April 2, 2025 • 19 mins
On February 25, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued their 5-3 opinion in Glossip v. Oklahoma. The Court held that the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony under Napue v. Illinois. and the Court has the jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.
Please join us in discussing the decision and its future implications.
Featuring:
Zack Smith, Legal Fellow and Manager, Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program, The Heritage Foundation
Please join us in discussing the decision and its future implications.
Featuring:
Zack Smith, Legal Fellow and Manager, Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program, The Heritage Foundation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to scot Discast, a project of the Federalist Society
for Law and Public Policy Studies. Our contributors join us
from around the country to bring you expert commentary on
US Supreme Court cases as they are argued and the
decisions are issued. The Federalist Society takes no position on
particular legal or public policy issues. All expressions are those
(00:23):
of the speaker.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, and welcome to scot Discast. I'm your host, Kyle
hammernis On, behalf of the Faculty division of the Federalist Society.
We are here today to discuss Gossip versus Oklahoma, which
is decided by the Court in a five to three
decision on February twenty fifth, twenty twenty five. It is
my honor to introduce our guests today, Zach Smith. Zach
(00:48):
is a legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court
and Appellate Advocacy Program in the Edwin Meses Third Center
for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He
previously served for several years and as an assistant United
States Attorney in the Northern District of Florida. Prior to that,
he spent two years as an associate in the Washington,
(01:09):
d c. Office of Clearly, gottlied Stein and Hamilton, which
he joined after clerking for the Honorable Emmett R. Cox
on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
And with that, I'll hand things over to Zech to
get a started by talking about how the case got
to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, thank you so much for having me on the
show today. And I think it goes without saying it's
always a pleasure to be able to do these types
of events. And look, the Glass of case is very
unique in a number of respects, particularly in terms of
it's very tortured procedural history. This is not a case
that has gone through the essentially normal Pelt process and
is at the Court. It's gone through an extensive period
(01:48):
of litigation on direct appeal and then also on collateral
appeal as well, and so to go all the way
back to the very beginning. This case started in nineteen
ninety seven when Justice Need murdered Barry van Trees. Barry
Van Trees owned two motels, one in Oklahoma, one in Tulsa,
and Justin Snead was working at one of those motels
(02:10):
along with Richard Glossop. Now Glossop managed one of those motels,
and the facts underlying this entire the background of the
murder are somewhat in dispute, but essentially what happened is
Van Trees showed up at one of his hotels and
while he was there, Sneed murdered him. Now. Sneed later
(02:32):
came out and said that Glossop essentially solicited him to
murder Barry Van Trees, and Glossop was worried that he
was going to be fired by Van Trees, allegedly for
maybe some financial improprieties, and this meant that Sneed himself
would probably end up homeless because he too was living
at the hotel. Now in the wake of the murder
(02:54):
of Van Trees, in the immediate aftermath, Glossop said he
didn't know where Van Trees was. He said he had
seen Van Trees the next morning, after he had been murdered.
He spoke to Van Trees's wife on the phone, assuring
her that everything was okay. And it turned out, of
course that that just wasn't true. And it wasn't until
several days later that a police officer showed up at
(03:17):
the hotel and found Van Trees's body in one of
the rooms, which, by the way, Snead and Glossop had
replaced broken glass in the room to try to hide
the crime. And so what happened, police arrested Snead. They
later arrested Glossop as well, and they initially charged Glossop
as an accessory after the fact of the murder, but
(03:38):
after talking to Sneed getting more factual information, they also
charged Richard Glossop with capital murder, essentially for soliciting Sneed
to commit the murder. Now, in terms of the trial,
Gossop was originally tried and convicted in nineteen ninety eight,
sentenced to death for his role in Barry Ventree murder.
