Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #210 Jason Flom with Richard Glossip

Transcript

#210 Jason Flom with Richard Glossip · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: Richard Glossop was the manager of a CD motel in
0:04
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City called the Best Budget in where he was
0:07
Speaker 1: responsible for large sums of cash belonging to its owner,
0:11
Speaker 1: Barry Van Trees, cash that he could have stolen at
0:14
Speaker 1: any time without violence. A traveling roofer and methadic named
0:18
Speaker 1: Justin Snead began staying at the motel in exchange for
0:21
Speaker 1: maintenance work, while enjoying easy access to the drugs and
0:24
Speaker 1: prostitutes one might find at a CD motel. In the
0:28
Speaker 1: early morning of January seventh, nineteen ninety seven, Stead and
0:32
Speaker 1: a girlfriend lured Barry van Trees into Room one O
0:35
Speaker 1: two to rob him of the cash he was known
0:37
Speaker 1: to carry. Barry resisted and was bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
0:41
Speaker 1: His car was moved to a nearby lot. Later that morning,
0:46
Speaker 1: Snead off handedly told Richard that he had killed Barry,
0:49
Speaker 1: but after seeing that Barry's car was not at its
0:52
Speaker 1: usual spot, Richard dismissed what he thought was Sneed's usual
0:56
Speaker 1: drug adult ramblings. When the body was discovered, Richard told
0:59
Speaker 1: police about what Snead had said, causing them to focus
1:02
Speaker 1: on him, even though Snead eventually confessed police steered him
1:07
Speaker 1: to implicate Richard as the mastermind of a murder for
1:10
Speaker 1: higher scheme. For his testimony, Snead escaped to death penalty
1:15
Speaker 1: in exchange for life without parole, swapping Richard into his place.
1:20
Speaker 1: The word of a meth head and a legit motive
1:22
Speaker 1: to steal cash was all.
1:24
Speaker 2: It took.
1:25
Speaker 1: Twenty four years, two trials, three stays of execution, a
1:29
Speaker 1: lethal injection drug scandal, and two Supreme Court cases later,
1:32
Speaker 1: Richard remains on death row in Oklahoma. This is wrongful
1:37
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flapp. Welcome back to wrongful conviction with
1:55
Speaker 1: Jason flamm That's me And if I sound a little
1:58
Speaker 1: down today, it's because this case that you're going to
2:01
Speaker 1: hear about is one of the most troubling cases I've
2:05
Speaker 1: ever heard of in my now twenty ninth year of
2:09
Speaker 1: doing this type of work. With us today we have
2:13
Speaker 1: one of the respected, even revered criminal and civil defense attorneys,
2:19
Speaker 1: a man named Don Knight. Welcome to ronfel conviction.
2:22
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason.
2:23
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, and of course with us today, calling
2:27
Speaker 1: in from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary where he is now
2:32
Speaker 1: in his twenty third year on death row, and that is,
2:36
Speaker 1: of course Richard Glossip.
2:38
Speaker 2: Hello, this is a collect call from for Sure, an
2:43
Speaker 2: incarcerated individual at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. This call is not private.
2:48
Speaker 3: This call will be recorded and may be monitored.
2:51
Speaker 2: To consent to this recorded call, press one to disconnect.
2:55
Speaker 1: Thank you for using securists.
2:57
Speaker 2: You may start the conversation now.
3:00
Speaker 1: Richard. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but I'm
3:03
Speaker 1: happier here.
3:04
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool, man, that's cool. Twenty four years of
3:07
Speaker 2: this and it's bed a long battle and it just continues.
3:11
Speaker 2: But the good thing is I'm still here.
3:13
Speaker 1: Richard, if you don't mind take us back to your childhood.
3:16
Speaker 1: You said, sort of an unusual childhood and moved from
3:18
Speaker 1: Illinois to Oklahoma. But also you were one of a
3:21
Speaker 1: lot of children, right, You had a lot of brothers
3:23
Speaker 1: and sisters.
3:24
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I actually grew up in Geilsburg, Illinois. There
3:27
Speaker 2: was sixteen of us. It was eight boys and eight girls.
3:30
Speaker 2: You know, I grew up around a lot of addiction
3:33
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, and you know, I just didn't
3:34
Speaker 2: think I was going to get anywhere if I stayed
3:36
Speaker 2: there any longer. And I left home when I was
3:38
Speaker 2: fourteen and just made it on my own.
3:41
Speaker 1: You know, it's actually kind of a miracle that you survived.
3:43
Speaker 1: I mean, we could do a whole podcast about that alone,
3:47
Speaker 1: but your story hadn't even begun yet. So okay, you
3:51
Speaker 1: were strange from your family for many years, working and
3:54
Speaker 1: getting by. But how'd you end up in Oklahoma where
3:58
Speaker 1: you got a job at the best budget in working
4:00
Speaker 1: for Barry Van Trees.
4:02
Speaker 2: My mom and dad retired and they decided to move
4:06
Speaker 2: out here to Oklahoma to be closer to my mom's family.
4:09
Speaker 2: And in nineteen ninety three, my dad's health was selling
4:12
Speaker 2: and my mom asked me if I would come out
4:14
Speaker 2: here and spend some time with my dad. And that's
4:17
Speaker 2: how I ended up with the best budget in.
4:20
Speaker 3: Barry Van Trees didn't just run the best budget in
4:23
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City, he also ran best budget in in Tulsa.
4:27
Speaker 3: These were really low rent motels. They were a cash business.
4:32
Speaker 3: There was a lot of drug activity and prostitution. Barry
4:35
Speaker 3: Van Trees would come by every couple of weeks to
4:38
Speaker 3: the Oklahoma City best budget in where he would pick
4:41
Speaker 3: up the cash from Rich. Rich would have sometimes up
4:44
Speaker 3: to thirty thousand dollars in receipts depending on how long
4:48
Speaker 3: it took for Van Trees to come by the motel.
4:51
Speaker 3: So Rich was constantly handling large amounts of money, and
4:55
Speaker 3: there was never any question about whether Rich was stealing money.
4:59
Speaker 3: He was not stealing anything at all.
5:01
Speaker 1: Right, And if he wanted to steal the money, he
5:03
Speaker 1: could have done so almost any time without violence, and
5:05
Speaker 1: he could have skipped town. But he never did, and
5:08
Speaker 1: certainly he didn't do so by involving a meth head
5:11
Speaker 1: named Justin Snead. Now Justin had come through town with
5:14
Speaker 1: a roof and crew out of Texas, and while he
5:16
Speaker 1: was staying at the best budget in and he worked
5:17
Speaker 1: out a deal for a free room in exchange for
5:20
Speaker 1: maintenance and other work around the motel.
5:22
Speaker 2: Right, yes, I said, hey, I need you to go
5:24
Speaker 2: take care of this, or I need to take these
5:26
Speaker 2: people from files or whatever the case may be. He
5:28
Speaker 2: always did it. But as time went by, it was
5:31
Speaker 2: getting harder to find him, and I was going to
5:33
Speaker 2: let him go a couple of times, but you know,
5:36
Speaker 2: very like the fact that he was working Beru, but
5:38
Speaker 2: Verry didn't want me to let him go. But yeah,
5:41
Speaker 2: towards all this happening in the end, It was like
5:43
Speaker 2: I hardly ever found him to do what he was
5:46
Speaker 2: supposed to do.
5:47
Speaker 1: Did you catch any signs that he was using meth?
5:50
Speaker 2: Well, they were up all the time, So I did
5:53
Speaker 2: have a couple of family members that did it, and
5:57
Speaker 2: so learning from how they acted, you know, I could
6:00
Speaker 2: tell that, yeah, definitely they want something. Justin was a
6:03
Speaker 2: very odd guy. He would say things that would throw
6:07
Speaker 2: you off. He would say things that would just make
6:09
Speaker 2: you sketch your head and go, man, this guy is
6:10
Speaker 2: just like really weird.
