An Oklahoma judge on Thursday granted bond to former death row inmate Richard Glossip as he awaits a retrial in the 1997 murder case that put him on the brink of execution on three separate occasions.
The ruling paves the way for the 63-year-old to be released from custody for the first time since his arrest nearly three decades ago.
“Today, we finally see some level of justice for Mr. Glossip,” David Weiss, who co-led Reed Smith’s pro bono investigation, told The Independent. “This case was heavily flawed from the outset, and murder charges never should have been filed against Mr. Glossip, who has suffered from two unfair trials and been on verge of execution three times.”
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction last year, and his claims of innocence have gained backing from Kim Kardashian and other high-profile supporters.
“That it takes so many people, working literally tens of thousands of hours, to convince five Supreme Court justices that his conviction was so flawed, suggests that our system of justice needs serious reform,” Weiss added.
Judge Natalie Mai set Glossip’s bond at $500,000 and ordered him to wear an electronic monitor. He is prohibited from leaving Oklahoma, contacting witnesses connected to the case or consuming any drugs or alcohol.
Glossip had been sentenced to death over the 1997 killing in Oklahoma City of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that prosecutors’ decision to allow a key witness to give testimony they knew to be false violated Glossip’s constitutional right to a fair trial.
Glossip has remained behind bars after Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced the state would seek to retry him on a murder charge but not pursue the death penalty again.
“The court fully expects that the state will rigorously prosecute its case going forward and the defense will provide robust representation for Glossip,” the judge wrote in the order. “The court hopes that a new trial, free of error, will provided all interested parties and the citizens of Oklahoma, the closure they deserve.”
During his time on death row, courts in Oklahoma set nine different execution dates for Glossip, and he came so close to being put to death that he ate three separate last meals. In 2015, he was even held in a cell next to Oklahoma’s execution chamber, waiting to be strapped to a gurney and die by lethal injection.
But the scheduled time for his execution came and went. Behind the walls of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, prison officials were scrambling after learning one of the lethal drugs they received to carry out the procedure didn’t match the execution protocols. The drug mix-up ultimately led to a nearly seven-year moratorium on executions in Oklahoma.
“Mr. Glossip now has the chance to taste freedom while his defense team continues to pursue justice on his behalf against a system that the United States Supreme Court has found to be guilty of serious misconduct by state prosecutors,” his attorney, Donald Knight, said.
Glossip’s case attracted international attention after actress Susan Sarandon — who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean’s fight to save a man on Louisiana’s death row in the 1995 movie Dead Man Walking — took up his cause in real life.
Glossip’s case also was featured in the 2017 documentary film titled Killing Richard Glossip.
