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richard glossip
DeSantis Death Penalty Spree Fuels Surge in US Executions
The Florida governor approved the executions of six people this year, and the state imposed five new death sentences.
Dec 01, 2023
Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis made a return to capital punishment in his state a key element of his "tough on crime" campaign messaging this past year, and the result was an overall increase in the use of the death penalty in the United States, according to a new annual report.
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) found that although a majority of U.S. states—29 of them—have now either abolished the death penalty or enacted a moratorium on executions, the number of people killed by state governments rose from 18 in 2022 to 25 in 2023.
The group attributed the rise to Florida's return to capital punishment after a four-year hiatus, with DeSantis moving forward with the executions of six people—the highest number in the state since 2014.
The state's new pattern of putting Floridians to death showed no sign of slowing down in the coming year, as it also imposed five new death sentences—the most of any state in 2023.
The DPIC catalogued other laws signed by DeSantis this year as he joined the Republican presidential primary race, in which he is currently trailing former Republican President Donald Trump by more than 47 points, with an average of 12.6% of Republicans backing him according to the latest polls.
In April Florida passed a law allowing the state to execute people convicted of sexual battery of a child under the age of 12 in cases in which the victim is not killed—a law that conflicts with a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a similar statute in Louisiana.
DeSantis also approved a law giving Florida the lowest threshold in the U.S. for permitting juries to sentence a convicted criminal to death, allowing a death sentence if only eight out of 12 jurors agree. Only Alabama and Florida allow non-unanimous juries to impose a death sentence, and Alabama's threshold is 10 jurors.
Florida also holds the country's record for the highest number of exonerations from death row, with 30 people exonerated—the majority after being sentenced by non-unanimous juries.
"It should be hard to send someone to the death penalty," Randolph Bracy, a former Democratic Florida state senator who pushed to require a unanimous jury vote for death sentences, told The New York Times when DeSantis signed the bill. "Florida has the highest rate of wrongful convictions, I think, in the country. We needed that threshold to make sure that we were doing the right thing."
As DeSantis' policies led to an increase in executions in the U.S., the DPIC reported that the Florida governor is out of step with a growing number of Americans. For the first time this year, Gallup found that 50% of Americans believe the death penalty is administered unfairly, while only 47% believe it is used fairly.
"That important change can also be seen in the unprecedented show of support for death-sentenced prisoners from conservative lawmakers and elected officials this year, some of whom now oppose use of the death penalty in their state," said Robin M. Maher, executive director of DPIC.
Richard Glossip, who was convicted of a 1997 murder in Oklahoma and sentenced to death earlier this year, was issued a stay of execution in May after the state's Republican attorney general joined campaigners who had long advocated for Glossip's life to be spared.
The DPIC found that a majority of the people who were executed in 2023—79% of whom had impairments such as brain injuries, serious childhood trauma, or developmental disabilities—would likely not have received death sentences had they been tried today, "due to significant changes in the law, prosecutorial decision-making, and public attitudes over the past few decades."
"Today," said the group, "they would have powerful arguments for life sentences and decisions from juries who better understand the effects of mental illness, developmental impairments, and severe trauma."
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Abolish the Death Penalty and a Touch of Hope for Richard Glossip
Despite a growing consensus that Glossip is actually innocent, Oklahoma’s capital punishment “justice” system remains determined to kill him.
May 13, 2023
Richard Glossip has been on Oklahoma’s death row for 25 years, convicted of masterminding the 1997 beating death of Barry Van Treese, the owner of a motel he managed. While Glossip has maintained his innocence, he’s faced nine separate execution dates. Just weeks ago, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted to allow Glossip’s scheduled May 18th execution to proceed. Then, last week, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Glossip a temporary stay of execution pending its review of his case. Despite a growing consensus that Glossip is actually innocent, Oklahoma’s capital punishment “justice” system remains determined to kill him.
But not all officials are on board: Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and state Representative Kevin McDugle, both Republicans, argue Glossip was denied a fair trial. McDugle watched documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s series, “Killing Richard Glossip,” based in part on investigative reporting by Intercept journalists Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith. McDugle concluded the state has no real proof of Glossip’s guilt.
Sister Helen Prejean wants to see the death penalty abolished outright, nationally. “All the other guys on death row that are lined up for execution, they don’t have teams like this working for them. What is going to happen to them?”
“The one thing they have is a witness that says that he [Glossip] was the one that told him to commit the murder,” McDugle told Public Radio Tulsa in April, speaking of the prosecution’s reliance on a single witness, Justin Sneed, who confessed to Van Treese’s 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. They have zero proof outside of that.”