6:12
Speaker 1: So were there any signs that he might have been
6:14
Speaker 1: robbing people to support his habit?
6:16
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know. I had one of the a guy
6:18
Speaker 2: named John Biebers, king to me and that he was
6:20
Speaker 2: missing a big jar of coins. When he said he
6:23
Speaker 2: thought Justin did it, I didn't believe him. But hindsight
6:27
Speaker 2: is twenty.
6:27
Speaker 1: Twenty, right, Yeah, it sure is. And at the time,
6:30
Speaker 1: you and your girlfriend Deanna Wood were spending a lot
6:33
Speaker 1: of time together and most of it at the motel.
6:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. I lived on the property. I lived behind the
6:37
Speaker 2: front desk in an apartment, so I'm always on the
6:40
Speaker 2: property other than DNA, and I'd being able to go
6:43
Speaker 2: out and do something on our own why the desk
6:45
Speaker 2: Cirk was there.
6:46
Speaker 1: Now, this brings us all the way up to January seventh,
6:49
Speaker 1: thineteen ninety seven. At six am, Justin Snead woke Rich
6:53
Speaker 1: up and told him about a broken window and then
6:56
Speaker 1: kind of off handily says, oh, and by the way,
6:58
Speaker 1: I killed Barry. Snead was known for saying weird stuff
7:02
Speaker 1: like that, and so when Richard looked at Barry's usual
7:05
Speaker 1: parking spot and didn't see Barry's car, he wrote it
7:08
Speaker 1: off as Sneed just being Snead. Now, later on, Barry
7:11
Speaker 1: Van Teresa's car was spotted in the Credit Union parking lot,
7:14
Speaker 1: about fifty yards away from the best budget in but
7:17
Speaker 1: there was no sign of Barry. So this kicked off
7:19
Speaker 1: a search, and rich was out shopping with his girlfriend
7:22
Speaker 1: Deiana and was called back to work around three pm.
7:25
Speaker 1: So at this point rich is wondering do I tell
7:28
Speaker 1: the police about what Sneed said? But he Indiana decided
7:32
Speaker 1: against it because they didn't even know if Barry was
7:34
Speaker 1: dead or not. And finally at ten pm, Barry's body
7:38
Speaker 1: was discovered in Room one oh two. He had been
7:41
Speaker 1: beaten with a baseball bat as well as having been
7:44
Speaker 1: stabbed with a blunt object.
7:46
Speaker 3: What happened here was that Barry Van Trees stopped in
7:50
Speaker 3: in the evening of January sixth, took care of payroll
7:54
Speaker 3: and took care of everybody at the Best Budget in
7:57
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City before leaving and driving Tulsa to take care
8:01
Speaker 3: of the payroll and the situation in Tulsa. He didn't
8:06
Speaker 3: get to Tulsa till around midnight or so and didn't
8:10
Speaker 3: stay there very long. Told the people in Tulsa when
8:13
Speaker 3: he left to tell his wife that he would be
8:16
Speaker 3: home in five and a half hours. Home was Lawton, Oklahoma.
8:20
Speaker 3: It doesn't take five and a half hours to get
8:22
Speaker 3: to Lawton, so obviously when he said that he had
8:25
Speaker 3: plans to stop, he stopped back at the Best Budget
8:28
Speaker 3: in in Oklahoma City where he went to room one
8:32
Speaker 3: oh two. And that's where Justin Snead was waiting for him,
8:36
Speaker 3: or at least his girlfriend was waiting for him. Because
8:40
Speaker 3: we have found out that there was another person involved
8:43
Speaker 3: in this case. It wasn't Rich Glossop, but it was
8:47
Speaker 3: Justin Snead's girlfriend. The information that we have found is
8:52
Speaker 3: that it was simply a robbery attempt. These two meth
8:56
Speaker 3: fueled young people thought they could simply take the keys
9:01
Speaker 3: from Barry Van Trees and get the money out of
9:04
Speaker 3: his car without Van Trees knowing or objecting. I don't
9:08
Speaker 3: know what their plan was. We talked to one witness
9:12
Speaker 3: and she had a great statement. She said, when you've
9:14
Speaker 3: been on mess for twenty days in a row, the
9:17
Speaker 3: idea fairy appears. That looks like what happened here. These
9:23
Speaker 3: two people knew Barry Van Trees had a lot of money,
9:26
Speaker 3: and so we think that he was lured into room
9:28
Speaker 3: one oh two by this girl. He knew he was
9:31
Speaker 3: coming back to that place, and once there, confronted by
9:35
Speaker 3: Justin Snead. From the information we have that we have
9:39
Speaker 3: found from new witnesses, Sneid admitted that he was intending
9:43
Speaker 3: simply to take Van Trees's money and not kill him.
9:47
Speaker 3: But Van Trees fought back and at the end of
9:50
Speaker 3: that fight, Barry Van Trees was beaten to death. It
9:53
Speaker 3: wasn't just beaten to death, but there was also some
9:55
Speaker 3: stab wounds on his body from a very blunt object.
10:00
Speaker 3: Blunt object appears to be a pocket knife that the
10:03
Speaker 3: police found in the motel room that had its tip
10:07
Speaker 3: broken off. So for this murder. Justin Snead and his
10:12
Speaker 3: girlfriend had two weapons, a baseball bat and a broken knife.
10:18
Speaker 1: It would be really low on anyone's choices of how
10:21
Speaker 1: to go right, sure.
10:23
Speaker 3: But also I think low on somebody's idea of how
10:26
Speaker 3: to kill somebody. I mean, if you're really planning to
10:28
Speaker 3: murder someone, you don't go with a dull knife in
10:30
Speaker 3: a baseball bat. You know. It sounds like a bad
10:34
Speaker 3: plan from mess fueled young people. And the aftermath was
10:40
Speaker 3: a continuation of that bad plan. The vehicle where the
10:44
Speaker 3: money was was moved not more than fifty yards. It's
10:49
Speaker 3: not as if it was moved away so that it
10:51
Speaker 3: could be hidden. It was within plain view of the
10:54
Speaker 3: best budget in in a credit union, right next to
10:57
Speaker 3: the best budget in. It was found there the next
10:59
Speaker 3: more by the security guard off duty sheriff's deputy working
11:04
Speaker 3: at the Wayoki credit union found this vehicle sort of
11:07
Speaker 3: with one tire up on the curb, parked in a
11:10
Speaker 3: place that it shouldn't be parked, and that's what started
11:13
Speaker 3: the investigation on the seventh into Barryvan Teresa's death.
11:18
Speaker 1: So you might notice that Rich hasn't been mentioned yet
11:22
Speaker 1: in the story of this crime and that's because no one,
11:25
Speaker 1: not even the prosecution, ever claimed that he was even
11:29
Speaker 1: in the room when it happened. Rich was sleeping in
11:33
Speaker 1: the apartment behind the front desk with his girlfriend. That's undisputed.
11:37
Speaker 1: So why are we even having this conversation and how
11:41
Speaker 1: is rich on death row? Well, the lead investigators in
11:44
Speaker 1: this case, Bimo and Cook, who did little to no investigation,
11:48
Speaker 1: basically didn't talk to anyone at the motel and instead
11:52
Speaker 1: focused on Richard early on for a few very ill
11:57
Speaker 1: conceived reasons.
11:58
Speaker 3: They focused on Rich and I think I think the
12:00
Speaker 3: first reason is Rich's last name is Glossop. Rich's family
12:04
Speaker 3: was a known family with a criminal history in Oklahoma,
12:07
Speaker 3: So I think that's one thing. That the second thing
12:11
Speaker 3: when they found Van Trees's body at ten o'clock and
12:16
Speaker 3: they said, you know, Rich, why don't you come in
12:18
Speaker 3: and sit and talk with us? And was at that
12:20
Speaker 3: point that Rich told them about that statement that Sneed made.
12:26
Speaker 3: That was the point I think when the police said, oh, well,
12:29
Speaker 3: he's hiding something. And I think that, in combination with
12:32
Speaker 3: Rich's last name, I think that's what made the police
12:35
Speaker 3: begin to think Rich Glossop had something to do with
12:38
Speaker 3: this case.
