Two weeks after granting Richard Glossip a last-minute stay of execution, the Oklahoma court of criminal appeals has rejected all of his attorney’s appeals and confirmed his scheduled death by lethal injection at 3pm local time on Wednesday.

The court delayed Glossip’s 16 September execution just hours before his sentence was to be carried out after lawyers and supporters submitted new evidence they said showed his innocence of the 1997 murder of his boss at a hotel in Oklahoma City.



On Monday, the court ruled 3-2 that the new evidence – including affidavits arguing that Glossip’s alleged accomplice was the actual murderer and mastermind of the killing and had recanted accusations against Glossip – did not significantly change the narrative of events on which Glossip was convicted.

“This evidence merely builds upon evidence previously presented to this court,” Judge David Lewis wrote in his opinion.

Glossip’s case has attracted high-profile attention from celebrities and activists such as Sister Helen Prejean and Susan Sarandon, and was featured on an episode of Dr Phil. An activist on death row, Glossip was a plaintiff in a supreme court case challenging the constitutionality of midazolam, the controversial lethal injection drug due to be used in his execution on Wednesday.

“This case splintered the court of criminal appeals – a 3-2 vote. Two judges believed a further stay of execution and a hearing on innocence was required on the facts. We should all be deeply concerned about an execution under such circumstances,” said Glossip attorney Donald Knight.

“We will continue to fight for Richard Glossip,” Prejean wrote on Twitter.



In his dissent, presiding judge Clancy Smith wrote that given the evidence presented, he would grant a 60-day stay and order a new evidentiary hearing. “While finality of judgment is important,” he wrote, “the state has no interest in executing an actually innocent man.”

Richard Glossip is scheduled to die on Wednesday, Photograph: AP

Glossip was convicted of the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese at the Best Budget Inn that Glossip managed. There was no physical evidence connecting him to the scene of the brutal beating that killed Van Treese, but he was convicted in large part on the testimony of Justin Sneed, a 19-year-old maintenance man who admitted to killing Van Treese but claimed Glossip was the mastermind behind the crime. Glossip’s attorneys have maintained that Sneed was coerced into implicating Glossip, stressing that it was interrogators who first introduced his name, and that Sneed received a lighter life sentence for his cooperation.

Glossip’s attorneys had earlier announced plans to file more records with the court on Monday. Knight told the Guardian the decision has not diminished their resolve. “We are not done. We are continuing to weigh our options,” he said, though he would not elaborate on whether those options include an appeal to the US supreme court. Knight said that the two-person dissent was gratifying, and that “We continue to believe in our client’s innocence.”

Last week, Glossip’s counsel submitted notarized affidavits from Michael Scott and Joe Tapley, inmates at Joseph Harp correctional center with Sneed, who together claimed Sneed said he acted alone to rob Van Treese, and bragged about setting up Glossip. The day after the affidavits went public and two days before the state filed its most recent response, Scott and Tapley were accused of probation violations.

Scott was arrested and then interrogated by Oklahoma County district attorney David Prater, even though he was arrested in Rogers County.

Rogers County district attorney, Matt Ballard, told Fox 25 Prater’s office had reached out earlier that week, and “just asked to be notified if we made contact with Mr Scott”. Ballard denied coordinating the filings with Prater, but did say that, following the call from the Oklahoma County district attorney’s office, Rogers County has tried to make contact with Scott, who had not checked in with them for three months.

“We tried to contact his mother this week and she lied about his whereabouts, about returning our phone calls and based on that behavior, we elected at that time to proceed with the warrant,” Ballard told Fox 25.

While the state did not address witness intimidation claims in its most recent filing, it called Scott and Tapley’s statements “inherently suspect”, and pointed to the drug use and rap sheets of both witnesses as evidence they could not be trusted.

The state said that Tapley – who claimed that Sneed, a former cellmate, told him he acted alone to kill Van Treese for his money – may have spoken to Sneed while the two were “under the influence of drugs”, and noted that his criminal history includes grand larceny, rape and burglary, among other crimes.

In its filings, the state described Tapley’s statement as “the ‘inherently suspect’ affidavit of an individual who has been repeatedly convicted of crimes involving deceit”, and noted that nearly two decades had passed before Tapley came forward. Similarly, the state described Scott as an“admitted liar, drug abuser and thief”.

Glossip’s attorneys say that these characterizations of Tapley and Scott could just as easily be used to discredit Sneed.



“If Tapley and Scott are unreliable, then Sneed is even more unreliable,” Knight, told the Guardian.



Glossip’s attorneys say Sneed, in police interrogation and at trial, had given “many accounts” of Glossip’s motive, including that “he was going to rent rooms off the books and keep money back and everything and slide me some on the side” and “Richard was saying with Van Treese out of the way he could con the widow into letting him run both motels, and I could manage one”. At trial prosecutors argued that Glossip wanted to kill Van Treese before he could fire him for shortages in accounting.

Glossip’s attorneys have long stressed the fluctuating narratives of Sneed as evidence that his story is false. On Monday, they maintained Sneed’s version of events to be “lies”, and say the information released earlier “continues to be true”.

In the decision on Monday, the Oklahoma court of criminal appeals found that “even with this ‘new’ evidence … Sneed’s testimony is still corroborated. None of the trial witnesses have recanted their testimony, and Glossip has presented no credible evidence that the witnesses gave falsified testimony at trial.”



The state’s attorney general and governor, both Republicans, praised the court’s decision on Monday.

“Now, our attention and support can be given to the family of Barry Van Treese, who has waited 18 long years for justice to be served for his brutal murder,” attorney general Scott Pruitt said in a statement.

Glossip “has now had multiple trials, seventeen years of appeals, and three stays of his execution,” governor Mary Fallin said. “Over and over again, courts have rejected his arguments and the information he has presented to support them.”