Richard Glossip, 61, left an Oklahoma City jail Thursday afternoon after a district judge set bond at $500,000, capping a legal saga that stretched across three decades and came to symbolize the flaws bedeviling capital punishment in the United States. Glossip was first arrested in 1997 for the murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of the motel where Glossip worked as a manager. A handyman, Justin Sneed, confessed to beating Van Treese to death with a baseball bat but told police that Glossip had promised him $10,000 to carry out the killing. Sneed’s testimony was the centerpiece of the state’s case at both of Glossip’s trials.
Glossip was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals overturned that conviction in 2001, citing errors in the trial, but a second jury returned the same verdict in 2004 and again sentenced him to die. The appeals that followed would take more than two decades.
In 2014, Oklahoma’s execution protocol came under national scrutiny after the botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett, who writhed and groaned on the gurney for 43 minutes after being given the sedative midazolam. The state halted executions and revised its drug mixture, but Glossip and other condemned prisoners challenged the continued use of midazolam, arguing it could not reliably prevent excruciating pain. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the protocol in June 2015, setting the stage for Glossip’s execution dates that summer.
Three times between January and September 2015, Glossip was served what he believed would be his last meal — chicken fried steak, fish and chips, a bacon cheeseburger, a strawberry malt, and pizza — and each time a court or the governor intervened. On September 30, just as the execution team was preparing to proceed, the governor stayed the execution after learning that one of the lethal drugs in the state’s supply did not match the official protocol. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals then suspended all executions indefinitely.
Pressure from Glossip’s lawyers and a growing coalition of supporters, including Oklahoma’s own Republican attorney general, eventually led to a re-examination of the case. In May 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court again halted Glossip’s execution at the urging of Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who had concluded that the 2004 trial was “unfair and unreliable.” Two years later, in February 2025, the high court threw out the conviction entirely, ruling that prosecutors had violated Glossip’s constitutional rights by knowingly allowing Sneed to give false testimony — testimony that had been central to the jury’s decision to impose death.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, Drummond announced in June 2025 that he intended to try Glossip a third time. “While I agree his previous trial was unfair, I do not believe Richard Glossip is innocent,” Drummond said at the time. Glossip remained in custody while prosecutors prepared for a new trial.
On Thursday, an Oklahoma judge granted Glossip’s request for release on a $500,000 bond. Glossip walked out of the jail hours later, surrounded by family and supporters. A new trial date has not been set.
Glossip’s case joins a small but growing list of death-row exonerations and near-exonerations that have fueled a national debate over the reliability of capital convictions. The revelation that prosecutors allowed a key witness to lie on the stand, combined with the length of time Glossip spent under threat of execution, has drawn criticism from both liberal opponents of the death penalty and conservative proponents of limited government.
For now, Glossip is free for the first time since the Clinton administration. He leaves behind a death row cell that had been his home for more than half his life.