12:39
Speaker 1: They decide to focus on this one statement that he omitted, right,
12:46
Speaker 1: which is, I don't know that I would have done
12:48
Speaker 1: anything differently myself.
12:50
Speaker 3: It's clearly his right to do so. I mean, he
12:52
Speaker 3: doesn't have to talk to the police. Nobody has to
12:54
Speaker 3: talk to the police.
12:56
Speaker 1: After this initial interview, on the seventh, Rich sells some
12:59
Speaker 1: personal Lineay was to raise money for a lawyer and
13:02
Speaker 1: talk to an attorney named David Mackenzie, who told him
13:04
Speaker 1: quite rightly to not speak with the police. But Rich
13:07
Speaker 1: did what a lot of innocent people do, right. He
13:11
Speaker 1: believed that just telling the truth will set you free.
13:14
Speaker 1: So he talked to Bemo and Cook.
13:17
Speaker 3: Anyway, in the parking lot of Mackenzie's office, the police
13:21
Speaker 3: were waiting for Rich. Rather than tell them I can't
13:26
Speaker 3: talk to you because this lawyer just told me this
13:29
Speaker 3: is what I'm supposed to say, Rich says, okay, I'll
13:32
Speaker 3: talk to you. And Demo and Cook to have a
13:35
Speaker 3: real bad history of how they do their interrogations, and
13:40
Speaker 3: when they set themselves upon Rich, they were going to
13:43
Speaker 3: do what they could do to try to get Rich
13:45
Speaker 3: to say things that they could say were inconsistent, and
13:49
Speaker 3: then they would start driving that home to try to
13:52
Speaker 3: get him to confess to this crime.
13:55
Speaker 1: But he never does confess to the crime. However, they
13:59
Speaker 1: start trying to tell him that he said things in
14:01
Speaker 1: his initial interview on the seventh that he did not.
14:05
Speaker 1: They tried to catch him in lies with lies of
14:09
Speaker 1: their own, and it's clear that they have their sights
14:12
Speaker 1: set on him. Meanwhile, Snead took off on the afternoon
14:16
Speaker 1: of the seventh, before Barry's body was even found. He
14:19
Speaker 1: went off working with the roof and crew that he
14:21
Speaker 1: came into town with from Texas, trying to make himself scarce. Basically, yeah, he.
14:25
Speaker 3: Left New motel sometime after three o'clock, just took the
14:29
Speaker 3: skateboard and took off again. It was It's something that
14:32
Speaker 3: the prosecutor in both trials tried to paint that he
14:36
Speaker 3: was totally dependent on Glossop for everything because he had
14:39
Speaker 3: no way of making any money, which was just wrong.
14:42
Speaker 3: I mean, first off, he was stealing the place blind,
14:44
Speaker 3: he was breaking into motel rooms, he was breaking into cars,
14:48
Speaker 3: he was doing everything he could do to get money
14:50
Speaker 3: for his drug habit. But when he left the motel
14:53
Speaker 3: that day, he skateboarded over to were the people who
14:58
Speaker 3: he used to work for doing roofing were and he
15:03
Speaker 3: joined the roofing crew again. So he had the opportunity
15:07
Speaker 3: at any point in time to go make more money
15:10
Speaker 3: doing his roofing work than he ever made it the
15:12
Speaker 3: best budget in and he did that on that day.
15:15
Speaker 3: They didn't catch Sneid until the fourteenth of January. It
15:20
Speaker 3: was the owner of the roofing company who seeing the
15:23
Speaker 3: news accounts of what had happened and seeing Sneed's picture
15:26
Speaker 3: on the news, that said to Sneid, I think you
15:28
Speaker 3: need to turn yourself in. So he's the one that
15:30
Speaker 3: called the police, and that's when they interrogated Sneed.
15:33
Speaker 1: Right, And in Sneed's interrogation it's clear that Rich is
15:36
Speaker 1: their main target. So they start working Snead over to
15:39
Speaker 1: both admit to the crime and implicate Rich in some way.
15:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was not a situation where they were saying, okay,
15:45
Speaker 3: justin we've caught you, why don't you tell us what happened. Instead,
15:48
Speaker 3: they go through this long prelude telling him what happened,
15:51
Speaker 3: telling him what they know, telling him that they know
15:54
Speaker 3: that somebody else was involved, and they don't want him
15:56
Speaker 3: to hang alone. And in Sneed's first is like, I
15:58
Speaker 3: don't even know what to say to tell you, as
16:00
Speaker 3: if he didn't have anything to do with it, And
16:03
Speaker 3: then they brought Rich's name into it. We think Rich
16:06
Speaker 3: had something to do with it. You know, he's under arrest.
16:08
Speaker 3: So Snead never said anything about Glossop at all. That
16:12
Speaker 3: came from the police, and then they began to work
16:17
Speaker 3: with Snead from there untill they finally got this sort
16:21
Speaker 3: of crazy idea about Rich wanting to steal the money,
16:25
Speaker 3: kill Van Trees and split the money with Sneid and
16:27
Speaker 3: somehow or another they would run the motels. Some crazy
16:31
Speaker 3: story that came out, which I think you would probably
16:34
Speaker 3: expect from somebody who's high on.
16:36
Speaker 1: Math, right, and who's being fed information by police who
16:39
Speaker 1: are exactly not interested in the truth here.
16:43
Speaker 3: So right, because if they had been interested into the truth,
16:46
Speaker 3: they simply would have said, why don't you tell us
16:48
Speaker 3: what happened? Tell us everything that you know.
16:50
Speaker 1: And so Snead confesses to the murder. But what's clear
16:53
Speaker 1: from his interrogation is that he was steered to drag
16:56
Speaker 1: Rich into it as the mastermind of a murder for
16:58
Speaker 1: higher plot, and then Snead uses this made up scenario
17:03
Speaker 1: to save himself, making a deal for a life without
17:07
Speaker 1: parole instead of the death penalty.
17:09
Speaker 3: We have a witness who says he talked to Snead
17:13
Speaker 3: that year while he was in jail with Steed, and
17:16
Speaker 3: as Snead said, I had two main goals. One I
17:20
Speaker 3: didn't want the death penalty and two I didn't want
17:22
Speaker 3: my girlfriend to get caught. Snead got bold of what
17:26
Speaker 3: he wanted at Rich's expense.
17:39
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss Rifkin, Porton and Garrison,
17:43
Speaker 1: a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had
17:47
Speaker 1: an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance
17:51
Speaker 1: to the most vulnerable members of our society and in
17:54
Speaker 1: support of the public interest, including extensive work in the
17:58
Speaker 1: criminal justice area.
18:06
Speaker 2: Detective Demo in the docuseries that was done changed what
18:10
Speaker 2: he testified at two trials and and it was a
18:13
Speaker 2: murder for hire. He gives the statement in our docuseries
18:17
Speaker 2: where he says, Oh, I think it was a robbery
18:19
Speaker 2: went bad. That's the original story that Justin gave him,
18:23
Speaker 2: that it was a robbery went bad, and they knew
18:25
Speaker 2: that that's what it was, but they needed it to
18:27
Speaker 2: be more. In my opinion, you know, prosecutors and stuff
18:30
Speaker 2: need these notches in their belt so bad so they
18:32
Speaker 2: could further their career. And it doesn't matter who they
18:36
Speaker 2: get that notch from, as long as they get it.
18:39
Speaker 2: My first judge, Judge Johnson, even looked at the prosecutor
18:43
Speaker 2: and said, I don't understand where this is the murder case.
18:48
Speaker 2: And she convinced the judge will give me some time.
18:52
Speaker 2: And that's the only reason the judge even allowed it
18:54
Speaker 2: to go forward, because he was convinced by a prosecutor
18:57
Speaker 2: to let her build a case.
