Oklahoma’s Richard Glossip, who was nearly executed 3 times, granted bond while awaiting retrial
An Oklahoma judge granted leave to a former death row inmate on Thursday. Richard Glossip He will be released on bail while awaiting a retrial for a 1997 murder that brought him to the brink of death. three separate times.
The decision paves the way for Glossip, 63, to be released from prison for the first time since his arrest nearly 30 years ago. Last year, the US Supreme Court vacated his conviction, and his long-standing claims of innocence received support from Kim Kardashian and other prominent figures.
Judge Natalie Mai set a $500,000 bench setting bond. Glossip must wear an electronic monitoring device and will not be allowed outside of Oklahoma. He must also not have contact with any witnesses in the case or use any drugs or alcohol.
It was not clear Thursday when Glossip would be published. His attorney, Donald Knight, said he only needs to put down 10%, or $50,000, and the process could take two or three days.
Knight also suggested that Glossip relied on contributions to raise the money.
“Mr. Glossip has many supporters and we hope those supporters will be able to afford bail,” Knight said.
Glossip was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in Oklahoma City in what prosecutors alleged was a murder-for-hire plot.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that prosecutors’ decision to allow a key witness to testify they knew to be false violated Glossip’s constitutional right to a fair trial.
Glossip remains behind bars after Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced the state would try it again He is tried on murder charges but is not sentenced to death again.
“The court fully expects that the state will diligently prosecute the case going forward and that the defense will provide strong representation for Glossip,” the judge wrote in his decision. “The court hopes that a new trial without errors will provide all parties involved and the citizens of Oklahoma the closure they deserve.”
At the time of the execution, courts in Oklahoma set nine different execution dates for Glossip, and he came so close to being executed that he ate his last three meals separately. In fact, in 2015, he was kept in a cell next to Oklahoma’s execution chamber, strapped to a gurney and waiting to die by lethal injection.
But the scheduled time for his execution came and went. Behind the walls of Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Prison officials were trying After learning about one of the lethal drugs they took to perform the procedure did not match execution protocols. The drug mixture is almost seven-year moratorium on executions in Oklahoma.
“Mr. Glossip now has a chance to taste freedom as his defense team continues to seek justice on his behalf against a system that the United States Supreme Court found guilty of serious misconduct by state prosecutors,” Knight said.
Glossip’s case gained international attention after her real-life take on the case of actress Susan Sarandon, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean’s fight to save a man on death row in Louisiana in the 1995 movie “Dead Man Walking.” Glossip’s case was also featured in the 2017 documentary film “Killing Richard Glossip.”
“Richard and I are both grateful for the court’s decision,” Glossip’s wife, Lea, said in a message to The Associated Press. “We prayed for this day”
