right, yes, I said, hey, I need you to go
take care of this, or I need to take these
people from files 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, but
Verry didn't want me to let him go. But yeah,
towards all this happening in the end, It was like
(05:43):
I hardly ever found him to do what he was
supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Did you catch any signs that he was using meth?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
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
you sketch your head and go, man, this guy is
(06:10):
just like really weird.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So were there any signs that he might have been
robbing people to support his habit?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah? You know. I had one of the a guy
named John Biebers, 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 (06:27):
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 2 (06:35):
Yeah. I lived on the property. I lived behind the
front desk in an apartment, so I'm always on the
property other than DNA, and I'd being able to go
out and do something on our own why the desk
Cirk was there.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Now, this brings us all the way up to January seventh,
thineteen 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. Snead was known for saying weird stuff
like that, and so when Richard looked at Barry's usual
parking spot and didn't see Barry's car, he wrote it
(07:08):
off as Sneed just being Snead. Now, later on, Barry
Van Teresa's car was spotted in the Credit Union parking lot,
about fifty yards away from the best budget in 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
(07:28):
the police about what Sneed 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 3 (07:46):
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 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
(08:10):
stay there very long. Told the people in Tulsa when
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 at the Best Budget
in in Oklahoma City where he went to room one
(08:32):
oh two. And that's where Justin Snead was waiting for him,
or at least his girlfriend was waiting for him. Because
we have found out that there was another person involved
in this case. It wasn't Rich Glossop, but it was
Justin Snead's girlfriend. The information that we have found is
(08:52):
that it was simply a robbery attempt. These two meth
fueled young people thought they could simply take the keys
from Barry Van Trees and get the money out of
his car without Van Trees knowing or objecting. I don't
know what their plan was. We talked to one witness
and she had a great statement. She said, when you've
(09:14):
been on mess for twenty days in a row, the
idea fairy appears. That looks like what happened here. These
two people knew Barry Van Trees had a lot of money,
and so we think that he was lured into room
one oh two by this girl. He knew he was
coming back to that place, and once there, confronted by
(09:35):
Justin Snead. From the information we have that we have
found from new witnesses, Sneid admitted that he was intending
simply to take Van Trees's money and not kill him.
But Van Trees fought back and at the end of
that fight, Barry Van Trees was beaten to death. It
wasn't just beaten to death, but there was also some
(09:55):
stab wounds on his body from a very blunt object.
Blunt object appears to be a pocket knife that the
police found in the motel room that had its tip
broken off. So for this murder. Justin Snead and his
girlfriend had two weapons, a baseball bat and a broken knife.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
It would be really low on anyone's choices of how
to go right, sure.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
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. The vehicle where the
(10:44):
money was was moved not more than fifty yards. It's
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
more by the security guard off duty sheriff's deputy working
(11:04):
at the Wayoki 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 (11:18):
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
(11:41):
is rich on death row? Well, the lead investigators in
this case, Bimo and 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 3 (11:58):
They focused on Rich and I think I think the
first reason is Rich's last name is Glossop. Rich's family
was a known family with a criminal history in Oklahoma,
So I think that's one thing. That the second thing
when they found Van Trees's body at ten o'clock and
they said, you know, Rich, why don't you come in
and sit and talk with us? And was at that
(12:20):
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 Glossop had something to do with
this case.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
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 3 (12:50):
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 (12:56):
After this initial interview, on the seventh, Rich sells some
personal Lineay was 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 will set you free.
So he talked to Bemo and Cook.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Anyway, 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 to have a
real bad history of how they do their interrogations, and
(13:40):
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 (13:55):
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 sights
set on him. Meanwhile, Snead took off on the afternoon
(14:16):
of the seventh, before Barry's body was even found. He
went off working with the roof and crew that he
came into town with from Texas, trying to make himself scarce. Basically, yeah, he.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Left New motel sometime after three o'clock, just took the
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,
(14:48):
he was doing everything he could do to get money
for his drug habit. But when he left the motel
that day, he skateboarded over to were the people who
he 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
(15:10):
doing his roofing work than he ever made it the
best budget in and he did that on that day.
They didn't catch Sneid until the fourteenth of January. It
was the owner of the roofing company who seeing the
news accounts of what had happened and seeing Sneed's picture
on the news, that said to Sneid, I think you
need to turn yourself in. So he's the one that
(15:30):
called the police, and that's when they interrogated Sneed.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
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 3 (15:42):
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 to tell you, as
if he didn't have anything to do with it, And
(16:03):
then they brought Rich's name into it. We think Rich
had something to do with it. You know, he's under arrest.
So Snead never said anything about Glossop at all. That
came from the police, and then they began to work
with Snead from there untill they finally got this sort
of crazy idea about Rich wanting to steal the money,
(16:25):
kill Van Trees and split the money with Sneid 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 (16:36):
Math, right, and who's being fed information by police who
are exactly not interested in the truth here.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So right, because if they had been interested into the truth,
they simply would have said, why don't you tell us
what happened? Tell us everything that you know.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
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 penalty.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
We have a witness who says he talked to Snead
that year while he was in jail with Steed, and
as Snead 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. Snead got bold of what
he wanted at Rich's expense.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
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 2 (18:06):
Detective Demo in the docuseries that was done changed what
he testified at two trials and and it was a
murder for hire. He gives the statement in our docuseries
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
(18:27):
be more. In my opinion, you know, prosecutors and stuff
need these notches in their belt so bad so they
could further their career. And it doesn't matter 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.