18:59
Speaker 1: Okay, so don there is a villain in this story,
19:03
Speaker 1: of course. I'm talking about then district attorney Bob Macy,
19:07
Speaker 1: who was nicknamed the Angel of Death, and he seemed
19:12
Speaker 1: to get off on winning death penalty cases, innocent, guilty, whatever.
19:19
Speaker 1: He played dress up like a cowboy, although he was
19:23
Speaker 1: not a cowboy. Can you tell us about this awful character.
19:28
Speaker 3: Bob Macy's just one of a handful of prosecuting attorneys
19:32
Speaker 3: in the country that really drives the death penalty in
19:37
Speaker 3: this country, they're only a handful of places where most
19:41
Speaker 3: of the death penalty verdicts come from or at least
19:44
Speaker 3: that has been the way in the past. New Orleans,
19:47
Speaker 3: there was certainly one in Oklahoma City. And these prosecutors
19:51
Speaker 3: they derive their power, i think, and their political base
19:55
Speaker 3: from seeking and getting the death penalty. They look at
19:57
Speaker 3: that as being tough on crime, and Macy certainly forged
20:01
Speaker 3: his legacy with all of that in mind. I think
20:05
Speaker 3: the thing that happens in these places is it can't
20:10
Speaker 3: just be one person that does this, but it becomes
20:13
Speaker 3: a culture. He was in power in Oklahoma City for
20:17
Speaker 3: a long time. A lot of his prosecutors went on
20:21
Speaker 3: to become judges. So now you've got not just the
20:24
Speaker 3: prosecuting attorney's office, but they're on the bench as well.
20:27
Speaker 3: So they've got judges, prosecutors, forensic people, you've got police,
20:31
Speaker 3: and you've got jurors who are just ready to go
20:35
Speaker 3: on these death penalty cases. And they begin to sort
20:39
Speaker 3: of cow the defense bar into either going along and
20:44
Speaker 3: getting their clients some kind of plea or they lose
20:49
Speaker 3: at trial, and these death verdicts result. It becomes a
20:53
Speaker 3: cultural situation where you have no one fighting anymore for
20:57
Speaker 3: the defendant and to sort of get on the train
20:59
Speaker 3: or get run over by the trained mentality takes over.
21:03
Speaker 1: So Rich is charged with capital murder, which the fact
21:07
Speaker 1: that he's being tried for his life for not having
21:09
Speaker 1: killed anyone is insane in and of itself. But that's
21:13
Speaker 1: a totally another story. And so a trial sneed testified
21:16
Speaker 1: that Rich was the mastermind behind this murder for higher plot,
21:21
Speaker 1: thereby receiving the direct benefit of not being sent to
21:24
Speaker 1: death row himself. I feel like this should have been
21:27
Speaker 1: easy to beat.
21:29
Speaker 3: So Rich had a terrible lawyer, guy named Wayne Farnarat.
21:32
Speaker 3: In the first trial, he never I don't even know
21:35
Speaker 3: if he ever tried a case before. He was completely
21:38
Speaker 3: incompetent and put on no witnesses, didn't know how to
21:42
Speaker 3: cross examine anybody. Basically, the case went exactly as the
21:46
Speaker 3: prosecutors wanted it to go, and Rich was sentenced to death.
21:50
Speaker 3: Vaornerot had no idea how to do a penalty phase
21:53
Speaker 3: in a death case. He didn't do any investigation. I mean,
21:56
Speaker 3: Rich was a guy without a criminal history at all.
21:58
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're talking about the death penalty in
22:00
Speaker 3: the United States, you're supposedly talking about the worst of
22:03
Speaker 3: the worst. Well, Rich had never committed a crime before.
22:07
Speaker 3: How could he possibly be the worst of the worst?
22:10
Speaker 3: Is this crime bad?
22:11
Speaker 2: Yes?
22:11
Speaker 3: Is it the worst crime ever? No, it's not the
22:14
Speaker 3: worst crime ever. So he doesn't fit that category at all.
22:18
Speaker 3: And yet, because of the way things were in Oklahoma
22:21
Speaker 3: at the time, they were able to get a conviction
22:24
Speaker 3: and a death sentence.
22:26
Speaker 1: Right, So was Rich convicted solely on the basis of
22:29
Speaker 1: the testimony of a murderous meth head or was there
22:32
Speaker 1: some sort of other evidence offered a trial?
22:35
Speaker 3: I would answer the question in both ways. Yes, no question.
22:38
Speaker 3: It was really all about what Snead said, and he
22:43
Speaker 3: said very many different things at different times. He initially
22:47
Speaker 3: told the police that Glossop told him to kill Van
22:52
Speaker 3: Trees and rob him of somewhere around five thousand dollars
22:56
Speaker 3: and they would split it. But by the time the
22:58
Speaker 3: first trial rolled around, Snead added things like Rich told
23:03
Speaker 3: me to go buy some muriatic acid because we were
23:06
Speaker 3: going to melt the body and I wasn't able to
23:09
Speaker 3: do that. So Sneid had a variety of stories that
23:12
Speaker 3: ultimately came out that just simply shows that he was
23:16
Speaker 3: not telling the truth. He was never consistent with anything
23:19
Speaker 3: that he said, and the prosecutor had to sort of
23:22
Speaker 3: cobble together what the Court of Appeals would later call
23:24
Speaker 3: corroborating evidence that was really really weak from a standpoint
23:28
Speaker 3: of corroborating evidence. They had put together a spreadsheet and
23:33
Speaker 3: an allegation that Rich was stealing money, that somehow or another,
23:38
Speaker 3: the Van Trees family knew he was stealing money and
23:41
Speaker 3: that they were about to fire him, and Rich knew
23:44
Speaker 3: he was about to be fired, and so that formed
23:47
Speaker 3: the motive for Rich to do this killing. There is
23:51
Speaker 3: no real evidence of that. We took a look at
23:53
Speaker 3: that spreadsheet, which by the way, no one did until
23:55
Speaker 3: we got involved in this case. We have two forensic
23:59
Speaker 3: accountants who looked at it and they said, the idea
24:01
Speaker 3: that Rich was stealing money based upon the information that
24:04
Speaker 3: we see is crazy.
24:07
Speaker 1: So after his first conviction, Rich took his case to
24:10
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who called the evidence
24:13
Speaker 1: against him extremely weak.
24:16
Speaker 3: And the Oklahoma Court or Criminal Appeals looked at the
24:19
Speaker 3: job that Wayne Farnerott did and said this can't be okay,
24:22
Speaker 3: and they in a unanimous verdict, which never happened. Ondirect
24:26
Speaker 3: Appeal threw it back and said he gets a new trial.
24:30
Speaker 1: Right. So the second trial rolls around and Oklahoma is
24:34
Speaker 1: not done with their dirty tricks. And you know what
24:36
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the way that they managed to remove
24:39
Speaker 1: an attorney who was prepared to probably win this case
24:44
Speaker 1: and right this wrong.
24:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, this lawyer was the appellate lawyer for Rich a
24:50
Speaker 3: guy named Lynn Birch, did a great job getting the
24:53
Speaker 3: case tossed out on appeal, decided to keep it, and
24:57
Speaker 3: was working the case leading up to this second trial
25:00
Speaker 3: when he made an error, and that is going to
25:04
Speaker 3: see Justin Snead. The night before the trial began. They
25:08
Speaker 3: think Lynn Birch was looking to see if there was
25:10
Speaker 3: some way that Snead would simply come clean and tell
25:14
Speaker 3: the truth. The air that Lynn Burch made was not
25:16
Speaker 3: taking an investigator with him, not taking a third party.
25:20
Speaker 3: Because when he showed up in court the next morning,
25:22
Speaker 3: the prosecutor said, Judge, we've got a problem. Lynn Birch
25:25
Speaker 3: was threatening our witness and was harassing Justin Snead. Rather
25:30
Speaker 3: than fight that, which I think Burch should have done,
25:32
Speaker 3: he should have said, I didn't do anything like that.
