OKLAHOMA CITY – Prominent anti-death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean, whose book ‘Dead Man Walking’ was made into a film, joined others on Wednesday in urging Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt to grant death row inmate Richard Glossip a 60-day pardon from his to grant the planned execution.
Prejean joined Republican Reps Kevin McDugle and Justin Humphrey and others in asking Stitt for a 60-day delay, similar to his granted Glossip in November to allow time for the State Criminal Court of Appeals to rule on claims of innocence and wrongdoing by the prosecution eventually denied.
“The people of Oklahoma have to be the ones who get to Gov. Stitt, who has the power to grant a stay,” Prejean, a spiritual adviser to Glossip, said during a news conference in the state capital.
Spokespersons in Stitt’s office did not immediately respond to calls and messages asking for comment.
McDugle, who says he supports the death penalty, asked Stitt to delay the execution while two appeals from Glossip are pending in the US Supreme Court.
“To allow this case to be fought in federal court would follow the law. Obeying the law means not rushing the execution process,” McDugle said.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 2-2 last week to reject a clemency recommendation for Glossip, with one member withdrawing because his spouse is a prosecutor previously involved in Glossip’s case, although Attorney General Gentner Drummond supported the clemency.
Stitt cannot grant a parole without the recommendation of the parole board, but can grant a stay.
Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, objected early in the hearing to a no-replacement trial for the resigning board member.
On Tuesday, Knight amended a lawsuit challenging the parole and parole board meeting with four members present instead of the full five-member board.
The amended lawsuit, filed in Oklahoma County District Court, calls for a stay of execution pending Glossip’s clemency hearing by a full committee and for the parole board’s vote denying clemency to be declared null and void.
“The state of Oklahoma has already agreed that Richard Glossip was denied a fair trial…he has now been denied a fair clemency hearing,” Knight said in a statement. “The board’s split decision is exactly the outcome this lawsuit sought to avoid, and it underscores the grave injustice of allowing the execution of (Glossip) without a proper clemency hearing before a fully assembled board.”
Drummond on Monday made an application that the US Supreme Court stayed the execution after taking the unusual step of supporting the clemency petition.
“Without the intervention of this court, an execution will proceed in circumstances in which the Attorney General has already admitted error – an outcome that would be unthinkable,” the motion to stay states.
During the clemency hearing, Drummond said he believed Glossip was guilty of complicity, at least retrospectively, but had numerous concerns about the fairness of the trial, including that Justin Sneed, the key witness against Glossip, lied to the jury about his psychiatric treatment and reasons for taking the mood-stabilizing drug lithium.
Glossip, now 60, was convicted of the 1997 murder of his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in two separate trials based largely on the testimony of Sneed, a co-defendant in the case. Sneed admitted to robbing and killing Van Treese but claims he only did so after Glossip agreed to pay him $10,000. Sneed was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Glossip was to be executed three times, only to be spared just before the sentence was carried out. He was only hours away from execution in September 2015, when prison officials discovered they had been given the wrong deadly drug, a mix-up that helped prompt a nearly seven-year moratorium on Oklahoma’s death penalty.
Glossip’s case garnered international attention after actress Susan Sarandon — who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Prejean’s struggle to save a man on Louisiana’s death row in the 1995 film based on Prejean’s book — took up his cause in real life. His case was also featured in a 2017 documentary called Killing Richard Glossip.
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