A former Oklahoma death row prisoner who had been incarcerated for nearly 30 years and whose execution was halted several times pleaded guilty to a lesser charge this week, his attorney said.
Richard Glossip had been sentenced to death in the 1997 killing of Barry Van Treese, the owner of an Oklahoma City motel where Glossip worked. Van Treese was beaten with a baseball bat. Glossip has long claimed his innocence in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire plot.
Glossip’s co-worker at the motel, Justin Sneed, confessed to killing Van Treese but testified that Glossip paid him to do it. Sneed was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Glossip on Thursday pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact in exchange for the prosecution dropping its first-degree murder charge against him. Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, said he will be sentenced in December.
“In May, the court determined that Rich could be released on bond, and since that time he has been living a peaceful and law-abiding life,” Knight said in a statement. “In 1997, had Rich been given the longest possible sentence for the crime he pleaded guilty to today, he would never have been on death row and would have been released ten years ago. We look forward to an opportunity to show why returning him to custody would not serve the interests of justice, and to ending this nightmare for Rich and all concerned.”
The plea agreement is the latest twist in a decades-long saga that at one point led Oklahoma to put its lethal injection protocols on indefinite hold for a review.
Since being sentenced to death in 1998, Glossip has been scheduled to die nine times and served three last meals only to have his execution halted by the state, sometimes at the 11th hour.
Glossip’s scheduled execution was repeatedly postponed in 2015 amid legal back-and-forth over the kinds of drugs the state used in its execution protocols.
That January, after Glossip was served a last meal, the U.S. Supreme Court halted his execution and the executions of two other prisoners while considering Oklahoma’s use of midazolam, a sedative, during executions. In June 2015, the court upheld the state’s use of the drug.
But hours before Glossip’s scheduled execution on Sept. 16, 2015, the state appeals court granted a two-week extension to review new evidence. Then, on Sept. 30, 2015, as prison officials were again preparing to execute Glossip, the state’s governor issued a stay because the execution drugs being used did not match Oklahoma’s execution procedures.
Oklahoma then put state executions on hold from 2015 through 2020 to review its lethal injection protocols.
In May 2023, the Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for Glossip at the request of the state and Glossip’s legal team, who alleged that the prosecution had known that Sneed made false statements in court. Glossip had been scheduled to be put to death less than two weeks later.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered a new trial for Glossip in 2025. He was released from prison on bond in May 2026. Oklahoma’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, had previously said he planned to try Glossip again for murder but would not pursue the death penalty.
Drummond said in a statement that while allowing Glossip to plead guilty to the lesser charge “was a difficult decision for me and, more importantly, the Van Treese family, we both recognize that this path ensures a conviction related to Mr. Van Treese’s murder and gives us the best chance to secure additional prison time for Glossip.”
Drummond said he hopes the court will consider sentencing Glossip to the maximum 45-year sentence in prison.
Katie Mettler contributed to this report.
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