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27 Years On Death Row

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Society & Culture, Business, News

3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2024

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Prosecutors elicited perjury and a man's gonna go to his death. We can't allow that to happen.” – Paul Clement, October 9th, 2024. 

This week the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the latest chapter in the complex and prolonged legal battle involving Richard Glossip, who has been on Oklahoma's death row since his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-hire. Following two independent investigations into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, suppression of material evidence, and a history of inadequate defense counsel, Oklahoma’s Attorney General took the bold step of confessing to constitutional error in the case and supporting a new trial. But Oklahoma’s State Supreme Court is pressing on with Glossip’s execution, and so, on Wednesday morning, the High Court heard a case long on the appearance of process and short on actual justice. Don Knight, Richard Glossip’s attorney of almost 10 years, provides insights into the flawed process, and the shocking revelations from newly discovered evidence boxes. This case highlights broader questions about justice, fairness, and trust in the American legal system…. Leading us to an update from the latest inductee to the Lady Justice Hall of Fame – Amicus listener Barbara Hausman-Smith, and her one-woman protest at One First Street. Listen to the end of the show to find out what links this 76-year-old grandmother from Maine to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and SCOTUS’s landmark decision to legalize equal marriage in Obergefell in 2015. 

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Richard Glossop was convicted on the word of one man.

0:05.0

Justin Sneed the undisputed murderer in this case.

0:09.0

If he's lying, if he's trying to cover up something about his own behavior, I'm going to take that into

0:15.2

account and deciding whether when he accuses the defendant he's telling the truth.

0:19.8

The prosecutor's elicited perjury here and a man's going to go to his death.

0:23.0

We can't allow that to happen.

0:25.2

Hi and welcome to Amicus.

0:27.0

This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court.

0:31.1

I'm Dahlia Lithwick.

0:32.2

I cover those things for slate. And here on

0:34.7

amicus we also try to cover some of the many things that connect us to justice

0:40.8

as opposed to just the law.

0:44.0

This past week swept in the first Monday of October, the first argued cases of the 2024 term.

0:50.7

On Wednesday morning the court heard arguments in an Oklahoma death penalty case that has

0:55.0

traveled one of the twistiest roads through the American capital justice system that I have

1:00.4

ever witnessed.

1:01.4

Indeed, we covered the accused Richard Glossop's last trip to the US Supreme Court back in 2015. Glossop lost then on a question about Oklahoma's execution drugs.

1:13.0

Quote, welcome to Groundhog Day,

1:15.2

wrote Justice Scalia at the time,

1:17.3

scoffing at death penalty lawyers

1:19.6

who bring claims of innocence that were,

1:22.2

in Scalia's view, at least, perennial and frivolous and in bad faith.

...

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