(04:01):
But because of an ineffective assistance of Council claim that
was brought, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which is
the highest criminal court in Oklahoma, sent the case back
for retrial. So Richard Glossip was retried, convicted once again,
and once again sentenced to death after a trial in
two thousand and four. And so it's the proceedings of
(04:21):
that two thousand and four trial that are really an
issue in this collateral appeal. Now. Since his conviction in
two thousand and four, Glossop as I mentioned earlier, has
taken a number of direct appeals, he has filed a
number of collateral attacks on his sentence. And so the
collateral attack is that the Supreme Court considered and ruled
on was actually his fifth Habeus petition that he had
(04:42):
filed with Oklahoma's court system. So it's a long and
tortured history that this case took to ultimately end up
at the Supreme Court and for the Court to issue
this decision.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Great, Well, thank you so much for providing that really
necessary background, because it does seem, you know, a bit complicated.
So I guess as we turned toward the oral arguments
and which arguments each side was making, can you go
a little bit more into that and kind of give
us a clear picture of where each side stood.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah. So, as part of his tortured history along the way,
the Oklahoma legislature essentially responded to some of the political
pressure was receiving and commissioned a law from Readsmith to
write a report about whether certain things have been turned
over appropriately to Richard Gossip's council during the trial to
flag any other issues with the trial. And so reed
(05:36):
Smith wrote the report and issued report flagging a number
of issues, particularly as it relates to some evidence that
they alleged wasn't turned over, particularly as it relates to
some testimony that came out at trial. And so what
ultimately happened is shortly after Reed Smith wrote its report,
a new Oklahoma Attorney General also took office. Now the
(05:56):
Oklahoma Attorney General who took office, he turned over additional
evidence to Richard Gossop's counsel, which prompted the filing of
this fifth habeas petition with the cork And along the
way he turned over an eighth box. There were seven
boxes originally that he turned over. He turned over an
eighth box as well, which contained some handwritten notes from
(06:17):
the prosecutor that tried the case. And so after he
turned over this eighth box, Richard Gossop's council was alleging
that Justin Sneed, remember the man who actually murdered Barry Ventries,
offered what Glossop's council characterized as false testimony at trial. Essentially,
(06:39):
Justin snead he had mental health issues. He'd been prescribed
lithium to deal with bipolar disorder, and at trial, one
of the questions to ask was whether he had ever
been prescribed to lithium, and he said, yes, he took lithium,
but he said he took it either in the wake
of a toothache, or that he had been inadvertently prescribed
lithium because he had a head cold and was supposed
(06:59):
to get zoodafed. Now everyone knows the only reason someone
would be prescribed to lithium is for mental health issues.
But the fact that the prosecutors didn't go back and
clarify that Glossop said that was a false testimony that
essentially had been left uncorrected, which would be a violation
of the Supreme courtse holding in Napoo versus Illinois. So
(07:20):
the Oklahoma Attorney General, he actually conceded error in front
of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and asked for
mister Gossip's sentenced to be vacated and for Glossop to
receive a new trial. Now, for state procedural reasons, Oklahoma
has a many states, like the federal government, has a
(07:41):
statute that governs when a prisoner can bring a successive
habeas petition, And essentially the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals
said that Glossop hadn't met those very strict procedural requirements,
particularly because much of the information that now is being
disputed could have been discovered by his attorneys much much
earlier in the process, and they certainly had access to
much of the underlying information about these issues. But nonetheless
(08:05):
Oklahoma's attorney general conceded error. Now, it's interesting when the
case came to the Supreme Court, because Oklahoma's attorney general
had conceded error below and actually supported mister Glossop's efforts
to get a new trial. The Oklahoma Attorney General was
lined up on the same side as Richard Glossom. What
this meant is that the court had to appoint in
(08:27):
amikus someone to argue on behalf of the state to
actually uphold the integrity of this conviction. And I think
the individual of the court appointed did a very good
job at that. At the oral arguments, it was clear
that justices were divided on exactly how to deal with
this issue, and there were really two substant issues. The
court was grappling with an argument and I think you
(08:47):
see that coming out in the opinion is one whether
the Court even had the power to hear this case,
because if there's an independent and adequate state ground where
a state ice court reaches the decision, the US Supreme
Court will not have the ability to hear that case.