(18:48):
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 (18:59):
Okay, so don there is a villain in this story,
of course. I'm talking about then district attorney Bob Macy,
who was nicknamed the Angel of Death, and he seemed
to get off on winning death penalty cases, innocent, guilty, whatever.
(19:19):
He played dress up like a cowboy, although he was
not a cowboy. Can you tell us about this awful character.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Bob Macy's just one of a handful of prosecuting attorneys
in the country that really drives the death penalty in
this country, they're 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
(19:51):
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 Macy certainly forged
his legacy with all of that in mind. I think
the thing that happens in these places is it can't
just be one person that does this, but it becomes
(20:13):
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
(20:35):
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
(20:57):
the defendant and to sort of get on the train
or get run over by the trained mentality takes over.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So Rich is charged with capital murder, which the fact
that he's being tried for his life for not having
killed anyone is insane in and of itself. 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
(21:24):
death row himself. I feel like this should have been
easy to beat.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
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 a case before. 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.
(21:50):
Vaornerot had no idea how to do a penalty phase
in a death case. He didn't do any investigation. I mean,
Rich was a guy without a criminal history at all.
I mean, if you're talking about the death penalty in
the United States, you're supposedly talking about the worst of
the worst. Well, Rich had never committed a crime before.
How could he possibly be the worst of the worst?
Is this crime bad?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
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 (22:26):
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 3 (22:35):
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 Glossop told him to kill Van
Trees and rob him of somewhere around five thousand dollars
(22:56):
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 Sneid had a variety of stories that
ultimately came out that just simply shows that he was
(23:16):
not telling the truth. He was never consistent with anything
that he said, and the prosecutor had to sort of
cobble together what the Court of Appeals would later call
corroborating evidence that was really really weak from a standpoint
of corroborating evidence. They had put together a spreadsheet and
an allegation that Rich was stealing money, that somehow or another,
(23:38):
the Van Trees family knew he was stealing money and
that they were about to fire him, and Rich knew
he was about to be fired, and so that formed
the motive for Rich to do this killing. There is
no real evidence of that. We took a look at
that spreadsheet, which by the way, no one did until
we got involved in this case. We have two forensic
(23:59):
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 (24:07):
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 3 (24:16):
And the Oklahoma Court or Criminal Appeals looked at the
job that Wayne Farnerott did and said this can't be okay,
and they in a unanimous verdict, which never happened. Ondirect
Appeal threw it back and said he gets a new trial.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
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 3 (24:46):
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 this second trial
when he made an error, and that is going to
see Justin Snead. The night before the trial began. They
(25:08):
think Lynn Birch was looking to see if there was
some way that Snead would simply come clean and tell
the truth. The air that Lynn Burch made was not
taking an investigator with him, not taking a third party.
Because when he showed up in court the next morning,
the prosecutor said, Judge, we've got a problem. Lynn Birch
was threatening our witness and was harassing Justin Snead. Rather
(25:30):
than fight that, which I think Burch should have done,
he should have said, I didn't do anything like that.
I never said anything wrong. Let me tell you what
I told him. Put me on the witness stand, put
sneed on the witness stand, let's have it out. Birch
simply said, you know, okay, you know, I probably screwed
up in there, and he left the case the morning
of trial, which caused a six month extension. But with
(25:54):
Birch gone, it left it in the hands of two
lawyers who were not prepared for the trial, and he
did very little. The lead up to the next trial.
They did no investigation, they put on no witnesses, Their
cross examinations were horrible. They allowed the prosecution to run
wild with leading questions. Basically, the kids were greased and
the prosecution just got their case through like they wanted.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
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 Glad
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
(26:40):
sit there and say, the prosecutor helped us remember.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
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 2 (26:55):
It's strange how you go through your whole life doing
what's right, think that you know, if you tell the
truth and 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 time, and your just your mouth just balls
open and this feeling comes over you, like, how can
this possibly be happening to me? This doesn't make sense.
(27:19):
It's one of the strangest feelings that's really hard to
put into word, but it's just like every part of
you just goes numb. It's like you're just in shock
and you don't know, you don't even have a response
to it. You just stand there and you just like
you just can't even believe it. It's one of the
most overwhelming things I've ever had to face, you know.
(27:57):
When I walked in, they they take you to the
main gate up there and they put you in this
little shack. Why they wait to get people to take
you down to Agena where you're supposed to go. And
I got to be honest with you, when they open
that door, like your hole just like disappears almost immediately
because it's so gloomy and so cold. In all honesty,
(28:20):
it felt like death. It just felt like you were
surrounded by death.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Rich I want you to know that there are a
lot of good people who are out of 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 2 (28:48):
Which turned out to be just as big of a
fiasco as my trials did. I was turned down for clemency,
and the reason being is not only was there a
prosecutor from my case on the board, Bob Macy's son
was as well, and when we brought to their attentions
after him, I was denied clemacy. The clemency boy claimed
that they had no idea that she had been a
(29:12):
prosecutor on my case.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Did she not remember she knew me really well? And
Bob Macy's son is there as well.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, Masy someone still has something to do with the
billboard today.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that is
just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I know, why don't we have anybody that had anything
to do with Bob may or his office on a
parole board that deals with that's row inmates.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
So your clemency was denied, but you didn't take that
sitting down.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
In October twenty fourteen, I started this campaign. I was
writing letters, 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 Kobern and others who
sit up for me back then.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So, while Richard was fighting for his life, other significant
events were in foot concerning the way in which the
state planned to kill him and others. Lethal injection. Lethal
injection as a method of state sanctioned murder, consists of
three drugs. A sedative, which depresses the nervous system and
renders the person unconscious, next, a paralytic, which provides skeletal
(30:20):
and muscular relaxation as well as depresses respiration, and finally,
a potassium solution which causes cardiac arrest. The most common
lethal injection drug combination is for the sedative sodium theopental
or pentobarbitol, then pancuronium bromide as the paralytic, and finally
potassium chloride, which causes the heart attack. In twenty eleven,
(30:44):
some American pharma companies halted production of sodium theopental, and
the European Union enacted a torture regulation that banned the
export of drugs for the use of lethal injections, starting
with sodium theopental and later pentobarbitol. By twenty fourteen, states
were experiencing a shortage of the necessary drugs, which affected
(31:05):
their ability to carry out death sentences according to protocol.