25:35
Speaker 3: I never said anything wrong. Let me tell you what
25:37
Speaker 3: I told him. Put me on the witness stand, put
25:39
Speaker 3: sneed on the witness stand, let's have it out. Birch
25:42
Speaker 3: simply said, you know, okay, you know, I probably screwed
25:46
Speaker 3: up in there, and he left the case the morning
25:49
Speaker 3: of trial, which caused a six month extension. But with
25:54
Speaker 3: Birch gone, it left it in the hands of two
25:56
Speaker 3: lawyers who were not prepared for the trial, and he
25:58
Speaker 3: did very little. The lead up to the next trial.
26:01
Speaker 3: They did no investigation, they put on no witnesses, Their
26:05
Speaker 3: cross examinations were horrible. They allowed the prosecution to run
26:09
Speaker 3: wild with leading questions. Basically, the kids were greased and
26:13
Speaker 3: the prosecution just got their case through like they wanted.
26:17
Speaker 2: In the second trial, it was really strange because the
26:20
Speaker 2: prosecutor came into the courtroom, she looked at the jury
26:22
Speaker 2: and she goes, I have no evidence against Richard Glad
26:26
Speaker 2: just justin sneath. So now it becomes who you're going
26:30
Speaker 2: to believe. Every witness had new testimony who when they
26:35
Speaker 2: were asked, oh, you didn't remember it the day it happened,
26:37
Speaker 2: but you remember it seven years later, and they would
26:40
Speaker 2: sit there and say, the prosecutor helped us remember.
26:44
Speaker 1: As a result, the results were predictable, which is that
26:47
Speaker 1: in August two thousand and four, another Oklahoma jury found
26:51
Speaker 1: Richard guilty and Richard gets sentenced to death again.
26:55
Speaker 2: It's strange how you go through your whole life doing
26:58
Speaker 2: what's right, think that you know, if you tell the
27:01
Speaker 2: truth and then everything's going to be okay. And then
27:05
Speaker 2: you're standing there when somebody says, you know, we find
27:08
Speaker 2: you guilty of murder and you had nothing to do
27:10
Speaker 2: with this time, and your just your mouth just balls
27:12
Speaker 2: open and this feeling comes over you, like, how can
27:15
Speaker 2: this possibly be happening to me? This doesn't make sense.
27:19
Speaker 2: It's one of the strangest feelings that's really hard to
27:21
Speaker 2: put into word, but it's just like every part of
27:25
Speaker 2: you just goes numb. It's like you're just in shock
27:30
Speaker 2: and you don't know, you don't even have a response
27:33
Speaker 2: to it. You just stand there and you just like
27:36
Speaker 2: you just can't even believe it. It's one of the
27:37
Speaker 2: most overwhelming things I've ever had to face, you know.
27:57
Speaker 2: When I walked in, they they take you to the
28:00
Speaker 2: main gate up there and they put you in this
28:02
Speaker 2: little shack. Why they wait to get people to take
28:04
Speaker 2: you down to Agena where you're supposed to go. And
28:08
Speaker 2: I got to be honest with you, when they open
28:09
Speaker 2: that door, like your hole just like disappears almost immediately
28:16
Speaker 2: because it's so gloomy and so cold. In all honesty,
28:20
Speaker 2: it felt like death. It just felt like you were
28:23
Speaker 2: surrounded by death.
28:25
Speaker 1: Rich I want you to know that there are a
28:27
Speaker 1: lot of good people who are out of here pulling
28:29
Speaker 1: for you more than you even know. And so you
28:33
Speaker 1: ended up exhausting all of your appeals with substandard representation
28:38
Speaker 1: who never did any of the necessary investigation into your case.
28:41
Speaker 1: So predictably you had more of the same results, which
28:44
Speaker 1: brings us to your clemency proceedings back in twenty fourteen.
28:48
Speaker 2: Which turned out to be just as big of a
28:51
Speaker 2: fiasco as my trials did. I was turned down for clemency,
28:55
Speaker 2: and the reason being is not only was there a
28:58
Speaker 2: prosecutor from my case on the board, Bob Macy's son
29:02
Speaker 2: was as well, and when we brought to their attentions
29:05
Speaker 2: after him, I was denied clemacy. The clemency boy claimed
29:08
Speaker 2: that they had no idea that she had been a
29:12
Speaker 2: prosecutor on my case.
29:14
Speaker 1: Did she not remember she knew me really well? And
29:17
Speaker 1: Bob Macy's son is there as well.
29:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, Masy someone still has something to do with the
29:22
Speaker 2: billboard today.
29:23
Speaker 1: I'm rarely at a loss for words, but that is
29:26
Speaker 1: just ridiculous.
29:28
Speaker 2: I know, why don't we have anybody that had anything
29:30
Speaker 2: to do with Bob may or his office on a
29:33
Speaker 2: parole board that deals with that's row inmates.
29:37
Speaker 1: So your clemency was denied, but you didn't take that
29:40
Speaker 1: sitting down.
29:41
Speaker 2: In October twenty fourteen, I started this campaign. I was
29:46
Speaker 2: writing letters, hundreds of letters to everybody. I wrote letters
29:50
Speaker 2: to John McCain, who answered me, by the way, who
29:52
Speaker 2: I became friends with, and he introduced my case to
29:55
Speaker 2: people here in Oklahoma like Tom Kobern and others who
29:57
Speaker 2: sit up for me back then.
30:00
Speaker 1: So, while Richard was fighting for his life, other significant
30:03
Speaker 1: events were in foot concerning the way in which the
30:06
Speaker 1: state planned to kill him and others. Lethal injection. Lethal
30:10
Speaker 1: injection as a method of state sanctioned murder, consists of
30:13
Speaker 1: three drugs. A sedative, which depresses the nervous system and
30:16
Speaker 1: renders the person unconscious, next, a paralytic, which provides skeletal
30:20
Speaker 1: and muscular relaxation as well as depresses respiration, and finally,
30:25
Speaker 1: a potassium solution which causes cardiac arrest. The most common
30:30
Speaker 1: lethal injection drug combination is for the sedative sodium theopental
30:35
Speaker 1: or pentobarbitol, then pancuronium bromide as the paralytic, and finally
30:39
Speaker 1: potassium chloride, which causes the heart attack. In twenty eleven,
30:44
Speaker 1: some American pharma companies halted production of sodium theopental, and
30:48
Speaker 1: the European Union enacted a torture regulation that banned the
30:52
Speaker 1: export of drugs for the use of lethal injections, starting
30:55
Speaker 1: with sodium theopental and later pentobarbitol. By twenty fourteen, states
31:01
Speaker 1: were experiencing a shortage of the necessary drugs, which affected
31:05
Speaker 1: their ability to carry out death sentences according to protocol.
31:08
Speaker 1: Oklahoma began looking for alternatives like medazzelam in place of
31:13
Speaker 1: sodium theopental. Following this change, the forty three minute long
31:18
Speaker 1: botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April twenty nine, twenty fourteen.
31:24
Speaker 1: Another death throw inmate, Charles Warner, awaited the same fate
31:28
Speaker 1: that night, just steps away from the death chamber, but
31:31
Speaker 1: as a result of the horror of Lockett's execution, warners
31:34
Speaker 1: was delayed. After an investigation, Oklahoma blamed an inability to
31:39
Speaker 1: find Lockett's veins as the cause of the botched execution
31:42
Speaker 1: and decided to continue with the same drug protocol involving
31:46
Speaker 1: medazzelam as a sedative, prompting Richard, Charles Warner, and nineteen
31:51
Speaker 1: others to sue Oklahoma, and eventually they took the case
31:55
Speaker 1: all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.
31:57
Speaker 1: While this was being litigated, Richard's clemency was denied and
32:02
Speaker 1: his campaign from death row was just beginning. He got
32:05
Speaker 1: in touch with renowned death penalty abolition as Sister Helen
32:08
Speaker 1: Prejon with his first execution date an warners looming in
32:12
Speaker 1: January twenty fifteen.