So that's the first prosecut issue. The second issue the
court was being asked to consider was whether, in fact,
(09:09):
this new information that came out constituted either a violation
of Napou versus Illinois, whether there's false testimony that the
prosecution left uncorrected, and also whether there was a violation
of Brady, where essentially prosecutors have to provide exculpatory evidence
to criminal defendants. Great.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Uh, so, I guess that that's that's that's perfectly to
talk about the opinions. There were three opinions that were
released by the court. The first was the holding opinion,
the majority opinion by Justice sodom Or. Can you touch
a little bit about how she ruled and the reasoning
(09:51):
behind her ruling?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah? Absolutely, And I think it's interesting at the outset
to note that Justice new Corsich didn't participate in this case.
That's like because while he was a judge on the
Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, previous iterations of mister Glossops
case came before the Tenth Circuit, and so Justice Gorsich
didn't rule at all or to take any part in
the consideration of this case. Now, Justice side in my
(10:14):
War in her opinion that was joined by everyone except
for Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, joined in part by
Justice Barrick, and we can talk about that more in
a minute, But essentially, Justice sign in my War said
that the procedural bar to the case, there was not
an adequate and independent state ground for the Court to
(10:36):
avoid ruling on the case. And the reason she did that,
I agree with Justice Thomas for rationale was somewhat convoluted
on this respect. But she said because the Oklahoma Court
of Criminal Appeals, essentially, in the process of deciding the
state law procedural issues, had to reject mister Glossop's napu claim,
which would be a federal claim, a claim arising from
(10:58):
federal law that aadequate federal ground existed essentially to allow
the court to take jurisdiction. Now, the reason napoo claim
is a federal claim is because essentially the Court said
in that case that the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process clause
requires that prosecutors essentially not knowingly solicit or allow false
(11:20):
testimony to stand uncorrected, particularly when it can have a
material impact on the jury's verdict. So that's the first
thing Justice Sonom Martter said. She said, the court had
the jurisdiction, you take the case, and then when she
got to the merits of the claim, she never ruled
on the Brady violation issue whether exculpatory evidence was not
provided to mister Blossipan's defense team. And the reason she
(11:40):
didn't rule in the Brady claim is because she said
that the napoo claim would resolve the case. And so
again for the reasons you know we've talked about, she
said that essentially this testimony about the lithium, justin sneed
taking it, why he received it, that that was that
was sufficient to raise a successful napoo claim in this circumstance.
(12:04):
And a lot of the discussion between the majority of
the descent turned around some very cryptic handwritten notes that
the prosecutor in the case had made concerning mister Sneath's lithium,
maybe a doctor at the prison that had prescribed it.
And there are different interpretations of what that meant. Certainly
the notes were kind of very quick scribbles you made
(12:26):
typically during the meeting. Justice Thomas actually appended an image
of the notes to his discent so everyone could see
just how cryptic they were in fact, and maybe not
as clear cut as just ae side of my Horse
suggested in her majority opinion. But because there was this
NAPU violation, according to the majority, the Court then ordered
a new trial for mister Glossop, and this was a
(12:48):
major point of contention, with Justice Thomas and the descent
essentially saying that this was not the correct remedy. And
this is where Justice Barrett disagreed with the majority as well.
She said, Justice Barrett, Justice Thomas, and Alito essentially took
issue with the Court ordering a new trial for mister Glossop.
And part of the reason Justice Thomas and Aledo in
particular took issue with that is because of the role
(13:11):
of the US Supreme Court versus state Supreme Court, so
the state's highest courts, where typically because the Supreme Court
does not exercise the same supervisory authority over state supreme
courts that it does over lower federal courts, that typically
whenever the US Supreme Court reverses a state Supreme court's
decision or the high decision from a state's highest court,
(13:34):
they'll simply send it back for further proceedings consistent with
this decision in this case, that usually would have meant
something like an evidentiary hearing would have needed to take place.