Oklahoma began looking for alternatives like medazzelam in place of
sodium theopental. Following this change, the forty three minute long
botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April twenty nine, twenty fourteen.
Another death throw inmate, Charles Warner, awaited the same fate
(31:28):
that night, just steps away from the death chamber, but
as a result of the horror of Lockett's execution, warners
was delayed. After an investigation, Oklahoma blamed an inability to
find Lockett's veins as the cause of the botched execution
and decided to continue with the same drug protocol involving
medazzelam as a sedative, prompting Richard, Charles Warner, and nineteen
(31:51):
others to sue Oklahoma, and eventually they took the case
all the way to the Supreme Court of 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 abolition as Sister Helen
Prejon with his first execution date an warners looming in
(32:12):
January twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
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,
(32:36):
there's no court appearances left, clemency has been done. Basically,
we're out of options. At this point in time, rich
comes up for an execution date.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
So Oklahoma sets the date for January twenty ninth, 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 2 (33:00):
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 off so bright
that I can see a tiny ant walking across a
dark and gray floor. That's how bright that room is.
(33:20):
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 (33:34):
While he and one 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 certierrari 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
(33:56):
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 2 (34:08):
Sister Helen and a bunch of people were there visiting me.
It was the day before I was supposed to be executed.
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 say, you got an attorney call.
So they set me down and gave me the phone,
(34:30):
and my attorney said, the Supreme Court just gave you
a stay and you are now going to Supreme Court
against lethal ingestion.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
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 execut date
(35:00):
to have his case gloss OFP. B. Gross go before
the United States Supreme.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Court, And so there was a whole place on all
executions in Oklahoma until the ruling was made. On June
twenty ninth, twenty fifteen, in the last day of the
Supreme Court's term. They ruled five to four against Richard
and the condemned prisoners, allowing me dazolam as the sedative,
and Richard's execution date was set for September fifteenth, twenty fifteen,
(35:25):
so thirty five days prior the death ritual began again.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
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
(35:50):
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
(36:10):
up with a stay of execution on 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 we had a two weeks stay so that
Rich 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
(36:34):
advance of the third execution date, which was set for
September thirtieth of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
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 ISUS does to people. When they pull
(37:02):
somebody out, they put a sword to their neck, they
act like they're going to chop their head off, and
then they stop and they say, oh, we're going to
wait for another day, put them back in himself, you know.
And then 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
(37:24):
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 (37:36):
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 psychevaluation
showing Sneed was aware of the charges against him and
that he made no mention of Richard, as well as
the numerous people Sneed confessed to along the way that
he had acted alone and saved his own hide by
(37:58):
implicating Richard. But despite all of that, on September twenty eighth,
the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted three to two
to proceed with the execution, and the Supreme Court also
deny to stay. Then the governor granted a stay on
the thirtieth, citing that Oklahoma, contrary to lethal injection drug protocol,
had received potassium acetate, a freaking food preservative, instead of
(38:23):
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 2 (38:33):
And it was interesting when that happened because sister Hillam
was outside the prison and she was saying, it's a
Richard Glossip preservative, because the drug they were going to
use was actually used as a preservative, you know. But
I think the scariest thing about that time was when
the governor at the time told the first second in
command who was there, google it. When we'd gotten to
(38:58):
a point in a societiety where we google how to
execute people? Or is it okay to use certain drugs
to execute people? That should just end the destiny by itself.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
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 indefinite stay of all executions, citing
(39:32):
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 Prewit
then ordered a multi county grand jury investigation, and this
put a hold on executions in Oklahoma. And with this moratorium,
(39:57):
the famous documentarian Joe Burlin, 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 4 (40:13):
I'm Joe Burlinger, 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 an opportunistic robbery that went awry, and all the
(40:34):
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
(40:54):
Sneed says in his original statement, and he said it
again to me when I interviewed him, that he never
really intended to kill Barry van Trees. 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 (41:17):
So the one thing that Sneed has been consistent about
is that he never meant to kill Barry van Trees.
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
(41:39):
been operating under Rich's authority. Therefore there was no murder
for higher plot. Richard could never have been involved. I mean, which,
justin Snead, are we supposed to believe the Sneed who
says Richard told me to do it, so I had
to do it, or the Sneed who never intended to
kill Barry van tries despite the alleged quote unquote orders
(42:02):
of Richard Classip. He can't be both not that any
of this matters to our legal processes, as actual innocence
does not entitle one to relief according to the United
States Supreme Court. So don where do we stand now?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
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
(42:42):
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
(43:06):
to the current lawsuit that's going on with Rich's name
on it. Again, it's the success of a gloss of
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.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Will be first.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
He doesn't have to be first, but he was last up.