32:16
Speaker 3: So in late twenty fourteen, he calls Sister Helen, or
32:19
Speaker 3: he sends her a letter and says, hey, sister Helen,
32:22
Speaker 3: you know, will you be with me when they kill me?
32:25
Speaker 3: And she looks into the case a little bit and
32:27
Speaker 3: then she calls me and I got together with another
32:29
Speaker 3: lawyer named Mark Olive who does a lot of state
32:33
Speaker 3: habeas work. And by now we're out of options. I mean,
32:36
Speaker 3: there's no court appearances left, clemency has been done. Basically,
32:40
Speaker 3: we're out of options. At this point in time, rich
32:43
Speaker 3: comes up for an execution date.
32:46
Speaker 1: So Oklahoma sets the date for January twenty ninth, twenty fifteen.
32:50
Speaker 1: And a lot of people don't know this, but in
32:52
Speaker 1: Oklahoma and other states, a period of real psychological torture
32:57
Speaker 1: begins prior to execution.
33:00
Speaker 2: Now, I was taken upstairs. They take you up thirty
33:02
Speaker 2: five days prior to your execution. You have to sit
33:05
Speaker 2: in this room that is so brightly lit for twenty
33:08
Speaker 2: four hours a day. Lights never go off so bright
33:11
Speaker 2: that I can see a tiny ant walking across a
33:15
Speaker 2: dark and gray floor. That's how bright that room is.
33:20
Speaker 2: You're on camera twenty four to seven, and you have
33:22
Speaker 2: a guard sitting outside your door. Twenty four seven. You
33:25
Speaker 2: can't cover your head, you can't do any of that.
33:30
Speaker 2: This is what people have to endure in Oklahoma before
33:33
Speaker 2: they're executed.
33:34
Speaker 1: While he and one are away to death. The suit
33:36
Speaker 1: continued in litigation, and on January thirteenth, twenty fifteen, the
33:40
Speaker 1: group of condemned prisoner's petition the US Supreme Court for
33:43
Speaker 1: a writ of certierrari and stays of their executions as
33:46
Speaker 1: evidenced by other botched executions in Ohio and Arizona. The
33:50
Speaker 1: petitioners argued that the medazolam would not numb the pain
33:53
Speaker 1: that would be caused by the other two drugs, so
33:56
Speaker 1: on January fifteenth, the lead petitioner, Charles Warner, was denied
34:01
Speaker 1: a stay and executed later that day over the descent
34:05
Speaker 1: of four justices, leaving Richard as the next in line.
34:08
Speaker 2: Sister Helen and a bunch of people were there visiting me.
34:11
Speaker 2: It was the day before I was supposed to be executed.
34:13
Speaker 2: It was funny because Sister Helen came like I seen
34:16
Speaker 2: her head like moving up and down in the crowd,
34:18
Speaker 2: and she gave me the phone and it was the Vatican.
34:20
Speaker 2: And I got talked to the Vatican that day. And
34:23
Speaker 2: as soon as I got done, the guards ran everybody
34:25
Speaker 2: out of there to say, you got an attorney call.
34:28
Speaker 2: So they set me down and gave me the phone,
34:30
Speaker 2: and my attorney said, the Supreme Court just gave you
34:32
Speaker 2: a stay and you are now going to Supreme Court
34:36
Speaker 2: against lethal ingestion.
34:38
Speaker 3: Sister Helen was able to mobilize a lot of people
34:42
Speaker 3: and put some petitions together, and the Supreme Court, while
34:48
Speaker 3: they didn't grant a stay for Charles Warner, based on
34:51
Speaker 3: basically the same information on the lethal injection drug granted
34:55
Speaker 3: rich a stay, and so he got to stay about
34:57
Speaker 3: twenty four hours in advance of his first execut date
35:00
Speaker 3: to have his case gloss OFP. B. Gross go before
35:03
Speaker 3: the United States Supreme.
35:04
Speaker 1: Court, And so there was a whole place on all
35:06
Speaker 1: executions in Oklahoma until the ruling was made. On June
35:09
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, twenty fifteen, in the last day of the
35:12
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's term. They ruled five to four against Richard
35:16
Speaker 1: and the condemned prisoners, allowing me dazolam as the sedative,
35:19
Speaker 1: and Richard's execution date was set for September fifteenth, twenty fifteen,
35:25
Speaker 1: so thirty five days prior the death ritual began again.
35:30
Speaker 3: They actually move you to a cell that's about four
35:34
Speaker 3: cells away from the actual death chamber, and you're in
35:37
Speaker 3: that cell for a few days, and then they bring
35:39
Speaker 3: you to the third cell, one closer to the death chamber,
35:43
Speaker 3: and they leave you there for a few days, and
35:45
Speaker 3: then they bring you to the second cell, one more
35:47
Speaker 3: step closer to the death chamber, and then they move
35:50
Speaker 3: you to the cell next to the death chamber. And
35:53
Speaker 3: if that's not torture in and of itself, by the
35:55
Speaker 3: time you get to that final thing. You can see
35:58
Speaker 3: the people coming and going from the death chamber. You
36:00
Speaker 3: know what's happening, you know what they're preparing, you know
36:03
Speaker 3: what they're going to do. And Rich was subject to
36:06
Speaker 3: that for a long period of time. Because we ended
36:10
Speaker 3: up with a stay of execution on September fifteenth. He
36:13
Speaker 3: had already been subjected to that, he'd already been brought
36:15
Speaker 3: to that final place. It was two hours in advance
36:18
Speaker 3: of the execution that hit that the second execution was stopped,
36:22
Speaker 3: and then we had a two weeks stay so that
36:24
Speaker 3: Rich was moved once again, just back to where he
36:27
Speaker 3: had been and to start that whole process over again.
36:30
Speaker 3: So Rich was subjected to this incredible emotional torture in
36:34
Speaker 3: advance of the third execution date, which was set for
36:38
Speaker 3: September thirtieth of twenty fifteen.
36:40
Speaker 2: I was in a lit room for fifty four straight days,
36:46
Speaker 2: no darkness whatsoever. It's crazy what they put you through.
36:52
Speaker 2: They do mock executions in front of you. And I'm
36:55
Speaker 2: not trying to compare Oklahoma to Isis, but it's no
37:00
Speaker 2: different than what ISUS does to people. When they pull
37:02
Speaker 2: somebody out, they put a sword to their neck, they
37:05
Speaker 2: act like they're going to chop their head off, and
37:06
Speaker 2: then they stop and they say, oh, we're going to
37:09
Speaker 2: wait for another day, put them back in himself, you know.
37:12
Speaker 2: And then they put the guy back in and bring
37:14
Speaker 2: him out the next day and keep doing this. I mean,
37:17
Speaker 2: where do we draw the line at torture, because this
37:20
Speaker 2: is torture. My first date, I got to stay the
37:24
Speaker 2: day before my execution. The second time I got to
37:28
Speaker 2: stay hours before my execution. The third time I got
37:32
Speaker 2: to stay after my execution was supposed to have taken place.
37:36
Speaker 1: And these days came with a lot of work. Don
37:38
Speaker 1: so for the second one. On September fifteenth, few filed
37:41
Speaker 1: motions presenting new evidence, including a July ninety seven psychevaluation
37:45
Speaker 1: showing Sneed was aware of the charges against him and
37:49
Speaker 1: that he made no mention of Richard, as well as
37:52
Speaker 1: the numerous people Sneed confessed to along the way that
37:55
Speaker 1: he had acted alone and saved his own hide by
37:58
Speaker 1: implicating Richard. But despite all of that, on September twenty eighth,
38:02
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted three to two
38:05
Speaker 1: to proceed with the execution, and the Supreme Court also
38:09
Speaker 1: deny to stay. Then the governor granted a stay on
38:12
Speaker 1: the thirtieth, citing that Oklahoma, contrary to lethal injection drug protocol,
38:17
Speaker 1: had received potassium acetate, a freaking food preservative, instead of
38:23
Speaker 1: potassium chloride for the cardiac arrest inducing portion of the cocktail.