And so essentially this ruling that a new trial has required.
Justice Thomas, Justice Leado, and Justice bhar All argue that
this was an inappropriate remedy, something that was beyond the
(13:54):
Court's power to issue. And yet that's what Justice soughtamor
and the majority of justices ordered to take place in
this case.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Okay, so great, you covered every single opinion. Good and
I think I was when I was looking over the case,
I I did note that, you know, Justice Barrett did
uh concurring part and and uh and dissent in part.
(14:23):
So thank you for for clearing that up for us.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I guess let's turn to what are some of the
ramifications do you see, uh, due to this case going
forward for other cases? How do you see this at
changing changing the body of law?
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Well, it's hard to say exactly. At this point, I
think you are going to see more potentially habeas type
petitions coming out. Certainly a lot of this interplay between
what exactly is an independent and adequately state ground, particularly
in the habeas context, that has been significantly embodied. I
suspect the Court will have to address that again at
(15:03):
some point in the not too distant future. And then
also I think what remedies the Supreme Court can order
when it reverses a state Supreme Court's decision. That is
something that is going to have to be determined in
the future as well, because obviously, this order of a
new trial is just as Thomas pointed out, is a
somewhat very aggressive assertion of power by the US Supreme Court,
(15:25):
and it'll be We'll have to wait and see what
happens in future cases if the Court continues down this
path of ordering very specific relief, or if it will
simply continue to remand case for further proceedings consistent with
this decision. The last thing I'll note one of the
interesting shout outs from Justice Sotomeyer's opinion, and I think
was underlining a lot of the discussion but never really
(15:47):
explicitly talked about, was an ameekus brief that Paul Cassel filed. Now,
if you don't know Paul Kassel, he's a professor at
the University of Utah. He's a former federal judge himself,
and he writes a lot on crime and criminal justice,
and particularly he writes a lot in the realm of
victim's rights. And he actually filed a very powerful Meekis
brief on behalf of Barry Van Trees's family, highlighting some
(16:10):
of the problems with the physician, the Oklahoma Attorney General,
the Reed Smith Report, and many other previous iterations of
this case had taken. And he was arguing that mister
Van Trees's family had really received adequate opportunity to participate
in this case. He was also arguing that essentially those
handwritten notes, he very much agreed with Justice Thomas that
(16:33):
they certainly didn't constitute Brady violation or NAPU violation. But
if folks are interested in doing a little bit of
a deeper dive, particularly on how victims' rights statutes often
interplay with some of these criminal cases, Paul Cussell's brief
is a very excellent explanation of kind of the background
and some of the larger picture items related to these
(16:53):
types of cases.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Hi, thank you for the recommendation. I'll definitely check it out.
I guess just one more question, because you talked about
how the Court chose to chose a specific remedy. Have
they done so before in the history of the court
or is this something completely new that we haven't seen.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Well, according to Justice Thomas, this is a very aggressive
remedy that the Court typically, into my knowledge, has not
done before, even in these types of cases. And it's
hard to say why the Court chose to take this path. Obviously,
the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals essentially overruled essentially the
Attorney General's confession of error and said that the court
(17:38):
has a duty to decide for itself whether an error
has been committed. So I don't know if the Court
was essentially worried that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals
might not issue the specific judgment that it wanted, that
justices wanted the issue in a case, which, of course
is certainly it's prerogative as a separate and independent court
exercising separate stop authority aside from the Supreme Courts and so.
(18:04):
But yes, according to Justice Thomas and even Justice Barrett
and Herkin Currents noted, this was a very unusual and
very aggressive remedy to the Court ordered.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, thank you so much, Zach for joining us that
that was really, really excellent. I'm glad you were able
to clear some of the muddy waters there in this case.
Thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Us, of course, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Thank you for listening to this episode of SCO discst
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(18:50):
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(19:10):
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Speaker 3 (19:22):
This has been a FEDSOC audio production
Welcome to scot Discast, a project of the Federalist Society
for Law and Public Policy Studies. Our contributors join us
from around the country to bring you expert commentary on
US Supreme Court cases as they are argued and the
decisions are issued. The Federalist Society takes no position on
particular legal or public policy issues. All expressions are those
(00:23):
of the speaker.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, and welcome to scot Discast. I'm your host, Kyle
hammernis On, behalf of the Faculty division of the Federalist Society.
We are here today to discuss Gossip versus Oklahoma, which
is decided by the Court in a five to three
decision on February twenty fifth, twenty twenty five. It is
my honor to introduce our guests today, Zach Smith. Zach
(00:48):
is a legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court
and Appellate Advocacy Program in the Edwin Meses Third Center
for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He
previously served for several years and as an assistant United
States Attorney in the Northern District of Florida. Prior to that,
he spent two years as an associate in the Washington,
(01:09):
d c. Office of Clearly, gottlied Stein and Hamilton, which
he joined after clerking for the Honorable Emmett R. Cox
on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
And with that, I'll hand things over to Zech to
get a started by talking about how the case got
to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, thank you so much for having me on the
show today. And I think it goes without saying it's
always a pleasure to be able to do these types
of events. And look, the Glass of case is very
unique in a number of respects, particularly in terms of
it's very tortured procedural history. This is not a case
that has gone through the essentially normal Pelt process and
is at the Court. It's gone through an extensive period
(01:48):
of litigation on direct appeal and then also on collateral
appeal as well, and so to go all the way
back to the very beginning. This case started in nineteen
ninety seven when Justice Need murdered Barry van Trees. Barry
Van Trees owned two motels, one in Oklahoma, one in Tulsa,
and Justin Snead was working at one of those motels
(02:10):
along with Richard Glossop. Now Glossop managed one of those motels,
and the facts underlying this entire the background of the
murder are somewhat in dispute, but essentially what happened is
Van Trees showed up at one of his hotels and
while he was there, Sneed murdered him. Now. Sneed later
(02:32):
came out and said that Glossop essentially solicited him to
murder Barry Van Trees, and Glossop was worried that he
was going to be fired by Van Trees, allegedly for
maybe some financial improprieties, and this meant that Sneed himself
would probably end up homeless because he too was living
at the hotel. Now in the wake of the murder
(02:54):
of Van Trees, in the immediate aftermath, Glossop said he
didn't know where Van Trees was. He said he had
seen Van Trees the next morning, after he had been murdered.
He spoke to Van Trees's wife on the phone, assuring
her that everything was okay. And it turned out, of
course that that just wasn't true. And it wasn't until
several days later that a police officer showed up at
(03:17):
the hotel and found Van Trees's body in one of
the rooms, which, by the way, Snead and Glossop had
replaced broken glass in the room to try to hide
the crime. And so what happened, police arrested Snead. They
later arrested Glossop as well, and they initially charged Glossop
as an accessory after the fact of the murder, but
(03:38):
after talking to Sneed getting more factual information, they also
charged Richard Glossop with capital murder, essentially for soliciting Sneed
to commit the murder. Now, in terms of the trial,
Gossop was originally tried and convicted in nineteen ninety eight,
sentenced to death for his role in Barry Ventree murder.
(04:01):
But because of an ineffective assistance of Council claim that
was brought, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which is
the highest criminal court in Oklahoma, sent the case back
for retrial. So Richard Glossip was retried, convicted once again,
and once again sentenced to death after a trial in
two thousand and four. And so it's the proceedings of
(04:21):
that two thousand and four trial that are really an
issue in this collateral appeal. Now. Since his conviction in
two thousand and four, Glossop as I mentioned earlier, has
taken a number of direct appeals, he has filed a
number of collateral attacks on his sentence. And so the
collateral attack is that the Supreme Court considered and ruled
on was actually his fifth Habeus petition that he had
(04:42):
filed with Oklahoma's court system. So it's a long and
tortured history that this case took to ultimately end up
at the Supreme Court and for the Court to issue
this decision.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Great, Well, thank you so much for providing that really
necessary background, because it does seem, you know, a bit complicated.
