SCOTUS Grants Death Row Inmate New Trial in Glossip v. Oklahoma

In Glossip v. Oklahoma, 604 U.S. ____ (2025), the U.S. Supreme Court granted death row inmate Richard Glossip a new trial. The Court ruled that a new trial was warranted because prosecutors violated their obligation to correct false testimony, and that the jury might not have sentenced Glossip to death if the testimony was corrected.

Facts of the Case

In 1997, Justin Sneed beat Barry Van Treese to death with a baseball bat at an Oklahoma hotel owned by Van Treese and managed by petitioner Richard Glossip. Glossip initially made inconsistent statements to the police about Sneed’s role in the murder, but he ultimately told police that Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese.

Sneed later claimed Glossip had asked him to murder Van Treese because, among other things, Glossip had wanted to steal Van Treese’s money. Glossip maintained his innocence and refused a plea deal that would have had him avoid the death penalty in return for testifying against Sneed. Sneed then testified against Glossip at trial in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, and Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence connecting Glossip to the murder.

The jury convicted Glossip and sentenced him to death. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) overturned that conviction because the defense had been ineffective in challenging Sneed’s testimony and the remainder of the evidence only weakly corroborated Sneed’s account.

At the retrial, Sneed provided inconsistent testimony on potential motives for Glossip’s murder. Sneed also denied that he had been prescribed lithium or seen a psychiatrist. After the defense established (through the State’s medical examiner) that Van Treese had been attacked with a knife as well as a bat, Sneed testified that he had repeatedly tried to stab Van Treese in the chest with a pocket knife. But Sneed had previously denied stabbing Van Treese both when questioned by the police as well as at Glossip’s first trial.

Glossip moved for a mistrial based on the prosecution’s failure to notify the defense about Sneed’s change in testimony, which the trial court denied after the prosecution disclaimed any knowledge about the change. Glossip was again convicted and sentenced to death, and a closely divided OCCA affirmed, holding that circumstantial evidence suggesting Glossip had mismanaged the hotel, combined with Glossip’s concession that he had been dishonest in his initial statements after the murder, sufficiently corroborated Sneed’s testimony that he killed Van Treese at Glossip’s direction.

Glossip subsequently filed several unsuccessful habeas petitions. Concerns over the integrity of his conviction led a bipartisan group of Oklahoma legislators to commission an independent investigation by a law firm, Reed Smith. In June 2022, Reed Smith reported “grave doubt” about Glossip’s conviction, citing factors such as the prosecution’s deliberate destruction of key evidence and the false portrayal of Justin Sneed as a non-violent “puppet.”

The State then disclosed seven boxes of previously withheld documents, including letters suggesting Sneed had considered recanting and a note from prosecutor Connie Smothermon to Sneed’s lawyer noting they should “get to” Sneed to discuss his problematic testimony about a knife found in Van Treese’s room.

Glossip filed for post-conviction relief based on this evidence and evidence revealed by Reed Smith. Glossip also argued that, during his second trial, Smothermon had interfered with Sneed’s testimony about the knife in violation of the rule of sequestration, which prohibits witnesses from hearing each other’s testimony. Oklahoma waived any procedural defenses to Glossip’s claims, and asked the OCCA to deny the claims on their merits. The OCCA denied Glossip’s claims as procedurally barred and meritless.

The State then discovered additional documents revealing that Sneed had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium, contradicting his trial testimony. The attorney general determined that Smothermon had knowingly elicited false testimony from

Sneed and failed to correct it, violating Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (1959), which held that prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to correct false testimony.

Glossip filed a successive petition for post-conviction relief, which the attorney general supported, conceding multiple errors that warranted a new trial. The OCCA denied the unopposed petition without a hearing, holding that Glossip’s claims were procedurally barred under Oklahoma’s Post-Conviction Procedures Act (PCPA), and further that the State’s concession was not “based in law or fact” because it did not create a Napue error.

Supreme Court’s Decision

The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony under Napue. “Because the prosecution violated its obligations under Napue, we reverse the judgment below and remand the case for a new trial,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote on behalf of the majority.

The Supreme Court first addressed whether the Court had the power to review Glossip’s case. As Justice Sotomayor explained, the Supreme Court will not take up a question of federal law presented in a case “if the decision of [the state] court rests on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment.” A state ground of decision is independent only when it does not depend on a federal holding, Foster v. Chatman, 578 U.S. 488, 498 (2016), and also is not intertwined with questions of federal law.

In this case, the Court rejected the argument that the Court lacked jurisdiction because the OCCA held that Glossip’s claims were barred under the PCPA, and the PCPA is “a paradigmatic independent and adequate state-law ground.” Justice Sotomayor wrote:

That argument fails because it overlooks an antecedent holding that turned on federal law. The OCCA first rejected the attorney general’s confession of Napue error, deeming it meritless and therefore incapable of “overcom[ing]” application of the PCPA. Only then did it apply the PCPA to Glossip. Because the OCCA’s decision to reject the attorney general’s confession of error rested exclusively on federal law, so too did its subsequent decision to apply the PCPA.

The Court next determined that prosecutors “violated [their] constitutional obligation to correct false testimony” under Napue.To establish a Napue violation, a defendant must show that the prosecution knowingly solicited false testimony or knowingly allowed it “to go uncorrected when it appear[ed].” If the defendant makes that showing, a new trial is warranted so long as the false testimony “may have had an effect on the outcome of the trial,”— that is, if it “in any reasonable likelihood [could] have affected the judgment of the jury. ”

In this case, the majority found that a material violation occurred, which warranted a new trial. As Justice Sotomayor noted, the evidence showed that Sneed was prescribed lithium to treat bipolar disorder, not after asking for cold medicine as he claimed at trial. The evidence also revealed that the prosecution knew Sneed’s testimony was false, as the prosecution almost certainly had access to Sneed’s medical file through Sneed’s competency evaluation.

The majority also found that because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossip’s guilt, the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s credibility was material and necessarily determinative. Justice Sotomayor wrote:

Had the prosecution corrected Sneed on the stand, his credibility plainly would have suffered. That correction would have revealed to the jury not just that Sneed was untrustworthy (as amicus points out, the jury already knew he repeatedly lied to the police), but also that Sneed was willing to lie to them under oath. Such a revelation would be significant in any case, and was especially so here where Sneed was already “nobody’s idea of a strong witness.”

Even if Sneed’s bipolar disorder were wholly irrelevant, as amicus argues, his willingness to lie about it to the jury was not.

The Supreme Court further that OCCA misinterpreted Napue, noting that while it held that there was no violation because the defense was aware or should have been aware that Sneed was taking lithium, Sneed’s false testimony concerned the reasons for his prescription, not merely the fact that he had taken lithium. Moreover, the Due Process Clause imposes the duty to correct false testimony on the State, not the defense.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, arguing that the Court should have upheld Glossip’s conviction and death sentence. Justice Amy Coney Barrett filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. She would have allowed a state appeals court to decide how to proceed rather than order a new trial. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case.