38:28
Speaker 1: So then Richard got a thirty seven day stay to
38:31
Speaker 1: November sixth, twenty fifteen.
38:33
Speaker 2: And it was interesting when that happened because sister Hillam
38:36
Speaker 2: was outside the prison and she was saying, it's a
38:38
Speaker 2: Richard Glossip preservative, because the drug they were going to
38:41
Speaker 2: use was actually used as a preservative, you know. But
38:44
Speaker 2: I think the scariest thing about that time was when
38:47
Speaker 2: the governor at the time told the first second in
38:52
Speaker 2: command who was there, google it. When we'd gotten to
38:58
Speaker 2: a point in a societiety where we google how to
39:01
Speaker 2: execute people? Or is it okay to use certain drugs
39:04
Speaker 2: to execute people? That should just end the destiny by itself.
39:10
Speaker 1: It makes no sense to me at all that we
39:14
Speaker 1: entrust so many deeply flawed humans with the machinery of death,
39:19
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, here we are. So on October first, twenty fifteen,
39:25
Speaker 1: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Prewitt asked the Court of Criminal
39:28
Speaker 1: Appeals to issue an indefinite stay of all executions, citing
39:32
Speaker 1: the acquisition of the wrong drugs. Then, on October eighth,
39:36
Speaker 1: it was revealed that Charles Warner had been killed using
39:39
Speaker 1: potassium acetate, the food preservative, contrary to protocol. Dag Prewit
39:47
Speaker 1: then ordered a multi county grand jury investigation, and this
39:52
Speaker 1: put a hold on executions in Oklahoma. And with this moratorium,
39:57
Speaker 1: the famous documentarian Joe Burlin, who made Paradise Lost about
40:02
Speaker 1: the West Memphis three, got involved to help uncover more
40:05
Speaker 1: evidence and make the incredibly powerful docuseries Killing Richard Glossip
40:10
Speaker 1: that we've been referencing.
40:13
Speaker 4: I'm Joe Burlinger, and I guess they've been talking about
40:16
Speaker 4: my docuseries Killing Richard Glossop. I mean, this case, to
40:20
Speaker 4: me is the very definition of why there should be
40:22
Speaker 4: no death penalty. It just demonstrates how easily innocent people
40:26
Speaker 4: can be put to death. This was a spontaneous act
40:30
Speaker 4: of an opportunistic robbery that went awry, and all the
40:34
Speaker 4: evidence suggests that, and no evidence points to Richard Glossop,
40:38
Speaker 4: even the fact that when they found money on each
40:41
Speaker 4: of them, the fact that there was blood on the
40:44
Speaker 4: two thousand dollars that Sneed had in his pocket, and
40:47
Speaker 4: Richard's money had no blood on it. Here you have
40:50
Speaker 4: a murder for higher plot. And yet he himself, Justin
40:54
Speaker 4: Sneed says in his original statement, and he said it
40:58
Speaker 4: again to me when I interviewed him, that he never
41:01
Speaker 4: really intended to kill Barry van Trees. He just was
41:04
Speaker 4: hoping to kind of immobilize him. Well, then, how is
41:07
Speaker 4: it a murder for higher plot? I mean, that very
41:10
Speaker 4: basic fact makes it impossible to believe his story.
41:17
Speaker 1: So the one thing that Sneed has been consistent about
41:21
Speaker 1: is that he never meant to kill Barry van Trees.
41:23
Speaker 1: So through his own repeated admissions, he denies Rich's involvement.
41:30
Speaker 1: Rich was supposed to have ordered him, remember, according to
41:33
Speaker 1: the state, to rob and kill Barry. But if he
41:36
Speaker 1: never intended to kill Barry, then he could not have
41:39
Speaker 1: been operating under Rich's authority. Therefore there was no murder
41:44
Speaker 1: for higher plot. Richard could never have been involved. I mean, which,
41:50
Speaker 1: justin Snead, are we supposed to believe the Sneed who
41:53
Speaker 1: says Richard told me to do it, so I had
41:55
Speaker 1: to do it, or the Sneed who never intended to
41:58
Speaker 1: kill Barry van tries despite the alleged quote unquote orders
42:02
Speaker 1: of Richard Classip. He can't be both not that any
42:07
Speaker 1: of this matters to our legal processes, as actual innocence
42:11
Speaker 1: does not entitle one to relief according to the United
42:15
Speaker 1: States Supreme Court. So don where do we stand now?
42:20
Speaker 3: So we've got several new witnesses, people that nobody has
42:23
Speaker 3: ever heard. We know the story now, we heard it
42:26
Speaker 3: from Sneed's mouth through at least two or three witnesses.
42:30
Speaker 3: We know what happened in this case, and we know
42:32
Speaker 3: that rich didn't have anything to do with this murder
42:35
Speaker 3: at all. And so we are ready to go to
42:39
Speaker 3: the Pardon and Parole Board with this new information. We
42:42
Speaker 3: would go to court, but we've already been to court
42:45
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen. We lost there. There are procedural bars
42:50
Speaker 3: that are in place to keep us from even getting
42:53
Speaker 3: a chance to fairly litigate this innocence again. So right
42:58
Speaker 3: now the state of Oklahoma is set to once again
43:02
Speaker 3: begin the process of killing people. There is an end
43:06
Speaker 3: to the current lawsuit that's going on with Rich's name
43:10
Speaker 3: on it. Again, it's the success of a gloss of
43:12
Speaker 3: be gross and once the court makes a ruling on
43:16
Speaker 3: the protocol that they know how to kill somebody with
43:19
Speaker 3: whatever drug they use. They're going to go ahead and
43:21
Speaker 3: begin to set dates once again, and we don't know
43:24
Speaker 3: if rich.
43:24
Speaker 2: Will be first.
43:25
Speaker 3: He doesn't have to be first, but he was last up.
43:28
Speaker 3: It's entirely possible that he will be the first one
43:31
Speaker 3: set for execution, and that could take place sometime in
43:35
Speaker 3: the late summer.
43:37
Speaker 2: The worst case scenario, they could set a date on
43:39
Speaker 2: July first.
43:43
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say anymore. His fate
43:46
Speaker 1: has essentially been determined, barring action from the parle Board
43:51
Speaker 1: and the executive branch, but his legal fate has been
43:54
Speaker 1: sealed because of technical considerations.
43:58
Speaker 3: In twenty fifteen, we have two judges who, based upon
44:02
Speaker 3: the evidence we had then, which is a shadow of
44:04
Speaker 3: the evidence that we have now at that point in time,
44:07
Speaker 3: two judges said we want to give this guy hearing
44:09
Speaker 3: on his innocence claim, but three judges said we won't,
44:13
Speaker 3: simply because of finality of judgment. That was their whole point.
44:18
Speaker 3: That's the court's point is we can't let this go
44:20
Speaker 3: on forever. We're going to stop it. Like you said,
44:24
Speaker 3: innocence doesn't matter. That's the legal posture that we face today.
44:30
Speaker 1: Right That awful decision was Herrera versus Collins in nineteen
44:34
Speaker 1: ninety three, where the Supreme Court said what I just said,
44:37
Speaker 1: evidence of innocence is not enough to stop the wheels
44:40
Speaker 1: of justice from turning and in this case, turning right
44:43
Speaker 1: into a state sponsored murder of an innocent man named
44:45
Speaker 1: Richard Glossen.
44:46
Speaker 2: I'm asking everybody to go to say Richard glossa dot com,
44:51
Speaker 2: to sign the petitions that we have, but to also
44:53
Speaker 2: participate in everything that we're doing to try to bring
44:56
Speaker 2: justice reforms so that we can prevent this from happening
44:59
Speaker 2: to other people. This isn't always about one person, and
45:02
Speaker 2: that's what I've always tried to make clear to people.
45:04
Speaker 2: This is about many innocent people who are facing what
45:07
Speaker 2: I'm facing, and I don't want them to face it.
45:09
Speaker 2: I don't want them to go through what I went through.