So I guess as we turned toward the oral arguments
and which arguments each side was making, can you go
a little bit more into that and kind of give
us a clear picture of where each side stood.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah. So, as part of his tortured history along the way,
the Oklahoma legislature essentially responded to some of the political
pressure was receiving and commissioned a law from Readsmith to
write a report about whether certain things have been turned
over appropriately to Richard Gossip's council during the trial to
flag any other issues with the trial. And so reed
(05:36):
Smith wrote the report and issued report flagging a number
of issues, particularly as it relates to some evidence that
they alleged wasn't turned over, particularly as it relates to
some testimony that came out at trial. And so what
ultimately happened is shortly after Reed Smith wrote its report,
a new Oklahoma Attorney General also took office. Now the
(05:56):
Oklahoma Attorney General who took office, he turned over additional
evidence to Richard Gossop's counsel, which prompted the filing of
this fifth habeas petition with the cork And along the
way he turned over an eighth box. There were seven
boxes originally that he turned over. He turned over an
eighth box as well, which contained some handwritten notes from
(06:17):
the prosecutor that tried the case. And so after he
turned over this eighth box, Richard Gossop's council was alleging
that Justin Sneed, remember the man who actually murdered Barry Ventries,
offered what Glossop's council characterized as false testimony at trial. Essentially,
(06:39):
Justin snead he had mental health issues. He'd been prescribed
lithium to deal with bipolar disorder, and at trial, one
of the questions to ask was whether he had ever
been prescribed to lithium, and he said, yes, he took lithium,
but he said he took it either in the wake
of a toothache, or that he had been inadvertently prescribed
lithium because he had a head cold and was supposed
(06:59):
to get zoodafed. Now everyone knows the only reason someone
would be prescribed to lithium is for mental health issues.
But the fact that the prosecutors didn't go back and
clarify that Glossop said that was a false testimony that
essentially had been left uncorrected, which would be a violation
of the Supreme courtse holding in Napoo versus Illinois. So
(07:20):
the Oklahoma Attorney General, he actually conceded error in front
of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and asked for
mister Gossip's sentenced to be vacated and for Glossop to
receive a new trial. Now, for state procedural reasons, Oklahoma
has a many states, like the federal government, has a
(07:41):
statute that governs when a prisoner can bring a successive
habeas petition, And essentially the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals
said that Glossop hadn't met those very strict procedural requirements,
particularly because much of the information that now is being
disputed could have been discovered by his attorneys much much
earlier in the process, and they certainly had access to
much of the underlying information about these issues. But nonetheless
(08:05):
Oklahoma's attorney general conceded error. Now, it's interesting when the
case came to the Supreme Court, because Oklahoma's attorney general
had conceded error below and actually supported mister Glossop's efforts
to get a new trial. The Oklahoma Attorney General was
lined up on the same side as Richard Glossom. What
this meant is that the court had to appoint in
(08:27):
amikus someone to argue on behalf of the state to
actually uphold the integrity of this conviction. And I think
the individual of the court appointed did a very good
job at that. At the oral arguments, it was clear
that justices were divided on exactly how to deal with
this issue, and there were really two substant issues. The
court was grappling with an argument and I think you
(08:47):
see that coming out in the opinion is one whether
the Court even had the power to hear this case,
because if there's an independent and adequate state ground where
a state ice court reaches the decision, the US Supreme
Court will not have the ability to hear that case.
So that's the first prosecut issue. The second issue the
court was being asked to consider was whether, in fact,
(09:09):
this new information that came out constituted either a violation
of Napou versus Illinois, whether there's false testimony that the
prosecution left uncorrected, and also whether there was a violation
of Brady, where essentially prosecutors have to provide exculpatory evidence
to criminal defendants. Great.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Uh, so, I guess that that's that's that's perfectly to
talk about the opinions. There were three opinions that were
released by the court. The first was the holding opinion,
the majority opinion by Justice sodom Or. Can you touch
a little bit about how she ruled and the reasoning
(09:51):
behind her ruling?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah? Absolutely, And I think it's interesting at the outset
to note that Justice new Corsich didn't participate in this case.
