Lucky again: US Supreme Court halts Oklahoma man Richard Glossip's fourth execution attempt

After a rare intervention by the US Supreme Court, a convicted man from Oklahoma was spared a fourth execution attempt. After the state's top lawman claimed Richard Glossip did not receive a fair trial, the court postponed his execution till 18 May.

A hotel owner in Oklahoma City and the employer of Glossip, Barry Van Treese, was beaten to death with a baseball bat by maintenance worker Justin Sneed in 1997. Justin Sneed, also a coworker of Glossip who was found guilty of the crime, said that Glossip had hired him to kill Treese.

Glossip was about to be put to death in 2015 when the execution was postponed so that security personnel could inspect the lethal injection chemicals. The order temporarily suspends the punishment while the court deliberates the case.

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Gentner Drummond, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has reexamined the case and requested a new trial on the basis that the prosecution withheld facts concerning his accuser that would have strengthened his defence.

Throughout his 26 years in prison, Glossip, 60, and his family have maintained his innocence by asserting that Sneed acted alone. After his initial conviction in 1998 was overturned in 2001, Glossip was found guilty once more three years later.

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He has had three final dinners while inside, and nine separate execution dates have been set. Republican attorney general Drummond discovered in a study made public last year that Glossip's accuser had been treated for a significant mental illness at the time of his 2004 retrial.

"Absent this court's intervention, an execution will move forward under circumstances where the Attorney General has already confessed error — a result that would be unthinkable," Mr Drummond wrote in his request to the court.

Until the court determines whether to mandate a new trial and perhaps overturn his conviction, the stay will be in effect. Pope Francis, Kim Kardashian, and Richard Branson have all shown their support for Glossip in the case, which has garnered attention on a global scale.

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"There's so many exonerations in this country - so many people were railroaded, so many people's lives were taken from them," Glossip purportedly said Thursday. "Why is it so hard for people to think that somebody's actually innocent?"

Glossip, who is married to a campaigner against the death penalty claims he has kept his attention on the things he wants to accomplish once he is released from jail.

GlossipattorneyDon Knight, said,"We are very grateful to the U.S. Supreme Court for doing the right thing in stopping Richard Glossip's unlawful execution," Knight said.

"There is nothing more harrowing than the thought of executing a man who the state now admits has never received a fair trial. Thankfully, for the time being, Mr. Glossip is out of peril."

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