Richard Eugene Glossip (born February 9, 1963) is an American former prisoner who was on death row for over two decades at Oklahoma State Penitentiary after being convicted of commissioning the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese. The man who murdered Van Treese, Justin Sneed (age 19 when he committed the crime), had a "meth habit" and agreed to plead guilty in exchange for testifying against Glossip. Sneed received a life sentence without parole, avoiding the death penalty by his plea bargain. Glossip's case has attracted international attention due to the unusual nature of his conviction, namely that there was little or no corroborating evidence, with the first case against him described as "extremely weak" by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. On February 25, 2025, the US Supreme Court set aside Glossip's conviction in Glossip v. Oklahoma and ordered a new trial. On May 14, 2026, Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai set Glossip's bond at $500,000. She ordered him to live with his wife, wear an electronic monitoring device, abide by a curfew from 10 pm to 7 am, and forbid him from traveling outside the state.
Glossip is notable for his role as named plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case Glossip v. Gross, which ruled that executions carried out by a three-drug protocol of midazolam, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In September and October 2015, Glossip was granted three successive stays of execution due to questions about Oklahoma's lethal injection drugs after Oklahoma Department of Corrections officials used potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride to execute Charles Frederick Warner on January 15, 2015, contrary to protocol. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt ordered a multicounty grand jury investigation of the execution drug mix-up.
Murder of Barry Van Treese On January 7, 1997, Justin Sneed beat Barry Van Treese to death with a baseball bat.Liliana Segura & Jordan Smith, What Happened in Room 102, The Intercept (July 9, 2015). The killing occurred at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where Van Treese was the owner, Sneed was the maintenance man, and Glossip was the manager. In exchange for avoiding the death penalty, Sneed confessed and told police that Glossip had instructed him to commit the murder.
Glossip insisted on his actual innocence and refused to accept a plea bargain. In July 1998, an Oklahoma jury convicted Glossip of the murder and sentenced him to death. In 2001, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously threw out that conviction, calling the case "extremely weak" and finding Glossip had received unconstitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel.
In August 2004, a second Oklahoma jury convicted Glossip of the murder and sentenced him to death. Glossip complained that prosecutors had intimidated his defense attorney into resigning. However, in April 2007, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the death sentence, with two judges in the majority, one judge specially concurring, and two judges dissenting.Glossip v. Oklahoma, 157 P.3d 143, 2007 O.K. C.R. 12 (Okla. Crim. App. 2007). Glossip attracted the advocacy of Sister Helen Prejean, but failed to get the clemency board to consider letters from Sneed's family, who believed Sneed to be lying.
Innocence controversy Glossip's legal team asserts that Justin Sneed was addicted to methamphetamine at the time that he murdered Van Treese, and that he habitually broke into vehicles in the parking lot of the Best Budget Inn while he was employed as a maintenance man. Glossip's death sentence is controversial because he was convicted almost entirely on the testimony of Sneed, who confessed to bludgeoning Van Treese to death with an aluminum baseball bat by himself and who was spared a death sentence himself by implicating Glossip.
In 2015, Oklahoma City police released a 1999 police report showing that a box of evidence had been marked for destruction. The report was never provided to attorneys who represented Glossip in his second trial or his appeals, according to his new defense team. In an interview published the same day, Glossip's attorney, Donald Knight, criticised his previous attorneys, saying "They did a terrible job. Horrible. No preparation. No investigation."
On September 22, 2015, Glossip's attorneys filed papers referring to a July 1997 psychiatric evaluation of Sneed, in which he said he understood he was charged with murder in connection with a burglary and made no reference to Glossip's involvement.
On September 23, 2015, Glossip's attorneys filed papers asserting that two new witnesses were being intimidated. In affidavits, one witness had claimed that Sneed laughed about lying in court about Glossip's involvement; another said he was convinced based on his conversations with Sneed that Sneed acted alone.
On September 24, 2015, the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office filed papers stating that the claims of the new witnesses were "inherently suspect", and that the time it took Van Treese to die and whether blood loss contributed to his death did not affect the trial outcome, in response to a defense claim that the testimony of Dr. Chai Choi, who performed the autopsy, was incorrect.
On September 28, 2015, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted 3–2 to proceed with execution. Presiding Judge Clancy Smith wrote "While finality of judgment is important, the state has no interest in executing an actually innocent man. An evidentiary hearing will give Glossip the chance to prove his allegations that Sneed has recanted, or demonstrate to the court that he cannot provide evidence that would exonerate him." Judge Arlene Johnson wrote that the original trial was "deeply flawed" and an evidentiary hearing should be ordered.