That's like because while he was a judge on the
Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, previous iterations of mister Glossops
case came before the Tenth Circuit, and so Justice Gorsich
didn't rule at all or to take any part in
the consideration of this case. Now, Justice side in my
(10:14):
War in her opinion that was joined by everyone except
for Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, joined in part by
Justice Barrick, and we can talk about that more in
a minute, But essentially, Justice sign in my War said
that the procedural bar to the case, there was not
an adequate and independent state ground for the Court to
(10:36):
avoid ruling on the case. And the reason she did that,
I agree with Justice Thomas for rationale was somewhat convoluted
on this respect. But she said because the Oklahoma Court
of Criminal Appeals, essentially, in the process of deciding the
state law procedural issues, had to reject mister Glossop's napu claim,
which would be a federal claim, a claim arising from
(10:58):
federal law that aadequate federal ground existed essentially to allow
the court to take jurisdiction. Now, the reason napoo claim
is a federal claim is because essentially the Court said
in that case that the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process clause
requires that prosecutors essentially not knowingly solicit or allow false
(11:20):
testimony to stand uncorrected, particularly when it can have a
material impact on the jury's verdict. So that's the first
thing Justice Sonom Martter said. She said, the court had
the jurisdiction, you take the case, and then when she
got to the merits of the claim, she never ruled
on the Brady violation issue whether exculpatory evidence was not
provided to mister Blossipan's defense team. And the reason she
(11:40):
didn't rule in the Brady claim is because she said
that the napoo claim would resolve the case. And so
again for the reasons you know we've talked about, she
said that essentially this testimony about the lithium, justin sneed
taking it, why he received it, that that was that
was sufficient to raise a successful napoo claim in this circumstance.
(12:04):
And a lot of the discussion between the majority of
the descent turned around some very cryptic handwritten notes that
the prosecutor in the case had made concerning mister Sneath's lithium,
maybe a doctor at the prison that had prescribed it.
And there are different interpretations of what that meant. Certainly
the notes were kind of very quick scribbles you made
(12:26):
typically during the meeting. Justice Thomas actually appended an image
of the notes to his discent so everyone could see
just how cryptic they were in fact, and maybe not
as clear cut as just ae side of my Horse
suggested in her majority opinion. But because there was this
NAPU violation, according to the majority, the Court then ordered
a new trial for mister Glossop, and this was a
(12:48):
major point of contention, with Justice Thomas and the descent
essentially saying that this was not the correct remedy. And
this is where Justice Barrett disagreed with the majority as well.
She said, Justice Barrett, Justice Thomas, and Alito essentially took
issue with the Court ordering a new trial for mister Glossop.
And part of the reason Justice Thomas and Aledo in
particular took issue with that is because of the role
(13:11):
of the US Supreme Court versus state Supreme Court, so
the state's highest courts, where typically because the Supreme Court
does not exercise the same supervisory authority over state supreme
courts that it does over lower federal courts, that typically
whenever the US Supreme Court reverses a state Supreme court's
decision or the high decision from a state's highest court,
(13:34):
they'll simply send it back for further proceedings consistent with
this decision in this case, that usually would have meant
something like an evidentiary hearing would have needed to take place.
And so essentially this ruling that a new trial has required.
Justice Thomas, Justice Leado, and Justice bhar All argue that
this was an inappropriate remedy, something that was beyond the
(13:54):
Court's power to issue. And yet that's what Justice soughtamor
and the majority of justices ordered to take place in
this case.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Okay, so great, you covered every single opinion. Good and
I think I was when I was looking over the case,
I I did note that, you know, Justice Barrett did
uh concurring part and and uh and dissent in part.