It's entirely possible that he will be the first one
set for execution, and that could take place sometime in
the late summer.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
The worst case scenario, they could set a date on
July first.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
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 3 (43:58):
In twenty fifteen, we have 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
(44:20):
on forever. We're going to stop it. Like you said,
innocence doesn't matter. That's the legal posture that we face today.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
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 Glossen.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I'm asking everybody to go to say Richard glossa 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 to people.
This is about many innocent people who are facing what
(45:07):
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 a people. We have to stand
up and say, hey, we're not going to tolerate this anymore.
We got to change this. We got to permit innocent
be executed, and we got to open people's eyes to
why this is such a barbaric practice and why it
(45:29):
should no longer take place.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
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.
(45:52):
And well, now we turn to what we call closing arguments.
This is a section of the show where I turned
my microphone off, back in my chair, leave my headphones on,
close my eyes, and just listen to whatever you have
to say that we may have left out, or anything
you want to share with our audience. So, Richard, we're
going to save you for last and let Don go first.
(46:14):
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 3 (46:28):
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 later this year, Richard glossiped a simple guy
who was in love with a young woman Richard loved
his job at the best budget in loved Barry Van Trees.
(46:49):
They had a great relationship. Rich never took any money
from Barry Van Trees and very respected Rich. And a
terrible murder took place that rich did not have anything
at all to do with, and the wheels of justice
began to turn in Oklahoma City the way that they
did back in those days with Bob Macy, and those
(47:09):
wheels just simply ran over Richard Glossop. He was a
victim of very very poor lawyering, of over aggressive police work,
of over aggressive prosecutors who only cared about one thing,
and that was getting a conviction and getting a death sentence,
because that was the culture of Oklahoma City at the time.
(47:30):
There was a series of three letters to the current
District Attorney, David Prater. We have requested a lot of
substantive information that we believe would prove that rich Glossop
had nothing to do with this, and we have received
no answers. We continue to wait for David Prater. So
(47:51):
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 save Richard.
You can find a petition there to the governor and
the Partner and Parole Board, letting those people know that
this is wrong, what's happening, and that the only way
to write it is to grant rich clemency and allow
(48:13):
us to get back into court again.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
What were to you, rich You know when I walked in,
I took that first step on agent it, 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
(48:35):
was and I am to this day. I sing in
my cell out loud, I laughed, I dance around, and
guards are always freaking out because I'm the way that
I am. And I told them, I said, you know,
I was a happy guy my whole life, and I'm
not going to let this change who I am because
we only have one life to live and it's a gift.
And I'm going to celebrate life no matter where the
(48:57):
hell I'm at, even in this hole, I'm going to
celebrate life. I've heard so many stories about people who
lost it down on Atue 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.
(49:22):
I've written so many poems. I've written a book which
I can't wait to get get out there to people,
because it's a book of hope. It's a book of
showing people that you do have more strengthen you know,
and you can take your courage and you can move
forward and you can have hope at the end. And
I described the three execution attempt. I describe everything because
I want people to know no matter how bad things get,
(49:43):
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 we're standing up saying we need to prevent this
and hopefully we can succeed because I do have a
(50:05):
lot more like lifts, and I do have a lot
more battle to raise against the destbility. Look at like
what's happening here in Oklahoma, one of the biggest Republican
states in the country, and you have Republicans now staying
and up saying we're not going to tolerate this anymore.
We're not going to kill innocent people. I'm proud of
Legislator mcdoogle and Legislator Humphrey, and you know, even the
(50:29):
local businessman Justin Jesson. I'm really proud of these people
because they're diehard conservative and yet they're standing us for
innocence because it's not a left thing, and it's not
a right thing. It's an innocent thing. And we've got
to stop using politics in justice reform. We all want
the right things. If we don't, then then you shouldn't
be an office. We all want fair, we all want justice.
(50:51):
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, as you're saying, well,
she's fine, 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 mindfold awesome letter, see what's
going on, and she'll see alfair of justice really is
in that country.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
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
Clyburn and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show, as always,
is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Be sure to.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook
at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Signal Company Number one.
Richard Glossop was the manager of a CD motel in
Oklahoma City called the Best Budget in where he was
responsible for large sums of cash belonging to its owner,
Barry Van Trees, cash that he could have stolen at
any time without violence. A traveling roofer and methadic named
Justin Snead began staying at the motel in exchange for
maintenance work, while enjoying easy access to the drugs and
(00:24):
prostitutes one might find at a CD motel. In the
early morning of January seventh, nineteen ninety seven, Stead and
a girlfriend lured Barry van Trees into Room one O
two to rob him of the cash he was known
to carry. Barry resisted and was bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
His car was moved to a nearby lot. Later that morning,
(00:46):
Snead off handedly told Richard that he had killed Barry,
but after seeing that Barry's car was not at its
usual spot, Richard dismissed what he thought was Sneed's usual
drug adult ramblings. When the body was discovered, Richard told
police about what Snead had said, causing them to focus
on him, even though Snead eventually confessed police steered him
(01:07):
to implicate Richard as the mastermind of a murder for
higher scheme. For his testimony, Snead escaped to death penalty
in exchange for life without parole, swapping Richard into his place.
