The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted the certiorari petition regarding the conviction of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip. The court will decide whether Glossip’s conviction should be set aside based on the argument that he did not receive a fair trial, which the state’s attorney general has conceded.
Oklahoma state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who took office in 2023, based his decision to confess error and support Glossip’s request to vacate Glossip’s conviction on newly discovered evidence, some of which had been withheld from defense counsel for 25 years. Many of these new findings were uncovered by Reed Smith’s independent investigation into Glossip’s case, later corroborated in a thorough review of the case conducted by Drummond’s appointed special counsel, Rex Duncan.
“We are thankful that the Court agreed to review Richard Glossip’s case. Mr. Glossip still awaits justice after more than 25 years in prison,” said Reed Smith partner David Weiss, who co-leads the firm’s investigative team with partner Stan Perry and senior pro bono counsel Chris Walters. “As we have long concluded in our independent investigation, no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Mr. Glossip.”
The court’s grant of review follows its May 5, 2023 grant of a stay of Glossip’s May 18, 2023 execution date, the ninth such execution date for Glossip over the many years he has been on Oklahoma’s death row. The Supreme Court will now receive briefings on the case, which will likely be argued in the court’s next session this coming October.
About the Reed Smith investigation
Reed Smith began its independent, third-party investigation into Glossip’s case in February 2022. Working with lawyers from Jackson Walker and Crowe & Dunlevy, a Reed Smith team of more than 30 lawyers, three investigators and two paralegals have devoted more than 4,000 hours, pro bono, to this investigation.
The team has since released five addendums to its initial report detailing additional findings in the ongoing investigation, including evidence withheld by state prosecutors for 25 years and only released after Drummond took office.
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