An Oklahoma judge on Thursday allowed former death row prisoner Richard Glossip to be released on bond while awaiting retrial over a 1997 killing that put him on the brink of execution three separate times.
The decision clears the way for Glossip, 63, to leave a lockup for the first time since his arrest nearly 30 years ago. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his conviction, and his longstanding claims of innocence have drawn support from
Kim Kardashian and other prominent figures.
Judge Natalie Mai issued an order setting bond at $500,000. Glossip must wear an electronic monitoring device and will not be allowed to travel outside Oklahoma. He also must not contact any witnesses in the case, or consume any drugs or alcohol.
Glossip had been sentenced to death over the 1997 killing in Oklahoma City of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that prosecutors’ decision to allow a key witness to give testimony they knew to be false violated Glossip’s constitutional right to a fair trial.
Glossip has remained behind bars after Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced the state would seek to retry him on a murder charge but not pursue the death penalty again.
“The court fully expects that the state will rigorously prosecute its case going forward and the defense will provide robust representation for Glossip,” the judge wrote in the order. “The court hopes that a new trial, free of error, will provided all interested parties and the citizens of Oklahoma, the closure they deserve.”
During his time on death row, courts in Oklahoma set nine different execution dates for Glossip, and he came so close to being put to death that he ate three separate last meals. In 2015, he was even held in a cell next to Oklahoma’s execution chamber, waiting to be strapped to a gurney and die by lethal injection.
But the scheduled time for his execution came and went. Behind the walls of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, prison officials were scrambling after learning one of the lethal drugs they received to carry out the procedure didn’t match the execution protocols. The drug mix-up ultimately led to a nearly seven-year moratorium on executions in Oklahoma.
“Mr. Glossip now has the chance to taste freedom while his defense team continues to pursue justice on his behalf against a system that the United States Supreme Court has found to be guilty of serious misconduct by state prosecutors," his attorney, Donald Knight, said.
Glossip’s case attracted international attention after actress Susan Sarandon — who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean’s fight to save a man on Louisiana’s death row in the 1995 movie “Dead Man Walking” — took up his cause in real life. Glossip's case also was featured in the 2017 documentary film titled “Killing Richard Glossip."
