Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai set bail at $500,000 on May 14 for Richard Glossip, the man at the center of a 1997 murder-for-hire case that has kept him on death row for decades. Glossip is expected to be able to post bond, which would free him for the first time in about 30 years if he is released.
The decision gives the 54-year-old a path out of custody while he waits for a third trial in the killing of Barry Van Treese, an Oklahoma City motel owner who was found beaten to death in Room 102 of the Best Budget Inn on Jan. 7, 1997. Prosecutors say Glossip arranged the killing to avoid being fired over embezzlement. His attorneys said the judge rejected the state’s claim that there is a strong case for guilt and that Glossip now has a chance to taste freedom while his defense team keeps pushing for justice after the U.S. Supreme Court found serious misconduct by state prosecutors.
The case has followed a brutal legal arc. Glossip was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals threw out that conviction in 2001 because of problems with his defense lawyer. He was convicted again at a 2004 retrial, then came within three hours of execution on Sept. 30, 2015, before a doctor discovered that a pharmacist had supplied the wrong drug for the lethal injection and the execution was called off. Last year, the Supreme Court threw out his conviction after Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond concluded that trial attorneys had hidden evidence that might have led to an acquittal.
That ruling did not end the state’s case. Leslie Berger, speaking for prosecutors, said they disagree with the court’s decision and remain focused on retrying the case and securing a third conviction. She said the question of Glossip’s guilt or innocence will again be decided by a jury of Oklahoma citizens, not a judge. The state still points to Justin Sneed, who confessed to killing Van Treese with a baseball bat in the motel room and said Glossip pressured him into the killing and offered him $10,000. Sneed was the key witness against Glossip at the first two trials and is expected to testify again.
For Glossip, the bail order is the biggest break in a case that has already produced three last meals, nine separate scheduled executions and years of litigation over what happened in that motel room. For the state, it is a pause, not a retreat. The next major fight is the third trial, where the same killing, the same witness and the same question of who ordered the crime are headed back before another Oklahoma jury.
