Hours after the bond order was issued, Glossip walked out of an Oklahoma City jail and headed back into the courts for what Oklahoma prosecutors have said would be a renewed case.
The decision in May 2026 follows the Supreme Court’s last-year ruling that overturned Glossip’s conviction and death sentence. The court said prosecutors violated Glossip’s right to a fair trial by allowing Sneed, described as the key witness against him, to give testimony the government knew was false.
Glossip’s name has been at the center of a long-running death-penalty case tied to the 1997 killing of Van Treese, an Oklahoma motel owner. According to the case timeline, Van Treese was beaten to death at a motel he owned, and Glossip was arrested in connection with the killing alongside another employee, Sneed.
Glossip was convicted and sentenced to death in August 1998, with prosecutors arguing at trial that Van Treese was killed in a murder-for-hire scheme. In subsequent appeals, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial in July 2001, and after a second trial ended in another murder conviction, Oklahoma sentenced him to death again in August 2004.
After multiple times close to execution, the federal and state litigation surrounding Glossip also focused on Oklahoma’s use of midazolam in executions. The timeline describes Oklahoma first using the surgical sedative midazolam during the April 29, 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett, when the execution was halted and Lockett died 43 minutes later, with the state later citing an improperly placed intravenous line rather than the drug mix.
In May 2015 and again in the fall of that year, Oklahoma scheduled Glossip’s execution amid further legal challenges to the midazolam protocol. The timeline notes that the U.S. Supreme Court halted Glossip’s execution on Jan. 28, 2015 while it considered challenges involving Oklahoma’s use of midazolam, and later in June 2015 a divided Supreme Court upheld the state’s use of the drug during executions.
Glossip’s path to a new trial accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision overturned his conviction. On June 9, 2025, Attorney General Drummond told reporters he planned to try Glossip again for murder while agreeing that the prior trial was unfair, according to the timeline.
Then, on May 14, 2026, an Oklahoma judge set Glossip’s bond at $500,000, and a short time later he was released from custody. As this case returns to court, prosecutors have a renewed procedural opportunity to address the evidence issues identified by the Supreme Court, while Glossip continues to await how that retrial will proceed.
Related prior coverage includes an MSI report on Glossip’s release from jail ahead of retrial. MSI previously reported that Glossip was released pending retrial in the 1997 murder case.