Renowned anti-death-penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean has counseled death row prisoners for decades. She wrote the book “Dead Man Walking,” made into a movie that earned actor Susan Sarandon an Oscar for her portrayal of Prejean. Prejean first spoke to Glossip in 2015.
“It was a phone call,” Prejean said this week on the Democracy Now! news hour, describing her first conversation with Glossip, after learning how thin the prosecution’s case was. “He’s a gentle guy. Here’s what I hear: ‘Sister Helen, I apologize. I know I didn’t ask your permission or anything, but I think Oklahoma is really serious about killing me. And would you be with me?’ So I go, ‘Well, sure, I’ll be with you, Richard.’”
Sister Prejean described the immediate impact of that call:
I get in bed that night [and] bolt awake at 2:00 in the morning and realize, in my own conscience, ‘I can’t just accompany that man and be there when he’s killed. I know enough about how broken this system is. He may really be innocent.’ Right away I made two phone calls. One was to Susan Sarandon, my buddy, who really cares about justice…and the other call was to the Vatican, to Pope Francis: ‘Would the Vatican, please, try to do what it could to speak up for Richard Glossip?’
Rep. McDugle joined 33 other Oklahoma state legislators, including 27 Republicans, demanding the Governor and the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board investigate Glossip’s case. When that didn’t happen, they recruited the Reed Smith law firm for a pro-bono independent inquiry. Between June and September 2022, the law firm released four reports – totaling over 400 pages – detailing flaws in the prosecution’s case and, importantly, Justin Sneed’s attempts to recant his testimony implicating Glossip and the prosecution’s efforts to stop him from recanting.
The case is now before the pro-capital punishment, conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court. Oklahoma Attorney General Drummond filed a brief with the court which included the unusual admission that “the State of Oklahoma recently made the difficult decision to confess error and support vacating the conviction of Richard Glossip.” Even though the Attorney General feels this way, critical institutions–courts, the pardon board, the corrections department–are all locked in to the process that is currently set for execution.
Should the Supreme Court fail to intervene, Oklahoma’s “machinery of death” will move forward, despite the Attorney General’s emphatic objections. Richard Glossip would be served his last supper – for the fourth time – then killed with a lethal injection.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt holds clemency power over state’s 42 death row prisoners. Oklahoma has one or two executions scheduled per month over the next 18 months. Stitt could still grant clemency to Glossip or commute his sentence to life with or without the possibility of parole, removing the threat of execution.
Sister Helen Prejean wants to see the death penalty abolished outright, nationally. “All the other guys on death row that are lined up for execution, they don’t have teams like this working for them. What is going to happen to them,” she asked.
There are over 2,400 prisoners on death row in the United States. The time has come to abolish the broken, unjust system of capital punishment.
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Richard Glossip Gets Stay of Execution From US Supreme Court
"There is nothing more harrowing than the thought of executing a man who the state now admits has never received a fair trial," said a lawyer for Glossip.
May 05, 2023
Anti-death penalty campaigners applauded Friday as the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution in the case of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate who has maintained he had nothing to do with the 1997 murder of his boss at a motel in Oklahoma City.
Glossip's case has been a focus of rights advocates for years, and Oklahoma's Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, has recently joined efforts to stop his execution, which had been scheduled for May 18.
Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself because he previously heard the case as an appellate judge, and the other eight justices appeared to unanimously decide in favor of staying the execution.
Glossip was convicted of arranging for another motel employee, Justin Sneed, to kill Barry Van Treese, the establishment's owner, in 1997. Two investigations since his conviction have raised questions about the prosecutors' case against Glossip; one found that Sneed had lied during his testimony and another pointed to destruction of evidence.
Last month, Drummond asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) to vacate Glossip's conviction and death sentence and open new proceedings regarding the case, but the court unanimously refused.
"The court waved away overwhelming evidence of innocence and decided that, actually, Glossip is guilty—and must be put to death on May 18," wrote journalist Mark Joseph Stern at Slate last month. "The decision makes a sadistic mockery of the judiciary's supposed role as a guardian of individual liberties. It favors vengeance over justice."
Issuing a temporary stay of execution on Friday, the Supreme Court said it would soon determine whether to take Glossip's case.
"We are very grateful to the U.S. Supreme Court for doing the right thing in stopping Richard Glossip's unlawful execution," said Don Knight, an attorney for Glossip. "There is nothing more harrowing than the thought of executing a man who the state now admits has never received a fair trial. Thankfully, for the time being, Mr. Glossip is out of peril."