The word of a meth head and a legit motive
to steal cash was all.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It took.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
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
(01:55):
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,
(02:19):
a man named Don Knight. Welcome to ronfel conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I appreciate that, 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 2 (02:38):
Hello, this is a collect call from for Sure, an
incarcerated individual at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. This call is not private.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
This call will be recorded and may be monitored.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
To consent to this recorded call, press one to disconnect.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Thank you for using securists.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You may start the conversation now.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Richard. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but I'm
happier here.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh that's cool, man, that's cool. Twenty four years of
this and it's bed a long battle and it just continues.
But the good thing is I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
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 2 (03:24):
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 (03:41):
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 2 (04:02):
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 selling
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 3 (04:20):
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
(04:41):
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 (05:01):
Right, And if he wanted to steal the money, he
could have done so almost any time without violence, and
he could have skipped town. But he never did, and
certainly he didn't do so by involving a meth head
named Justin Snead. 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 2 (05:22):
Right, yes, I said, hey, I need you to go
take care of this, or I need to take these
people from files 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, but
Verry didn't want me to let him go. But yeah,
towards all this happening in the end, It was like
(05:43):
I hardly ever found him to do what he was
supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Did you catch any signs that he was using meth?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
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
you sketch your head and go, man, this guy is
(06:10):
just like really weird.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So were there any signs that he might have been
robbing people to support his habit?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah? You know. I had one of the a guy
named John Biebers, 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 (06:27):
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 2 (06:35):
Yeah. I lived on the property. I lived behind the
front desk in an apartment, so I'm always on the
property other than DNA, and I'd being able to go
out and do something on our own why the desk
Cirk was there.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Now, this brings us all the way up to January seventh,
thineteen 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. Snead was known for saying weird stuff
like that, and so when Richard looked at Barry's usual
parking spot and didn't see Barry's car, he wrote it
(07:08):
off as Sneed just being Snead. Now, later on, Barry
Van Teresa's car was spotted in the Credit Union parking lot,
about fifty yards away from the best budget in 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
(07:28):
the police about what Sneed 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 3 (07:46):
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 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
(08:10):
stay there very long. Told the people in Tulsa when
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 at the Best Budget
in in Oklahoma City where he went to room one
(08:32):
oh two. And that's where Justin Snead was waiting for him,
or at least his girlfriend was waiting for him. Because
we have found out that there was another person involved
in this case. It wasn't Rich Glossop, but it was
Justin Snead's girlfriend. The information that we have found is
(08:52):
that it was simply a robbery attempt. These two meth
fueled young people thought they could simply take the keys
from Barry Van Trees and get the money out of
his car without Van Trees knowing or objecting. I don't
know what their plan was. We talked to one witness
and she had a great statement. She said, when you've
(09:14):
been on mess for twenty days in a row, the
idea fairy appears. That looks like what happened here. These
two people knew Barry Van Trees had a lot of money,
and so we think that he was lured into room
one oh two by this girl. He knew he was
coming back to that place, and once there, confronted by
(09:35):
Justin Snead. From the information we have that we have
found from new witnesses, Sneid admitted that he was intending
simply to take Van Trees's money and not kill him.
But Van Trees fought back and at the end of
that fight, Barry Van Trees was beaten to death. It
wasn't just beaten to death, but there was also some
(09:55):
stab wounds on his body from a very blunt object.
Blunt object appears to be a pocket knife that the
police found in the motel room that had its tip
broken off. So for this murder. Justin Snead and his
girlfriend had two weapons, a baseball bat and a broken knife.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
It would be really low on anyone's choices of how
to go right, sure.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
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. The vehicle where the
(10:44):
money was was moved not more than fifty yards. It's
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
more by the security guard off duty sheriff's deputy working
(11:04):
at the Wayoki 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 (11:18):
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
(11:41):
is rich on death row? Well, the lead investigators in
this case, Bimo and 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 3 (11:58):
They focused on Rich and I think I think the
first reason is Rich's last name is Glossop. Rich's family
was a known family with a criminal history in Oklahoma,
So I think that's one thing. That the second thing
when they found Van Trees's body at ten o'clock and
they said, you know, Rich, why don't you come in
and sit and talk with us? And was at that
(12:20):
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 Glossop had something to do with
this case.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
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 3 (12:50):
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 (12:56):
After this initial interview, on the seventh, Rich sells some
personal Lineay was 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 will set you free.
So he talked to Bemo and Cook.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Anyway, 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 to have a
real bad history of how they do their interrogations, and
(13:40):
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 (13:55):
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 sights
set on him. Meanwhile, Snead took off on the afternoon
(14:16):
of the seventh, before Barry's body was even found. He
went off working with the roof and crew that he
came into town with from Texas, trying to make himself scarce. Basically, yeah, he.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Left New motel sometime after three o'clock, just took the
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,
(14:48):
he was doing everything he could do to get money
for his drug habit. But when he left the motel
that day, he skateboarded over to were the people who
he 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
(15:10):
doing his roofing work than he ever made it the
best budget in and he did that on that day.
They didn't catch Sneid until the fourteenth of January. It
was the owner of the roofing company who seeing the
news accounts of what had happened and seeing Sneed's picture
on the news, that said to Sneid, I think you
need to turn yourself in. So he's the one that
(15:30):
called the police, and that's when they interrogated Sneed.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
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 3 (15:42):
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 to tell you, as
if he didn't have anything to do with it, And
(16:03):
then they brought Rich's name into it. We think Rich
had something to do with it. You know, he's under arrest.
