Forty-four Republican and 17 Democratic legislators, amounting to more than a third of the Oklahoma state assembly, have written to attorney general John O’Connor pleading for a new hearing in the case of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed next month who many now fear may be an innocent man, reports The Guardian.
Glossip was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of Oklahoma City Best Budget motel owner Barry Van Treese, despite the fact that another man confessed tro the crime. Justin Sneed, the motel’s maintenance worker, admitted that he had beaten Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. Sneed later turned state’s witness, accusing Glossip, who was the motel manager, of having ordered the murder and, as a result, avoided the death penalty. Glossip’s scheduled execution forms part of an extraordinary glut of death warrants that have been issued by Oklahoma in recent weeks following court permission to go ahead with 25 executions at a rate of almost one a month between now and December 2024.