(14:23):
So thank you for for clearing that up for us.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I guess let's turn to what are some of the
ramifications do you see, uh, due to this case going
forward for other cases? How do you see this at
changing changing the body of law?
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Well, it's hard to say exactly. At this point, I
think you are going to see more potentially habeas type
petitions coming out. Certainly a lot of this interplay between
what exactly is an independent and adequately state ground, particularly
in the habeas context, that has been significantly embodied. I
suspect the Court will have to address that again at
(15:03):
some point in the not too distant future. And then
also I think what remedies the Supreme Court can order
when it reverses a state Supreme Court's decision. That is
something that is going to have to be determined in
the future as well, because obviously, this order of a
new trial is just as Thomas pointed out, is a
somewhat very aggressive assertion of power by the US Supreme Court,
(15:25):
and it'll be We'll have to wait and see what
happens in future cases if the Court continues down this
path of ordering very specific relief, or if it will
simply continue to remand case for further proceedings consistent with
this decision. The last thing I'll note one of the
interesting shout outs from Justice Sotomeyer's opinion, and I think
was underlining a lot of the discussion but never really
(15:47):
explicitly talked about, was an ameekus brief that Paul Cassel filed. Now,
if you don't know Paul Kassel, he's a professor at
the University of Utah. He's a former federal judge himself,
and he writes a lot on crime and criminal justice,
and particularly he writes a lot in the realm of
victim's rights. And he actually filed a very powerful Meekis
brief on behalf of Barry Van Trees's family, highlighting some
(16:10):
of the problems with the physician, the Oklahoma Attorney General,
the Reed Smith Report, and many other previous iterations of
this case had taken. And he was arguing that mister
Van Trees's family had really received adequate opportunity to participate
in this case. He was also arguing that essentially those
handwritten notes, he very much agreed with Justice Thomas that
(16:33):
they certainly didn't constitute Brady violation or NAPU violation. But
if folks are interested in doing a little bit of
a deeper dive, particularly on how victims' rights statutes often
interplay with some of these criminal cases, Paul Cussell's brief
is a very excellent explanation of kind of the background
and some of the larger picture items related to these
(16:53):
types of cases.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Hi, thank you for the recommendation. I'll definitely check it out.
I guess just one more question, because you talked about
how the Court chose to chose a specific remedy. Have
they done so before in the history of the court
or is this something completely new that we haven't seen.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Well, according to Justice Thomas, this is a very aggressive
remedy that the Court typically, into my knowledge, has not
done before, even in these types of cases. And it's
hard to say why the Court chose to take this path. Obviously,
the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals essentially overruled essentially the
Attorney General's confession of error and said that the court
(17:38):
has a duty to decide for itself whether an error
has been committed. So I don't know if the Court
was essentially worried that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals
might not issue the specific judgment that it wanted, that
justices wanted the issue in a case, which, of course
is certainly it's prerogative as a separate and independent court
exercising separate stop authority aside from the Supreme Courts and so.
(18:04):
But yes, according to Justice Thomas and even Justice Barrett
and Herkin Currents noted, this was a very unusual and
very aggressive remedy to the Court ordered.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, thank you so much, Zach for joining us that
that was really, really excellent. I'm glad you were able
to clear some of the muddy waters there in this case.
Thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Us, of course, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Thank you for listening to this episode of SCO discst
SC Discust is the project of the Federalist Society, not
for profit educational organization of conservative and libertarian law students,
law professors, and lawyers, founded upon the principles that the
state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental
power is essential to our constitution, and that it is
(18:50):
emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say
what the law is, not what it should be. Don't
forget to subscribe to our podcast series, including SCO Discasts
Practice Group podcasts, on iTunes or Google Play. For an
archive of past podcasts, as well as audio and video
of past Federalist Society events, please visit our website at
(19:10):
FEDSOC dot org slash multimedia. That's f E d s
OC dot org slash multimedia.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
This has been a FEDSOC audio production
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