So Snead never said anything about Glossop at all. That
came from the police, and then they began to work
with Snead from there untill they finally got this sort
of crazy idea about Rich wanting to steal the money,
(16:25):
kill Van Trees and split the money with Sneid 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 (16:36):
Math, right, and who's being fed information by police who
are exactly not interested in the truth here.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So right, because if they had been interested into the truth,
they simply would have said, why don't you tell us
what happened? Tell us everything that you know.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
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 penalty.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
We have a witness who says he talked to Snead
that year while he was in jail with Steed, and
as Snead 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. Snead got bold of what
he wanted at Rich's expense.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
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 2 (18:06):
Detective Demo in the docuseries that was done changed what
he testified at two trials and and it was a
murder for hire. He gives the statement in our docuseries
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
(18:27):
be more. In my opinion, you know, prosecutors and stuff
need these notches in their belt so bad so they
could further their career. And it doesn't matter 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.
(18:48):
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 (18:59):
Okay, so don there is a villain in this story,
of course. I'm talking about then district attorney Bob Macy,
who was nicknamed the Angel of Death, and he seemed
to get off on winning death penalty cases, innocent, guilty, whatever.
(19:19):
He played dress up like a cowboy, although he was
not a cowboy. Can you tell us about this awful character.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Bob Macy's just one of a handful of prosecuting attorneys
in the country that really drives the death penalty in
this country, they're 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
(19:51):
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 Macy certainly forged
his legacy with all of that in mind. I think
the thing that happens in these places is it can't
just be one person that does this, but it becomes
(20:13):
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
(20:35):
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
(20:57):
the defendant and to sort of get on the train
or get run over by the trained mentality takes over.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So Rich is charged with capital murder, which the fact
that he's being tried for his life for not having
killed anyone is insane in and of itself. 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
(21:24):
death row himself. I feel like this should have been
easy to beat.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
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 a case before. 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.
(21:50):
Vaornerot had no idea how to do a penalty phase
in a death case. He didn't do any investigation. I mean,
Rich was a guy without a criminal history at all.
I mean, if you're talking about the death penalty in
the United States, you're supposedly talking about the worst of
the worst. Well, Rich had never committed a crime before.
How could he possibly be the worst of the worst?
Is this crime bad?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
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 (22:26):
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 3 (22:35):
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 Glossop told him to kill Van
Trees and rob him of somewhere around five thousand dollars
(22:56):
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 Sneid had a variety of stories that
ultimately came out that just simply shows that he was
(23:16):
not telling the truth. He was never consistent with anything
that he said, and the prosecutor had to sort of
cobble together what the Court of Appeals would later call
corroborating evidence that was really really weak from a standpoint
of corroborating evidence. They had put together a spreadsheet and
an allegation that Rich was stealing money, that somehow or another,
(23:38):
the Van Trees family knew he was stealing money and
that they were about to fire him, and Rich knew
he was about to be fired, and so that formed
the motive for Rich to do this killing. There is
no real evidence of that. We took a look at
that spreadsheet, which by the way, no one did until
we got involved in this case. We have two forensic
(23:59):
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 (24:07):
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 3 (24:16):
And the Oklahoma Court or Criminal Appeals looked at the
job that Wayne Farnerott did and said this can't be okay,
and they in a unanimous verdict, which never happened. Ondirect
Appeal threw it back and said he gets a new trial.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
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 3 (24:46):
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 this second trial
when he made an error, and that is going to
see Justin Snead. The night before the trial began. They
(25:08):
think Lynn Birch was looking to see if there was
some way that Snead would simply come clean and tell
the truth. The air that Lynn Burch made was not
taking an investigator with him, not taking a third party.
Because when he showed up in court the next morning,
the prosecutor said, Judge, we've got a problem. Lynn Birch
was threatening our witness and was harassing Justin Snead. Rather
(25:30):
than fight that, which I think Burch should have done,
he should have said, I didn't do anything like that.
I never said anything wrong. Let me tell you what
I told him. Put me on the witness stand, put
sneed on the witness stand, let's have it out. Birch
simply said, you know, okay, you know, I probably screwed
up in there, and he left the case the morning
of trial, which caused a six month extension. But with
(25:54):
Birch gone, it left it in the hands of two
lawyers who were not prepared for the trial, and he
did very little. The lead up to the next trial.
They did no investigation, they put on no witnesses, Their
cross examinations were horrible. They allowed the prosecution to run
wild with leading questions. Basically, the kids were greased and
the prosecution just got their case through like they wanted.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
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 Glad
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
(26:40):
sit there and say, the prosecutor helped us remember.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
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 2 (26:55):
It's strange how you go through your whole life doing
what's right, think that you know, if you tell the
truth and 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 time, and your just your mouth just balls
open and this feeling comes over you, like, how can
this possibly be happening to me? This doesn't make sense.
(27:19):
It's one of the strangest feelings that's really hard to
put into word, but it's just like every part of
you just goes numb. It's like you're just in shock
and you don't know, you don't even have a response
to it. You just stand there and you just like
you just can't even believe it. It's one of the
most overwhelming things I've ever had to face, you know.