45:12
Speaker 2: We got to stand up as a society. We have
45:15
Speaker 2: to stand up as a people. We have to stand
45:17
Speaker 2: up and say, hey, we're not going to tolerate this anymore.
45:20
Speaker 2: We got to change this. We got to permit innocent
45:22
Speaker 2: be executed, and we got to open people's eyes to
45:26
Speaker 2: why this is such a barbaric practice and why it
45:29
Speaker 2: should no longer take place.
45:31
Speaker 1: Go to save Richard glossip dot com. We'll also have
45:35
Speaker 1: links in the bio for action steps that you can take,
45:39
Speaker 1: and you know, with that, I want to turn it
45:42
Speaker 1: over to YouTube. Guys, thank you for being here with
45:46
Speaker 1: us today and spreading the word about this awful injustice.
45:52
Speaker 1: And well, now we turn to what we call closing arguments.
45:55
Speaker 1: This is a section of the show where I turned
45:57
Speaker 1: my microphone off, back in my chair, leave my headphones on,
46:01
Speaker 1: close my eyes, and just listen to whatever you have
46:05
Speaker 1: to say that we may have left out, or anything
46:08
Speaker 1: you want to share with our audience. So, Richard, we're
46:10
Speaker 1: going to save you for last and let Don go first.
46:14
Speaker 1: And again, Richard, I just want you to know we're
46:17
Speaker 1: all out here thinking about you. So many people are
46:20
Speaker 1: praying for you, and we hope to see you free
46:24
Speaker 1: before too long. Over to you, Don.
46:28
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Jason. I really appreciate you taking the
46:31
Speaker 3: time to shine a light on this terrible case and
46:34
Speaker 3: this terrible injustice that we are hoping to stop with
46:38
Speaker 3: a hearing later this year, Richard glossiped a simple guy
46:43
Speaker 3: who was in love with a young woman Richard loved
46:46
Speaker 3: his job at the best budget in loved Barry Van Trees.
46:49
Speaker 3: They had a great relationship. Rich never took any money
46:52
Speaker 3: from Barry Van Trees and very respected Rich. And a
46:55
Speaker 3: terrible murder took place that rich did not have anything
46:58
Speaker 3: at all to do with, and the wheels of justice
47:03
Speaker 3: began to turn in Oklahoma City the way that they
47:06
Speaker 3: did back in those days with Bob Macy, and those
47:09
Speaker 3: wheels just simply ran over Richard Glossop. He was a
47:13
Speaker 3: victim of very very poor lawyering, of over aggressive police work,
47:19
Speaker 3: of over aggressive prosecutors who only cared about one thing,
47:23
Speaker 3: and that was getting a conviction and getting a death sentence,
47:27
Speaker 3: because that was the culture of Oklahoma City at the time.
47:30
Speaker 3: There was a series of three letters to the current
47:34
Speaker 3: District Attorney, David Prater. We have requested a lot of
47:39
Speaker 3: substantive information that we believe would prove that rich Glossop
47:44
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with this, and we have received
47:47
Speaker 3: no answers. We continue to wait for David Prater. So
47:51
Speaker 3: at this point in time, we're preparing for a clemency
47:54
Speaker 3: hearing that we know will take place later this year,
47:57
Speaker 3: and we are hoping that people will go to save Richard.
48:01
Speaker 3: You can find a petition there to the governor and
48:03
Speaker 3: the Partner and Parole Board, letting those people know that
48:06
Speaker 3: this is wrong, what's happening, and that the only way
48:10
Speaker 3: to write it is to grant rich clemency and allow
48:13
Speaker 3: us to get back into court again.
48:15
Speaker 2: What were to you, rich You know when I walked in,
48:18
Speaker 2: I took that first step on agent it, on death row.
48:21
Speaker 2: I said that I have two choices. I can make
48:25
Speaker 2: peace with death or I can let it destroy me.
48:28
Speaker 2: And so I made peace with death right then and there,
48:31
Speaker 2: and I just said, I'm not going to let it
48:32
Speaker 2: destroy me. I'm going to be the same person I
48:35
Speaker 2: was and I am to this day. I sing in
48:38
Speaker 2: my cell out loud, I laughed, I dance around, and
48:42
Speaker 2: guards are always freaking out because I'm the way that
48:44
Speaker 2: I am. And I told them, I said, you know,
48:45
Speaker 2: I was a happy guy my whole life, and I'm
48:48
Speaker 2: not going to let this change who I am because
48:51
Speaker 2: we only have one life to live and it's a gift.
48:55
Speaker 2: And I'm going to celebrate life no matter where the
48:57
Speaker 2: hell I'm at, even in this hole, I'm going to
49:00
Speaker 2: celebrate life. I've heard so many stories about people who
49:03
Speaker 2: lost it down on Atue and I've seen it for myself.
49:06
Speaker 2: I've witnessed it myself, and there are a lot of
49:08
Speaker 2: people with serious mental health issues because you're isolated for
49:12
Speaker 2: years and years and years, and it's yeah, it's hard.
49:17
Speaker 2: And thankfully, you know, I had my art. I've written songs.
49:22
Speaker 2: I've written so many poems. I've written a book which
49:24
Speaker 2: I can't wait to get get out there to people,
49:26
Speaker 2: because it's a book of hope. It's a book of
49:28
Speaker 2: showing people that you do have more strengthen you know,
49:31
Speaker 2: and you can take your courage and you can move
49:34
Speaker 2: forward and you can have hope at the end. And
49:36
Speaker 2: I described the three execution attempt. I describe everything because
49:40
Speaker 2: I want people to know no matter how bad things get,
49:43
Speaker 2: there is always something good that will come from the
49:46
Speaker 2: worst situations you face in life. You just got to
49:50
Speaker 2: fight for it and you've got to make sure it happens.
49:53
Speaker 2: So it's we're in a fight. We're in a big
49:56
Speaker 2: fight with legislators and people in the state of Oklahoma
50:00
Speaker 2: who we're standing up saying we need to prevent this
50:02
Speaker 2: and hopefully we can succeed because I do have a
50:05
Speaker 2: lot more like lifts, and I do have a lot
50:07
Speaker 2: more battle to raise against the destbility. Look at like
50:12
Speaker 2: what's happening here in Oklahoma, one of the biggest Republican
50:15
Speaker 2: states in the country, and you have Republicans now staying
50:18
Speaker 2: and up saying we're not going to tolerate this anymore.
50:21
Speaker 2: We're not going to kill innocent people. I'm proud of
50:25
Speaker 2: Legislator mcdoogle and Legislator Humphrey, and you know, even the
50:29
Speaker 2: local businessman Justin Jesson. I'm really proud of these people
50:33
Speaker 2: because they're diehard conservative and yet they're standing us for
50:36
Speaker 2: innocence because it's not a left thing, and it's not
50:38
Speaker 2: a right thing. It's an innocent thing. And we've got
50:42
Speaker 2: to stop using politics in justice reform. We all want
50:47
Speaker 2: the right things. If we don't, then then you shouldn't
50:49
Speaker 2: be an office. We all want fair, we all want justice.
50:51
Speaker 2: And that's why I've always said that take the blindfold
50:54
Speaker 2: off of Lady Justice, because that's one of the days
50:57
Speaker 2: that's always weirded me out over the years, as you're saying, well,
51:00
Speaker 2: she's fine, sold fold us so she can be fair.
51:02
Speaker 2: How can you be fair if you can't see what's
51:04
Speaker 2: going on, So take the mindfold awesome letter, see what's
51:08
Speaker 2: going on, and she'll see alfair of justice really is
51:11
Speaker 2: in that country.
51:18
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
51:22
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence projects and go to the
51:25
Speaker 1: link in our bio to see how you can help.
51:27
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff
51:30
Speaker 1: Clyburn and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show, as always,
51:34
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
51:38
Speaker 2: Be sure to.
51:38
Speaker 1: Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook
51:42
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is
51:46
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
51:49
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one.