OKLAHOMA, USA — Oklahoma has set execution dates nine times for death row inmate Richard Glossip. The state has fed him three “last meals.” Glossip has even been married twice while awaiting execution.
Somehow, he’s still here, even after the Supreme Court rejected his challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection process nine years ago.
Now, in another twist, Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general has joined with Glossip in seeking to overturn his murder conviction and death sentence in a 1997 murder-for-hire scheme. This unlikely turn has put Glossip’s case back at the Supreme Court, where the justices will hear arguments Wednesday.
The court’s review of Glossip’s case comes amid a decline in the use of the death penalty and a drop in new death sentences in recent years. At the same time, though, the court’s conservative majority has generally been less open to efforts to halt executions.
It’s exceedingly rare for prosecutors to acknowledge they, or perhaps their predecessors, made serious mistakes that led to the imposition of death sentences.
But that’s precisely what Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond did, in calling for Glossip to get a new trial.
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