(27:57):
When I walked in, they they take you to the
main gate up there and they put you in this
little shack. Why they wait to get people to take
you down to Agena where you're supposed to go. And
I got to be honest with you, when they open
that door, like your hole just like disappears almost immediately
because it's so gloomy and so cold. In all honesty,
(28:20):
it felt like death. It just felt like you were
surrounded by death.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Rich I want you to know that there are a
lot of good people who are out of 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 2 (28:48):
Which turned out to be just as big of a
fiasco as my trials did. I was turned down for clemency,
and the reason being is not only was there a
prosecutor from my case on the board, Bob Macy's son
was as well, and when we brought to their attentions
after him, I was denied clemacy. The clemency boy claimed
that they had no idea that she had been a
(29:12):
prosecutor on my case.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Did she not remember she knew me really well? And
Bob Macy's son is there as well.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, Masy someone still has something to do with the
billboard today.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that is
just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I know, why don't we have anybody that had anything
to do with Bob may or his office on a
parole board that deals with that's row inmates.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
So your clemency was denied, but you didn't take that
sitting down.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
In October twenty fourteen, I started this campaign. I was
writing letters, 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 Kobern and others who
sit up for me back then.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So, while Richard was fighting for his life, other significant
events were in foot concerning the way in which the
state planned to kill him and others. Lethal injection. Lethal
injection as a method of state sanctioned murder, consists of
three drugs. A sedative, which depresses the nervous system and
renders the person unconscious, next, a paralytic, which provides skeletal
(30:20):
and muscular relaxation as well as depresses respiration, and finally,
a potassium solution which causes cardiac arrest. The most common
lethal injection drug combination is for the sedative sodium theopental
or pentobarbitol, then pancuronium bromide as the paralytic, and finally
potassium chloride, which causes the heart attack. In twenty eleven,
(30:44):
some American pharma companies halted production of sodium theopental, and
the European Union enacted a torture regulation that banned the
export of drugs for the use of lethal injections, starting
with sodium theopental and later pentobarbitol. By twenty fourteen, states
were experiencing a shortage of the necessary drugs, which affected
(31:05):
their ability to carry out death sentences according to protocol.
Oklahoma began looking for alternatives like medazzelam in place of
sodium theopental. Following this change, the forty three minute long
botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April twenty nine, twenty fourteen.
Another death throw inmate, Charles Warner, awaited the same fate
(31:28):
that night, just steps away from the death chamber, but
as a result of the horror of Lockett's execution, warners
was delayed. After an investigation, Oklahoma blamed an inability to
find Lockett's veins as the cause of the botched execution
and decided to continue with the same drug protocol involving
medazzelam as a sedative, prompting Richard, Charles Warner, and nineteen
(31:51):
others to sue Oklahoma, and eventually they took the case
all the way to the Supreme Court of 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 abolition as Sister Helen
Prejon with his first execution date an warners looming in
(32:12):
January twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
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,
(32:36):
there's no court appearances left, clemency has been done. Basically,
we're out of options. At this point in time, rich
comes up for an execution date.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
So Oklahoma sets the date for January twenty ninth, 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 2 (33:00):
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 off so bright
that I can see a tiny ant walking across a
dark and gray floor. That's how bright that room is.
(33:20):
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 (33:34):
While he and one 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 certierrari 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
(33:56):
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 2 (34:08):
Sister Helen and a bunch of people were there visiting me.
It was the day before I was supposed to be executed.
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 say, you got an attorney call.
So they set me down and gave me the phone,
(34:30):
and my attorney said, the Supreme Court just gave you
a stay and you are now going to Supreme Court
against lethal ingestion.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
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 execut date
(35:00):
to have his case gloss OFP. B. Gross go before
the United States Supreme.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Court, And so there was a whole place on all
executions in Oklahoma until the ruling was made. On June
twenty ninth, twenty fifteen, in the last day of the
Supreme Court's term. They ruled five to four against Richard
and the condemned prisoners, allowing me dazolam as the sedative,
and Richard's execution date was set for September fifteenth, twenty fifteen,
(35:25):
so thirty five days prior the death ritual began again.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
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
(35:50):
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
(36:10):
up with a stay of execution on 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 we had a two weeks stay so that
Rich 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
(36:34):
advance of the third execution date, which was set for
September thirtieth of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
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 ISUS does to people. When they pull
(37:02):
somebody out, they put a sword to their neck, they
act like they're going to chop their head off, and
then they stop and they say, oh, we're going to
wait for another day, put them back in himself, you know.
And then 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
(37:24):
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 (37:36):
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 psychevaluation
showing Sneed was aware of the charges against him and
that he made no mention of Richard, as well as
the numerous people Sneed confessed to along the way that
he had acted alone and saved his own hide by
(37:58):
implicating Richard. But despite all of that, on September twenty eighth,
the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted three to two
to proceed with the execution, and the Supreme Court also
deny to stay. Then the governor granted a stay on
the thirtieth, citing that Oklahoma, contrary to lethal injection drug protocol,
had received potassium acetate, a freaking food preservative, instead of
(38:23):
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 2 (38:33):
And it was interesting when that happened because sister Hillam
was outside the prison and she was saying, it's a
Richard Glossip preservative, because the drug they were going to
use was actually used as a preservative, you know. But
I think the scariest thing about that time was when
the governor at the time told the first second in
command who was there, google it. When we'd gotten to
(38:58):
a point in a societiety where we google how to
execute people? Or is it okay to use certain drugs
to execute people? That should just end the destiny by itself.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
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 indefinite stay of all executions, citing
(39:32):
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 Prewit
then ordered a multi county grand jury investigation, and this
put a hold on executions in Oklahoma. And with this moratorium,
(39:57):
the famous documentarian Joe Burlin, 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 4 (40:13):
I'm Joe Burlinger, 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 an opportunistic robbery that went awry, and all the
(40:34):
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
(40:54):
Sneed says in his original statement, and he said it
again to me when I interviewed him, that he never
really intended to kill Barry van Trees. 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 (41:17):
So the one thing that Sneed has been consistent about
is that he never meant to kill Barry van Trees.