"Our hope is that the court will reverse the decision of the OCCA," said Knight, "and vacate Mr. Glossip's conviction once and for all."
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Autopsy Shows Oklahoma Used Wrong Drug to Kill Man Who Said His Body Was 'On Fire'
State ACLU chapter says events show 'incompetence'
Oct 08, 2015
Oklahoma correctional officials in January used the wrong drug to execute Charles Warner, who said his body was "on fire" after the injection was administered, according to his autopsy report released Thursday.
The Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner revealed that officials had used potassium acetate to stop Warner's heart--violating state protocols, which require potassium chloride.
Oklahoma correctional officers received the same incorrect drug on September 30 ahead of the scheduled execution of Richard Glossip, who received a stay from Governor Mary Fallin after she was made aware of the erroneous delivery.
Shortly thereafter, Attorney General Scott Pruitt launched an investigation into those circumstances and confirmed to the Oklahoman that his inquiry would stretch back to cover "any and all actions prior, relevant to the use of potassium acetate and potassium chloride."
Fallin also said that she supported a separate investigation into Warner's death and would delay any executions until her office has "complete confidence" in the state's justice system. She said she had been unaware that potassium acetate had been used to kill Warner until the wrong pharmaceuticals arrived again, this time for Glossip.
Glossip's attorney, Dale Baich, said the news shows that Oklahoma cannot be trusted to undertake the death penalty.
"The State's disclosure that it used potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride during the execution of Charles Warner yet again raises serious questions about the ability of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to carry out executions," Baich said. "The execution logs for Charles Warner say that he was administered potassium chloride, but now the State says potassium acetate was used. We will explore this in detail through the discovery process in the federal litigation."
ACLU-Oklahoma said the latest error illustrated the "incompetence" of the state's justice system.
"If Oklahomans had any doubt that their government can competently exercise its greatest authority over human life, then those doubts should be magnified ten-fold today," said Ryan Kiesel, ACLU-Oklahoma executive director. "We fail to understand how anyone could say the events of the past several months resemble justice."
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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Lethal Injection Suit, But Won't Stay Executions
Men scheduled to die say Oklahoma's lethal injection method violates constitutional rights
Jan 26, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court has announced it will hear a case on the constitutionality of Oklahoma's death penalty drug cocktail, which critics say causes intense pain during executions.
The court will hear the case of Glossip v. Gross, filed last summer by 21 inmates on Oklahoma's death row who say the lethal injection violates their Eighth Amendment rights. Up until last week, the case was known as Warner v. Gross, but was changed after plaintiff Charles Warner was executed on January 15.
The new lead petitioner, Richard Glossip, is set to die Thursday. He was convicted of a 1997 contract killing. Warner, Richard Glossip, and two other men on death row were all denied stays of execution this month. As the New York Times explains, "It takes the vote of five justices to stay an execution, but only four to agree to hear a case."
The case argues that the first of the drugs administered in the procedure--midazolam--is not strong enough to sedate the body for the two injections that follow, including one to induce paralysis and one to stop the heart.
Dale Baich, an attorney representing the three inmates, said Friday he was pleased that the court was taking on the case.
"The drug protocol used in Oklahoma is not capable of producing a humane execution, even if it is administered properly," Baich said. "The time is right for the court to take a careful look at this important issue, particularly given the bungled executions that have occurred since states started using these novel and experimental drug protocols."
Warner was scheduled to die in April 2014, but his execution was delayed over concerns about the drugs used in the cocktail after the botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett earlier that same night. Lockett's execution, which lasted 43 minutes and saw him writhing and groaning on the gurney after being declared unconscious, prompted Oklahoma legislators to put a halt on lethal injections to conduct an investigation into those chemicals. The state then resumed the practice after increasing the dosage in the lethal cocktail. The drugs used were not changed.
Prior to Warner's death, medical experts testified at an evidenciary hearing that the effects of higher doses of midazolam are too unpredictable and may not be enough to induce a coma. Midazolam has been used in several other lethal injections in other states, including Florida, Ohio, and Arizona; without a proper sedative, medical experts said, the drugs used to stop the heart will cause excruciating pain.
A state witness defended the use of midazolam in a Supreme Court brief on Oklahoma's use of the protocol, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the dissenting opinion in Warner's case, said the witness's opinion was suspect. He "cited no studies, but instead appeared to rely primarily on the web site www.drugs.com," Sotomayor wrote.
The court denied Warner's stay in a 5-4 vote. During his execution, Warner did not appear to be in physical distress, but said in his dying moments, "My body is on fire."
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