On September 30, 2015, Glossip spoke to the UK's Sky News on the telephone from his cell as he was served his last meal. Glossip said that Sneed testified at trial that Glossip did not wear or own gloves, "And now he's on TV saying that I did. It continues to show the discrepancies in anything that Justin Sneed has to say." On the same day, Virgin CEO Richard Branson bought an advertisement in The Oklahoman newspaper which had campaigned against the execution, with Branson stating the evidence against Glossip is flawed and that "every person is deserving of a fair trial", adding, "Your state is about to execute a man whose guilt has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt." The United States Supreme Court denied a stay of execution. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that he would have granted a stay. Ultimately, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin did grant Glossip a stay of execution the same day, citing discrepancies with the lethal injection protocol (see next section).
In July 2022, Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board member Richard Smothermon, who had up to that point voted to deny clemency to every death row inmate seeking it, voted to recuse himself from voting because his wife had been a prosecutor on the case. In August 2022, 61 lawmakers urged Attorney General John O'Connor to support Glossip's request for a new hearing because without "support from O'Connor, the Court of Criminal Appeals is expected to reject Glossip's claims of innocence, as it has done before."
Kevin McDugle advocacy In 2022, Oklahoma state representative Kevin McDugle, a Republican, said "he would fight to end the death penalty if Glossip dies." He has been quoted as saying, "They can show me nothing that ties him, and the one thing they have is a witness that says that he was the one that told him to commit the murder. Guess who that witness was? The actual murderer that beat him with a baseball bat. He's the witness, and what did he get for that testimony? He got off of death row himself and got life in prison." In May 2023, McDugle accused the District Attorneys Council of applying "pressure across the system to protect their power" and claimed district attorneys are "deeply embedded" in Oklahoma's branches of government in his attempt to help Richard Glossip. The Council has also "actively sought to undermine Prater's successor, Vicki Behenna, the county's first female elected DA". Prater and the Council knows "that if the courts agree that Glossip's conviction should be overturned, it will be up to Behenna to decide whether to retry the case." McDugle worked with Dr. Phil to bring attention to Glossip's case. McDugle is quoted as saying "This case is no longer about justice. It's about power, pride, and politics." He has threatened to try to legislatively put a stop to the death penalty in Oklahoma if Glossip is executed.
In 2024, McDugle said he "believes that members of the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council had improper communications with the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board prior to Richard Glossip's clemency hearing in April 2023." District Attorney Jason Hicks criticized Attorney General Getner Drummond for sharing his views on the case. In other communications revealed, district attorneys referred to Drummond as a "douche", "complained among themselves that the attorney general had turned Glossip's clemency hearing into a 'circus, and accused Drummond of vying for a run for governor.
Oklahoma lethal injection protocol controversy On October 13, 2014, the Oklahoma Attorney General said the state did not have an adequate supply of execution drugs and delayed the execution of Glossip and two other inmates. On January 28, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court halted executions in Oklahoma until it decided on lethal injection drugs. However, in June 2015, the Supreme Court approved the use of Oklahoma's lethal injection mix in combination with midazolam (see sub-section below) to carry out executions, leading to a reinstatement of capital punishments in the state and a new execution date for Glossip.
Governor Fallin's stay of Glossip's execution on September 30, 2015, was motivated by the Department of Corrections having received potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride. The execution was reset for November 6, 2015.
On October 1, 2015, Attorney General Scott Pruitt asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to issue an indefinite stay of all scheduled executions in Oklahoma, citing the Department of Correction's acquisition of a drug contrary to protocol. The next day, the request was granted.
On October 6, 2015, Governor Mary Fallin said she hired an independent attorney, Robert McCampbell, to advise her on the legal process.
On October 8, 2015, it was reported that Oklahoma Corrections Department officials used potassium acetate to execute Charles Frederick Warner on January 15, 2015, contrary to protocol. An attorney representing Glossip and other Oklahoma death row inmates said logs from Warner's execution initialed by a prison staff member indicated the use of potassium chloride; however, an autopsy report showed 12 vials of potassium acetate were used.
According to a report on October 16, 2015, due to a grand jury investigation, it was likely the state would not conduct an execution for more than a year.
Midazolam controversy