Richard Glossip pleads guilty to accessory charge after nearly 30 years on death row
Richard Glossip, formerly on Oklahoma's death row, entered a plea deal on 12 November 2026, admitting to accessory after the fact while maintaining he never ordered the 1997 killing.
Glossip plea ends murder charge after three decades on death row
Richard Glossip, who spent nearly 30 years on Oklahoma's death row for a murder he consistently denied ordering, pleaded guilty on 12 November 2026 to accessory after the fact to first-degree murder, according to deathpenaltyinfo.org. Under the agreement, prosecutors dropped the original first-degree murder charge tied to the 1997 killing of motel owner Barry Van Treese. Sentencing is scheduled for 17 December.
Glossip was released in May 2026 after Judge Natalie Mai set bail at $500,000, ruling that the court could not deny bail while remaining consistent with the Oklahoma Constitution. That decision came in the context of Attorney General Gentner Drummond's 2023 acknowledgment that the evidence "does not support that he is guilty of first degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt."
His long-time attorney Don Knight issued a statement following the hearing: "For 30 years Richard Glossip has maintained his innocence. After nearly executing him nine times, the State of Oklahoma has now dismissed the murder charge against him. This morning, to finally put this matter to rest, Rich pleaded guilty to be an accessory after the fact." Knight added that Glossip had "more than paid his debt to society by spending nearly 30 years on death row, during which time he was served three last meals, and came within minutes of being executed for a crime he did not commit."
Knight also noted the disparity in sentencing: "In 1997, had Rich been given the longest possible sentence for the crime he pled guilty to today, he would never have been on death row and would have been released ten years ago."
The original case and Justin Sneed's testimony
The case against Glossip rested largely on the testimony of Justin Sneed, a coworker at the Oklahoma City motel where Van Treese was killed. Sneed confessed to the killing but told the court that Glossip had paid him to carry it out and helped cover up the crime. Sneed was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Glossip was first sentenced to death in 1998; that conviction was overturned in 2001. A second trial in 2004 again resulted in a death sentence.
An independent investigation by the law firm Reed Smith found that Sneed had discussed recanting his testimony over the course of a decade, both before and after Glossip's 2004 conviction. A handwritten note from Sneed to his attorneys asked, "Do I have the choice of recanting at any time during my life?" A second note indicated he considered his testimony a "mistake." Neither note was disclosed to Glossip's defence team. Reed Smith's investigation also documented conversations in which Sneed acknowledged speaking with his mother and daughter about recanting — something he had previously denied under oath.
Supreme Court ruling and retrial decision
On 25 February 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Glossip's 2004 conviction in a 5–3 decision in Glossip v. Oklahoma, ordering a new trial on the grounds that prosecutors had allowed a key witness to give false testimony and had withheld material information. Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor found that prosecutors "violated [their] constitutional obligation to correct false testimony," entitling Glossip to a new trial. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the majority opinion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett concurred in part; Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate.
On 9 June 2025, AG Drummond announced his office would retry Glossip but would not seek the death penalty. In a statement, Drummond said: "While it was clear to me and to the U.S. Supreme Court that Mr. Glossip did not receive a fair trial, I have never proclaimed his innocence." The AG's office noted that Sneed — the man who admitted to beating Van Treese to death with a baseball bat — is serving a life sentence without parole.
The road to that retrial decision began in March 2023, when Drummond and Glossip's counsel jointly requested a stay of execution, with the AG formally acknowledging error and asking the court to vacate the conviction due to "material misstatements" made by Sneed. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied those requests, but Glossip's team appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted a stay of execution on 5 May 2023.
The plea agreement on 12 November 2026 — just weeks before the trial was set to begin on 7 December — brought the criminal proceedings to a close without a further jury verdict on the murder charge itself.
Source: Google News MT — Crime (en)