Gov. Kevin Stitt’s order is a 60-day stay of execution beginning on Sept. 22, which, until Tuesday, was Glossip’s latest execution date. The order reschedules the execution for Dec. 8, more than two weeks after the stay expires. The stay “is being granted to allow the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals time to address a pending legal proceeding,” the order states. “We are extremely grateful for Governor Stitt’s thoughtful and compassionate decision to grant a 60-day stay of Rich’s execution date,” Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, said in a news release Tuesday. Glossip, a motel manager, was convicted of manslaughter in the 1997 death of his boss, Barry Van Treese, based on prosecutors’ theory that he ordered the killing. Prosecutors acknowledged that a different employee, then-19-year-old maintenance worker Justin Sneed, killed Van Treese with a baseball bat in Oklahoma City, but told jurors that Sneed did it in a plan concocted by Glossip. Glossip maintained that he had nothing to do with it. Sneed was sentenced to life in prison for testifying against Glossip. Glossip was initially convicted and sentenced to death in 1998, but this was overturned in 2001 due to ineffective defense attorneys. Glossip was convicted at a second trial in 2004 and again sentenced to death. In a 2015 CNN interview, Glossip said he believed Sneed framed him to avoid the death penalty. In February, citing years of concern about the conviction, some Oklahoma state lawmakers asked the law firm Reed Smith to investigate the Glossip case, in which the firm had no previous involvement. The company released a report in June that said a “sloppy and sloppy” police investigation and damaged evidence led to Glossip’s conviction. He concluded that “the 2004 trial cannot be relied upon to support a murder-for-hire conviction. Nor can it provide a basis for the government to take the life of Richard E. Glossip.” “Our conclusion is that no reasonable jury, hearing the full record and the undisclosed facts detailed in this report, would have convicted Richard Glossip of murder,” Reed Smith’s attorney, Stan Perry, said in June. meals, according to his attorney. In September 2015, Glossip was minutes from execution when then-Gov. Mary Fallin postponed it over concerns that the state supplied an unapproved drug for the procedure. CNN’s Rebekah Riess, Amy Simonson, Andy Rose and Jarrod Wardwell contributed to this report.
