Death Row Inmate Saved by Supreme Court
Caroline MolloyLea Glossip has been waiting nine years for this moment.
The anti–death penalty activist struck up a pen pal friendship with death row inmate Richard Glossip in 2016. Six years later they married, when he was 59 and she was 32.
She always believed that Glossip—who was convicted of murdering his boss in 1998 at the motel in Oklahoma City where he worked—was innocent. So did many others. As I reported one year ago, Republican politicians in the very red state of Oklahoma have been campaigning alongside anti–death penalty advocates for Glossip’s exoneration for years.
He had been scheduled to die nine times and had eaten his last meal three times when his case finally went to the Supreme Court last October. It was his last chance for a reprieve.
Finally, on Tuesday, the nation’s highest court ruled that Richard Glossip deserves a new trial. And if the Oklahoma County district attorney believes there is not enough evidence to convict Glossip for murder again, a trial will not be called—and Glossip will finally walk free.
When Lea Glossip texted me today, she was exuberant over the news: “We’re both just extremely overcome with so many emotions, and yes, lots of happy tears!! We’re both just extremely blessed and grateful to be sharing this moment together and hopeful for what’s ahead.”
In the meantime, Glossip will be moved from death row at the state penitentiary in McAlester as soon as this week and placed at Oklahoma County Jail, according to Kevin McDugle, a former Republican state representative from Oklahoma who has been pushing for his release.
McDugle told me that, despite being a proponent of the death penalty, he is “1,000 percent ecstatic” about the court’s ruling. Glossip’s case was unique in that his lawyers teamed up with state representatives like McDugle to urge the high court to overturn his conviction and death sentence. “This is truly a miracle, because no one individual could have ever made this happen,” he told me. “It took so many different people to make this happen.”