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
(41:39):
been operating under Rich's authority. Therefore there was no murder
for higher plot. Richard could never have been involved. I mean, which,
justin Snead, are we supposed to believe the Sneed who
says Richard told me to do it, so I had
to do it, or the Sneed who never intended to
kill Barry van tries despite the alleged quote unquote orders
(42:02):
of Richard Classip. He can't be both not that any
of this matters to our legal processes, as actual innocence
does not entitle one to relief according to the United
States Supreme Court. So don where do we stand now?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
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
(42:42):
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
(43:06):
to the current lawsuit that's going on with Rich's name
on it. Again, it's the success of a gloss of
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.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Will be first.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
He doesn't have to be first, but he was last up.
It's entirely possible that he will be the first one
set for execution, and that could take place sometime in
the late summer.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
The worst case scenario, they could set a date on
July first.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
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 3 (43:58):
In twenty fifteen, we have 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
(44:20):
on forever. We're going to stop it. Like you said,
innocence doesn't matter. That's the legal posture that we face today.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
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 Glossen.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I'm asking everybody to go to say Richard glossa 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 to people.
This is about many innocent people who are facing what
(45:07):
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 a people. We have to stand
up and say, hey, we're not going to tolerate this anymore.
We got to change this. We got to permit innocent
be executed, and we got to open people's eyes to
why this is such a barbaric practice and why it
(45:29):
should no longer take place.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
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.
(45:52):
And well, now we turn to what we call closing arguments.
This is a section of the show where I turned
my microphone off, back in my chair, leave my headphones on,
close my eyes, and just listen to whatever you have
to say that we may have left out, or anything
you want to share with our audience. So, Richard, we're
going to save you for last and let Don go first.
(46:14):
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 3 (46:28):
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 later this year, Richard glossiped a simple guy
who was in love with a young woman Richard loved
his job at the best budget in loved Barry Van Trees.
(46:49):
They had a great relationship. Rich never took any money
from Barry Van Trees and very respected Rich. And a
terrible murder took place that rich did not have anything
at all to do with, and the wheels of justice
began to turn in Oklahoma City the way that they
did back in those days with Bob Macy, and those
(47:09):
wheels just simply ran over Richard Glossop. He was a
victim of very very poor lawyering, of over aggressive police work,
of over aggressive prosecutors who only cared about one thing,
and that was getting a conviction and getting a death sentence,
because that was the culture of Oklahoma City at the time.
(47:30):
There was a series of three letters to the current
District Attorney, David Prater. We have requested a lot of
substantive information that we believe would prove that rich Glossop
had nothing to do with this, and we have received
no answers. We continue to wait for David Prater. So
(47:51):
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 save Richard.
You can find a petition there to the governor and
the Partner and Parole Board, letting those people know that
this is wrong, what's happening, and that the only way
to write it is to grant rich clemency and allow
(48:13):
us to get back into court again.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
What were to you, rich You know when I walked in,
I took that first step on agent it, 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
(48:35):
was and I am to this day. I sing in
my cell out loud, I laughed, I dance around, and
guards are always freaking out because I'm the way that
I am. And I told them, I said, you know,
I was a happy guy my whole life, and I'm
not going to let this change who I am because
we only have one life to live and it's a gift.
And I'm going to celebrate life no matter where the
(48:57):
hell I'm at, even in this hole, I'm going to
celebrate life. I've heard so many stories about people who
lost it down on Atue 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.
(49:22):
I've written so many poems. I've written a book which
I can't wait to get get out there to people,
because it's a book of hope. It's a book of
showing people that you do have more strengthen you know,
and you can take your courage and you can move
forward and you can have hope at the end. And
I described the three execution attempt. I describe everything because
I want people to know no matter how bad things get,
(49:43):
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 we're standing up saying we need to prevent this
and hopefully we can succeed because I do have a
(50:05):
lot more like lifts, and I do have a lot
more battle to raise against the destbility. Look at like
what's happening here in Oklahoma, one of the biggest Republican
states in the country, and you have Republicans now staying
and up saying we're not going to tolerate this anymore.
We're not going to kill innocent people. I'm proud of
Legislator mcdoogle and Legislator Humphrey, and you know, even the
(50:29):
local businessman Justin Jesson. I'm really proud of these people
because they're diehard conservative and yet they're standing us for
innocence because it's not a left thing, and it's not
a right thing. It's an innocent thing. And we've got
to stop using politics in justice reform. We all want
the right things. If we don't, then then you shouldn't
be an office. We all want fair, we all want justice.
(50:51):
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, as you're saying, well,
she's fine, 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 mindfold awesome letter, see what's
going on, and she'll see alfair of justice really is
in that country.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
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
Clyburn and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show, as always,
is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Be sure to.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook
at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Signal Company Number one.
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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